The Trainer

Bruce Nauman in retrospect.

- Peter Schjeldahl

Once, in the early nineteen-nineties, when I visited Bruce Nauman, the most influential (though for many people arcane) American artist of the past half century, on the ranch that he shares with his wife, the painter Susan Rothenberg, in Galisteo, New Mexico, he took me riding. Our mounts were two of about a dozen quarter horses—speedy, agile rodeo standbys—that Nauman was raising and training for his own use and for sale. At the time, he also maintained a cattle ranch. Besides satisfying his love of animals and his enjoyment of physical activity, the rugged avocations have given Nauman things to do during his long spells, which are legendary among artists, of artist’s block—a vulnerability of his reliance on ever new ideas, which he will explore intensively for short periods and then let drop. An immense retrospective that has opened at the Museum of Modern Art and its annex, PS1, in Long Island City, is a discontinuous parade of creative brainstorms that tend toward engulfing installations of sculpture, film, video, neon, and sound, any of which might anchor the whole career of a less restive artist. One work that I had loved before my equestrian outing with Nauman, “Green Horses” (1988), presents dreamlike videos of him expertly riding.