Shit in Your Hat – Head on a Chair

Bruce Nauman speaks the language of clowns, It is for the most part a physical language based on specific mental limitations or def cits. Gestures articulate what the clown does not say-or in the case of a mime-cannot say. If the clown does speak, it is rote to the extent that the clown does not think and then utter thoughts but blurts out what s already on its mind. It says what it must say. The exag- geration of the clown's actions has the effect of erasing all other considerations, all mitigating factors that might, in a more fully developed narrative form, explain its predicament. Likewise makeup and stylized facial expressions collapse the range of possible responses to a situation with only one or two basic options. In that sense, the clown's character is one dimensional, and forces the audience to deal with its Intractable nature and consequences. The situation in which the clown finds itself is always the same though the specifics may vary. The clown s the fool who does not understand what is happening around it, happen ing to it-the fool who is defenseless against the malice of other smarter beings and the dangers of the world. The clown trips because it most trip, is hit because it must be hit, gets up again because its fate is to top and be hit again and again and again. The clown is every man and every woman in his or her incomprehension, vulnerability, despair, and, since frus tration breeds aggression, in his or her malice as well. Like Paul McCarthy, with whom he shares so much, Nauman knows all this and more, which is why clowns have been so ubiquitous in the work of both artists Insofar as the conduct of clowns seems Pavlovian, they are ideal for the agonizing but comic scenarios which Nauman has created as parodies of the behav ior modification techniques devised by the social sciences to correct and control human nature. And so, like a ral in a cage prompted by shimuli-or an actor desperately trying to please en authoritarian director-the clown in Shit in Your Hat-Head on a Char obediently follows the dictates of an off-camera voce up until the last counter-intuitive command which gives the piece its title. The clown mimes that ton, and we laugh and wince at the humiliating novitability of a general subservience writ large.
Text written by Curator Rob Storr for the exhibition catalog.