Bruce Nauman Quotes

It's just strange to think about...whether I'll be an artist or what I'll be doing.

I like to use my hands and make things... It might seem pretty stupid or pointless but that doesn't matter... some of the most interesting work is the stuff that starts like that - out of a raw need for activity.

And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell, and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly.

If you really want to do it, you do it. There are no excuses.

In the studio, I don't do a lot of work that requires repetitive activity. I spend a lot of time looking and thinking and then try to find the most efficient way to get what I want, whether it's making a drawing or a sculpture, or casting plaster or whatever.

A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on.

But part of the enjoyment I take in it is finding the most efficient way to do it, which doesn't mean the corrections aren't made. I like to have a feeling of the whole task before I start, even if it changes.

And sometimes the question that you pose or the project that you start yourself turns into something else, you know, but at least it gets you started.

Pete and Repeat were sitting on a wall. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat.

What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art . . . . From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.

Sometimes I just have a few people over to see the new work, and I think it works better than in a museum situation, where the public is just presented with a large area.

But if you can find that spot - I suppose it's like running - I used to be a swimmer and swim laps, and you just have to be there with what you're doing.

I thought I might have to give up art, but I couldn't think of anything else to do.

My videos always involve some idea of a human being in a unusual situation-and what happens.

I want to be in the studio. I want to be doing something. You just do whatever is at hand, and you don't even worry about whether it's going to be interesting or not interesting to anybody else-or even yourself. You just have to make something.

In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.

I'll talk. You'll listen.

And then what makes the work interesting is if you choose the right questions.

Learn to recognise when you need to know something.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.

Did you stop because it was good enough, or could have done more - but then maybe ruined it too? Sometimes you finish because you've gone too far.

My work is basically an outgrowth of the anger I feel about the human condition. The aspects of it that make me angry are our capacity for cruelty and the ability people have to ignore situations they don't like.

What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be - and can become.

I like to combine different aspects in my work, to cover different areas, but I do see them as being separate.

Generalised anger and frustration is something that gets you in the studio, and gets you to work - though it's not necessarily evident in anything that's finished.

If you choose the wrong questions and you proceed, you still get a result, but it's not interesting.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

I get the feeling that sometimes the ideas work very well when you're doing them in the studio alone.

I don't like to think about being an influence. It's embarrassing.

I'm surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I'm not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness; and when it's got a certain completeness, then it's beautiful.