(born in Fort Wayne, USA in 1941)
Maquette for 5 foot 8 inch figure, 1998, stamped on the back of the figure B. Nauman 1998 AFE and numbered 8 from the edition of 15, bronze, plaster, 48 x 36 x 15 cm (2 parts)

Provenance:
Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York - there acquired by the previous owner

Literature:
Eugen Blume, Bruce Nauman, ed. by the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, Cologne 2010, p.122, no. 34 (another example illustrated)

“The question of the relevance of what a sculpture encompasses is actually the question of the interstices of all relationships which, pertaining as it does in Nauman’s practice to the human condition, becomes a political question. Evocative of performative acts, Nauman’s architectures fundamentally explore the difference, probing the interstices of what is happening, and not the banality of what just happens to be happening at any given moment. […] Nauman’s fascination for body parts, his castings and imprints, can be traced all the way back to the beginnings of his artistic career. As exterior embodiments of the thought process, both the hand and the head have ever and again been the object of his investigations in media of sculpture and drawing.” (1)

With “Maquette for 5 foot 8 inch figure” Bruce Nauman counteracts his own fascination for body parts. The flat, almost two-dimensional human body captivates the viewer by its conscious, absolute reduction of physical details to the nothingness of the naked body with head, torso, arms and legs. The capacity of sculpture to be viewed from every angle is taken ad absurdum with the flat figure, which is reduced to a frozen preservation of movement. The still-and-scenic-image maquette of the depicted motion sequence shows, at the same time, both the desire to get up and to stretch oneself out while sitting – the human body sits moved and unmoved on the three-level installation. With the Maquette sculpture Bruce Nauman preserves human physical activity once more, and, in so doing, places the human figure at the centre of his art yet again.

(1) Eugen Blume in: Exhib. cat. Bruce Nauman: Dream Passage,