200. Bruce Nauman, Pay Attention
Dear readers, we’ve reached No. 200 in the American 250, my goodness. This is it: the list is tightening up in our final push to the end of the year. What have I missed? Let me know, and thanks for reading. - Rainey
Is this really necessary? This urgent, maybe angry, maybe fearful message commanding us, pleading with us—or are we the ones shouting? Are we seeing it backwards because we are behind the words, looking out?
Bruce Nauman may have been channeling rage with this piece, as his biographer Peter Plagens speculated—hence Nauman intentionally didn’t reverse the text on the lithographic stone so that it would read forwards once printed. Maybe so. Rage is understandable for an artist trying to get people to look at his work; we all want recognition. But I read Nauman as being up to something more ambitious. He is exhorting us to be attentive to the whole world.
Two hundred objects into this project, it’s clear that everything—everything—is interesting. The inert stuff that surrounds us is in fact alive with hidden histories of people we’ve never heard of, people who will soon be lost to history, just as we will be. But they’ve left this thing behind, a souvenir of life. When we closely examine the thing, we realize what is always available to us, right here, right now: a more expansive, more generous understanding of our fellow travelers. And so the answer is yes. Yes, this is necessary. Nauman has cursed at us with backward text to break us out of our distraction, hoping we might see.
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.
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