Bruce Nauman Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.

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

When I was in art school, I thought art was something I would learn how to do, and then I would just do it. At a certain point I realized that it wasn't going to work like that. Basically, I would have to start over every day and figure out what art was going to be.

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

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

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.

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.

Learn to recognise when you need to know something.

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

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

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.

It's interesting when you make things or do things that open up the possibilities for making more things, or different kinds of things.

I'll talk. You'll listen.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

One of the factors that still keeps me in the studio is that every so often I have to more or less start all over.

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.

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

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

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