Artist Project 11

One Hundred Live And Die by Bruce Nauman
     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 made his neon pieces minimalist/maximalist emotions: they painted a space pink one minute, flickered on purple another, flickered black one minute, and then combined all the colors at once. Like neon signs you see on any store front that flicker red and blue, Nauman took this idea and embedded a text, story, and emotion to it, an incomparable achievement.

       One Hundred Live and Die is what many consider to be Nauman’s masterpiece. It covers sadness and happiness. One hundred flickers through each possible flippant, mundane, and tragic way to live and die in a blaze of neon exuberance. As I see through the artwork, each phrase lights differently such as orange, white, blue, and any color it could be. It paints the room and provides a surprisingly profound commentary on life, telling a story with each phrase, reiterating just how fucked up life can be. In the end, One Hundred resonates with all one hundred phrases lit, blindingly beautiful and a little overwhelming. His work is inconic, meaningful and fun.