Clea Rsky [Clear Sky]
Bruce Nauman
N.d [1968]
Clea Rsky [Clear Sky]
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Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves ...
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Clea Rsky [Clear Sky]
Bruce Nauman
N.d [1968]
N.p. [Los Angeles]: Self-published
Unpaginated [12 pages]
30.5 × 30.5 cm
Signed

Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves of contemporary life while making private feelings and hidden doubt publicly accessible,” writes Robert Storr in his introduction to the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.


 


Among Nauman’s most enigmatic publications of the 1960s, “Clea Rsky” and “LA AIR” function less as illustrated books than as conceptual machines: works whose structures themselves generate questions and provoke reflection. These publications are organized around fundamental inquiries that anticipate the logic of conceptual art: What is an image? What transforms something into a picture? How much meaning can be contained within a title, a color, or the physical form of a book?


 


Often described as containing ten photographs of the sky above Los Angeles, Clea Rsky, in fact, contains no photographs and was produced without the use of a camera. Instead, the publication consists entirely of printed blue pages designed to evoke the experience of looking at the sky while simultaneously exposing the illusion of that perception. As Nauman explained in an interview: “Clea Rsky was a way to have a book that only had colored pages—pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page; you are not really looking into anything … LA Air was the same idea, but it was also a response to Clea Rsky using polluted colors instead.”


 


Through these works, Bruce Nauman transforms the book into a cartography of perception and uncertainty, in which the boundaries between image and object, representation and reality, are continually unsettled.

N.p. [Los Angeles]: Self-published
Unpaginated [12 pages]
30.5 × 30.5 cm
Signed

Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves of contemporary life while making private feelings and hidden doubt publicly accessible,” writes Robert Storr in his introduction to the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

 

Among Nauman’s most enigmatic publications of the 1960s, “Clea Rsky” and “LA AIR” function less as illustrated books than as conceptual machines: works whose structures themselves generate questions and provoke reflection. These publications are organized around fundamental inquiries that anticipate the logic of conceptual art: What is an image? What transforms something into a picture? How much meaning can be contained within a title, a color, or the physical form of a book?

 

Often described as containing ten photographs of the sky above Los Angeles, Clea Rsky, in fact, contains no photographs and was produced without the use of a camera. Instead, the publication consists entirely of printed blue pages designed to evoke the experience of looking at the sky while simultaneously exposing the illusion of that perception. As Nauman explained in an interview: “Clea Rsky was a way to have a book that only had colored pages—pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page; you are not really looking into anything … LA Air was the same idea, but it was also a response to Clea Rsky using polluted colors instead.”

 

Through these works, Bruce Nauman transforms the book into a cartography of perception and uncertainty, in which the boundaries between image and object, representation and reality, are continually unsettled.

DESCRIPTION

Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves of contemporary life while making private feelings and hidden doubt publicly accessible,” writes Robert Storr in his introduction to the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

 

Among Nauman’s most enigmatic publications of the 1960s, “Clea Rsky” and “LA AIR” function less as illustrated books than as conceptual machines: works whose structures themselves generate questions and provoke reflection. These publications are organized around fundamental inquiries that anticipate the logic of conceptual art: What is an image? What transforms something into a picture? How much meaning can be contained within a title, a color, or the physical form of a book?

 

Often described as containing ten photographs of the sky above Los Angeles, Clea Rsky, in fact, contains no photographs and was produced without the use of a camera. Instead, the publication consists entirely of printed blue pages designed to evoke the experience of looking at the sky while simultaneously exposing the illusion of that perception. As Nauman explained in an interview: “Clea Rsky was a way to have a book that only had colored pages—pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page; you are not really looking into anything … LA Air was the same idea, but it was also a response to Clea Rsky using polluted colors instead.”

 

Through these works, Bruce Nauman transforms the book into a cartography of perception and uncertainty, in which the boundaries between image and object, representation and reality, are continually unsettled.

N.p. [Los Angeles]: Self-published
Unpaginated [12 pages]
30.5 × 30.5 cm
Signed

Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves of contemporary life while making private feelings and hidden doubt publicly accessible,” writes Robert Storr in his introduction to the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

 

Among Nauman’s most enigmatic publications of the 1960s, “Clea Rsky” and “LA AIR” function less as illustrated books than as conceptual machines: works whose structures themselves generate questions and provoke reflection. These publications are organized around fundamental inquiries that anticipate the logic of conceptual art: What is an image? What transforms something into a picture? How much meaning can be contained within a title, a color, or the physical form of a book?

 

Often described as containing ten photographs of the sky above Los Angeles, Clea Rsky, in fact, contains no photographs and was produced without the use of a camera. Instead, the publication consists entirely of printed blue pages designed to evoke the experience of looking at the sky while simultaneously exposing the illusion of that perception. As Nauman explained in an interview: “Clea Rsky was a way to have a book that only had colored pages—pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page; you are not really looking into anything … LA Air was the same idea, but it was also a response to Clea Rsky using polluted colors instead.”

 

Through these works, Bruce Nauman transforms the book into a cartography of perception and uncertainty, in which the boundaries between image and object, representation and reality, are continually unsettled.

MORE BOOKS

Bruce Nauman’s artist’s books often appear deceptively simple, yet they are constructed around carefully orchestrated mysteries and ambiguities. “At times cryptic, at times funny, and always intellectually and emotionally challenging, Nauman touches the raw nerves of contemporary life while making private feelings and hidden doubt publicly accessible,” writes Robert Storr in his introduction to the artist’s 1995 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.

 

Among Nauman’s most enigmatic publications of the 1960s, “Clea Rsky” and “LA AIR” function less as illustrated books than as conceptual machines: works whose structures themselves generate questions and provoke reflection. These publications are organized around fundamental inquiries that anticipate the logic of conceptual art: What is an image? What transforms something into a picture? How much meaning can be contained within a title, a color, or the physical form of a book?

 

Often described as containing ten photographs of the sky above Los Angeles, Clea Rsky, in fact, contains no photographs and was produced without the use of a camera. Instead, the publication consists entirely of printed blue pages designed to evoke the experience of looking at the sky while simultaneously exposing the illusion of that perception. As Nauman explained in an interview: “Clea Rsky was a way to have a book that only had colored pages—pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page; you are not really looking into anything … LA Air was the same idea, but it was also a response to Clea Rsky using polluted colors instead.”

 

Through these works, Bruce Nauman transforms the book into a cartography of perception and uncertainty, in which the boundaries between image and object, representation and reality, are continually unsettled.

MORE BOOKS