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Monday, February 12, 2007

Terrifying

posted by on February 12 at 9:13 AM

Art rarely scares me. The lights, for the most part, are up. The special effects are not so good. There’s no music jumping out of the narrative bush to attack me.

But Saturday I ran into something decidedly nasty in the Henry Art Gallery’s woodshed. It is Bruce Nauman’s Pulling Mouth, a 1969 video on view from the Henry’s permanent collection (in conjunction with the Nauman neon traveling show that opened Saturday).

Pulling Mouth is one of the artist’s slo-mo videos. It is a black-and-white view of the artist’s face, upside-down. His hands hold his mouth open. You get occasional glimpses of his eyes, squeezed closed, and it looks at first as though nothing is happening, except that he is going to have some sore cheeks.

Then you realize that the bottom teeth, at the top of the screen, are fading from view, and something dark and wet is appearing in their place. It isn’t at all clear what’s going to happen, and then—Nauman pushes out his thick, glistening, terrifying tongue, slowwwwwly, and then he retracts it, and the teeth gradually come back into view. He does this repeatedly, and it never ceases to be anything less than horrible. At one point, he opens his eyes to a sliver width, and they gleam, too.

This may be the most frightening artwork I’ve ever seen, and it’s nothing more than a man sticking his tongue out. That’s maybe the worst part of it, that, unlike a horror video by, say, the artist Chloe Piene, we don’t have to try to terrify each other. We do it naturally.

nauman.pulling.mouth.gif

RSS icon Comments

1

love the Cold Comfort Farm reference...

Jen knows her books as well as her art!! she's a renaissance gal!!

if she worked at the Times, that would be the name of her column...

Posted by michael strangeways | February 12, 2007 10:13 AM
2

"if she worked at the Times, that would be the name of her column..."

Goddamn that's funny. And sad.

Posted by David Schmader | February 12, 2007 10:20 AM
3

I am so glad that she works at the Stranger instead of the Times, even if I don't always agree with her views on art, her writing is always educational, inspirational, and FUN!

Posted by Sarah Moon | February 12, 2007 10:33 AM
4

Cold Comfort Farm was a movie too. Jen will have to weigh in: well-read Renaissance woman or connoisseur of mid-'90s satirical BBC dramas?

Posted by annie | February 12, 2007 10:43 AM
5

Jen, you do know what a goatse is, right? Because to me THAT's the real horror invoked by this photograph.

Posted by DrewVSea | February 12, 2007 12:26 PM
6

hmmm....anybody need a band name?

i'll sell you 'renaissance gal' for 5%.....of gross...

Posted by michael strangeways | February 12, 2007 12:38 PM
7

Hello guys!!!
Best for you :)

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Posted by ParisSexHiltonS | March 1, 2007 1:11 PM

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