Judging Bruce Nauman's Exhibit

Judging Bruce Nauman’s Exhibit

While experiencing Bruce Nauman’s exhibit entitled A Rose has no Thorns, two overwhelming points of realization came to my mind. First, it became clear to me that anything can be qualified as art. And second, it became clear to me that what constitutes “good” or “quality” art is a purely subjective judgment

Now, that being said, I have no problem calling anything and everything art. I am not one of those people who believe that art can be defined and bounded. I believe that everything in the world has some artistic value and so anything can be considered art. But the point that concerned me most when experiencing Bruce Nauman’s work is how can one decide what constitutes “quality” art and is this decision a purely subjective judgment.

As I stated above, it is my opinion that this is a subjective judgment. So the only way to make a judgment of Bruce Nauman's work is to make a subjective claim and support this claim with evidence. I felt that Bruce Nauman’s work was very original and experimental, but overall I felt that his work was of little real quality. Of course this is only my opinion, but since we already heard the guides explanation on why this is “quality” art, let me give you my explanation.

I feel that the “quality” of art can be judged by two measures: 1) the ability of the piece to produce an emotional response in the viewer and 2) the intrinsic value of the piece, more specifically, the ability of the piece to communicate its message universally without an explanation.

Let us now apply these measures to Bruce Nauman’s exhibit, beginning with the first measure. Throughout my entire experience at the exhibit, I felt very little positive or negative emotion. Mostly I felt extremely apathetic and disinterested. At one point in the exhibit our guide pointed to a rag positioned on a stool and then expounded for several minutes on the artistic quality of the piece. Now all said and done this piece was aesthetically unpleasing, its message was extremely diluted and it elicited absolutely no emotional response from me. I was then presented with several film clips including “Manipulating the T-Bar”, “Thighing”, and “Square Dance” all of which did not ignite a single feeling inside of me besides boredom and disinterest. In fact, while experiencing the entire exhibit I felt no emotional response, which leads me to conclude that it does not pass the first measure.

Now lets move on to the second measure: the intrinsic value of the piece, that is to say its ability to communicate its message universally without explanation. Throughout my tour of the exhibit I had not the slightest clue what message the art was attempting to communicate. It was only until the tour guide explained the entire theory behind the work that I came to somewhat understand the point of the art. If the tour guide had not explained to me the history of sculpture and why a rag in the corner is revolutionary then I would have absolutely no clue that I was looking at a piece of art. If he had not told me that the purpose of a piece was to “extends beyond my ability to pay attention to it”, I would have never understood what Bruce Nauman was trying to communicate. Just imagine if we were to drop this exhibit in a non-western country and did not explain anything to the viewers. People would never be able to figure out what the art was trying to communicate. Therefore it is clear that the art does not have an intrinsic universal message. Instead its message must be translated and teased out by people who have studied the artist, his work and his motives. Thus it is clear that the work does not pass the second measure.

In the end it is difficult for me to say that Bruce Nauman’s work is low quality. After all he spent his life producing the work and he clearly put a lot of effort and thought into his art. What I can say is according to the definition set forth in the response; Bruce Nauman’s work does not measure up.