"And then what makes the work interesting is if you choose the right questions"
About this Quote
Art doesn not get interesting because the answers are dazzling; it gets interesting because the artist is ruthless about what to be curious about. Bruce Nauman’s line reads like a demystification of creativity, but it’s also a quiet flex: the real skill is not making objects, it’s framing the problem so the object can’t help but matter.
Nauman came up in the late 1960s, when “work” in art was being stripped of its old assurances. Sculpture was no longer a noble thing on a pedestal; it could be a corridor that pressures your body, a neon sentence that needles your assumptions, a video of the artist repeating a gesture until it turns uncanny. In that context, “choose the right questions” is an ethic and a survival strategy. If you’re leaving behind traditional craft as the main event, you need a different standard of rigor. The question becomes the engine; the piece is evidence that the question bites.
The subtext is anti-romantic but not anti-feeling. Nauman isn’t claiming art is a crossword puzzle. He’s pointing to how attention works: ask a vague question and you get decorative ambiguity; ask a sharp one and you generate tension, discomfort, humor, or dread almost automatically. His best work often feels like an experiment conducted on the viewer: What does language do to you? How does repetition degrade meaning? When does a space become a trap?
“Right” doesn’t mean morally correct. It means productive - a question with teeth, a question that keeps worrying at you after the gallery lights go out.
Nauman came up in the late 1960s, when “work” in art was being stripped of its old assurances. Sculpture was no longer a noble thing on a pedestal; it could be a corridor that pressures your body, a neon sentence that needles your assumptions, a video of the artist repeating a gesture until it turns uncanny. In that context, “choose the right questions” is an ethic and a survival strategy. If you’re leaving behind traditional craft as the main event, you need a different standard of rigor. The question becomes the engine; the piece is evidence that the question bites.
The subtext is anti-romantic but not anti-feeling. Nauman isn’t claiming art is a crossword puzzle. He’s pointing to how attention works: ask a vague question and you get decorative ambiguity; ask a sharp one and you generate tension, discomfort, humor, or dread almost automatically. His best work often feels like an experiment conducted on the viewer: What does language do to you? How does repetition degrade meaning? When does a space become a trap?
“Right” doesn’t mean morally correct. It means productive - a question with teeth, a question that keeps worrying at you after the gallery lights go out.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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