Lot Essay
Conceived for the annual benefit gala for the New Museum, New York in 1985, Double Poke in the Eye II is one of Bruce Nauman’s most iconic neon works. The wall-mounted sculpture depicts two opposed faces in profile—one yellow, one blue—with four pointing hands between them. An internal timer causes the hands to flash on and off in irregular sequence, creating a two-frame animation in which the two figures poke one another in the eye. The hands’ looping motion sometimes settles into a sidelong figure-of-eight: the symbol for infinity. Both playful and ominous, the work literalises the Biblical phrase ‘an eye for an eye’, portraying an endless cycle of retribution. Double Poke in the Eye II was the second in a special yearly series of sculptural editions organised to support the New Museum’s exhibitions and programs. It was preceded by a work by Claes Oldenburg, and followed by contributions from Donald Judd, Richard Artschwager and Jenny Holzer. Other examples of Double Poke in the Eye II are in the collections of institutions including Tate, London, the Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart, the New Museum, New York, Princeton University Art Museum and Denver Art Museum.
Nauman created his first neon works in the mid-1960s while he was a teacher at the Art Institute of San Francisco. He was inspired by an old illuminated beer sign hanging in the window of his studio, a converted grocery store. Nauman had studied mathematics and physics before turning to art, and he was uninterested in traditional forms such as painting. His early works had drawn ideas from the disciplines of dance, music, theatre and literature. Neon, he realised, offered another unconventional medium in which he could embed language and meaning.
The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967), which remains one of Nauman’s most well-known works, set its title’s words in a neon spiral. It was displayed in his studio’s storefront window, making it illegible from the inside. The cliché of the artist’s timeless, transcendent role was played off against the work’s formal evocation of mass culture, creating an ambiguous and ironic dual statement. Nauman’s other early light works included linear, abstracted tracings of his body’s profile and ‘light rooms’ that made the viewer into a performer in disorienting, altered spaces. His word-based neons such as Raw War (1971) and Run from Fear, Fun from Rear (1972) used double meanings, puns and idioms to menacing poetic effect. Double Poke in the Eye II dates from the climax of a final, intense burst of neon production between 1980 and 1985. During this period, Nauman used more word games, linguistic patterns and human figures to probe the human predicament and its contradictions of sex and violence, creation and destruction, humour and horror, and life and death.
Nauman’s neons touch on our most profound, Freudian drives, yet they echo the presentation of commercial signage: alluring, flashing emblems that advertise cheap thrills and instant gratification. In the case of the figural works, the motifs’ whimsical, even childlike quality—Nauman’s Hanged Man (1985) draws directly on a children’s game—likewise jars with their profound themes. While neon had proved itself as an artistic medium in the Minimalist and Spatialist creations of Dan Flavin and Lucio Fontana, it was not until Nauman’s works that it was given such complex expressive reach. They are performative vignettes, engaging with the big questions of life in the manner of Samuel Beckett’s existential plays. They are at once witty and disturbing, visually sumptuous and bitingly satirical. Whichever way one sees Double Poke in the Eye II, it’s hard to look away. ‘My work comes out of being frustrated about the human condition’, said Nauman in 1988. ‘And about how people refuse to understand other people. And about how people can be cruel to each other. It’s not that I think I can change that, but it’s just such a frustrating part of human history’ (B. Nauman quoted in J. Simon, ‘Breaking the Silence: An Interview with Bruce Nauman’, Art in America 76, no. 9, September 1988, p. 148).
Nauman created his first neon works in the mid-1960s while he was a teacher at the Art Institute of San Francisco. He was inspired by an old illuminated beer sign hanging in the window of his studio, a converted grocery store. Nauman had studied mathematics and physics before turning to art, and he was uninterested in traditional forms such as painting. His early works had drawn ideas from the disciplines of dance, music, theatre and literature. Neon, he realised, offered another unconventional medium in which he could embed language and meaning.
The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (1967), which remains one of Nauman’s most well-known works, set its title’s words in a neon spiral. It was displayed in his studio’s storefront window, making it illegible from the inside. The cliché of the artist’s timeless, transcendent role was played off against the work’s formal evocation of mass culture, creating an ambiguous and ironic dual statement. Nauman’s other early light works included linear, abstracted tracings of his body’s profile and ‘light rooms’ that made the viewer into a performer in disorienting, altered spaces. His word-based neons such as Raw War (1971) and Run from Fear, Fun from Rear (1972) used double meanings, puns and idioms to menacing poetic effect. Double Poke in the Eye II dates from the climax of a final, intense burst of neon production between 1980 and 1985. During this period, Nauman used more word games, linguistic patterns and human figures to probe the human predicament and its contradictions of sex and violence, creation and destruction, humour and horror, and life and death.
Nauman’s neons touch on our most profound, Freudian drives, yet they echo the presentation of commercial signage: alluring, flashing emblems that advertise cheap thrills and instant gratification. In the case of the figural works, the motifs’ whimsical, even childlike quality—Nauman’s Hanged Man (1985) draws directly on a children’s game—likewise jars with their profound themes. While neon had proved itself as an artistic medium in the Minimalist and Spatialist creations of Dan Flavin and Lucio Fontana, it was not until Nauman’s works that it was given such complex expressive reach. They are performative vignettes, engaging with the big questions of life in the manner of Samuel Beckett’s existential plays. They are at once witty and disturbing, visually sumptuous and bitingly satirical. Whichever way one sees Double Poke in the Eye II, it’s hard to look away. ‘My work comes out of being frustrated about the human condition’, said Nauman in 1988. ‘And about how people refuse to understand other people. And about how people can be cruel to each other. It’s not that I think I can change that, but it’s just such a frustrating part of human history’ (B. Nauman quoted in J. Simon, ‘Breaking the Silence: An Interview with Bruce Nauman’, Art in America 76, no. 9, September 1988, p. 148).