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A Golden Lion for Bruce Nauman

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Best National Participation at the 53^rd Venice Biennale

The audience appeared to have set their minds on who the winner was, long before the committee presented the Golden Lion for best national participation at the 53rd Venice Biennale. From the first day, that this international gathering of artists opened its gates, queues were formed outside the U.S. pavilion.   The multifaceted conceptual artist and sculptor Bruce Nauman, a pioneer of Post Minimalist video and performance art, represented the United States at the 2009 Venice Biennale, and returned home a winner.

Bruce Nauman was the man to see. On the outside of the ancient-like pavilion, neon lights were flashing – the artist’s trademark technique – and the words shaped represented the seven deadly sins. As for the interior of the pavilion, the exhibition took the form of a retrospective, for older generations to remember and for younger ones to learn. Nauman’s trademark, sculptures of hands and heads made of was, dominated the presentation.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was chosen as the commissioner for the 2009 United States Pavilion. Carlos Basualdo, its curator of contemporary art, and Michael R. Taylor, its curator of modern art, organized the Nauman exhibition. “He’s an immensely interesting artist because he’s somebody whose work makes us think,” Anne d’Harnoncourt, director and chief executive of the Philadelphia Museum, said.

After the museum acquired one of Mr. Nauman’s early neon works — “The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths” (1967) — the curators began considering Mr. Nauman’s career and proposed an exhibition of his work for the 2009 Venice Biennale.

“Michael Taylor and I were astonished that he’d never been represented by the United States,” Mr. Basualdo said. “He’s so influential, and lately his work has been so strong.”

Mr. Basualdo said “We are looking at things that have not been shown for a long time or haven’t received much attention.” “And when you’re working with a living artist, there’s always the possibility of showing things no one has seen at all.”

It was not Mr. Nauman’s first appearance in a Venice Biennale, where his work has been shown five times since 1978 in exhibitions organized outside the national pavilions. In 1999, when he and Louise Bourgeois won Golden Lions for lifetime achievement, he exhibited a 1994 video installation that depicted him poking his own face, a comment on human vulnerability.

The State Department contributed about $500,000 to the Venice installation, its highest grant to date.

Born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of the most innovative and provocative of America’s contemporary artists. Nauman finds inspiration in the activities, speech, and materials of everyday life. Nauman concentrates less on the development of a characteristic style and more on the way in which a process or activity can transform or become a work of art.

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