(2 of 2)
Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists, 1967, is as anemic a parody of the cement pavement outside Grauman's Chinese Theater as one could desire; therein, perhaps, lies a fatuous sort of originality. Its aim, as Nauman once expressed it, "has to do with making the thing itself less important to look at." In those terms, such works are a complete success. It is hard to think of anything that could be less visually important, unless it is the punning (Duchamp again, minus the flair) in thrusts of wit like Nauman's Waxing Hot — a photograph of the young master's hands applying car polish to three red wooden letters, H, O and T.
Nauman's output lacks the sense of fantasy, myth and visual meaning that informs the work of his West Coast contemporaries, William Wiley, William Allen and Joseph Raffael. It is too heavyhanded to rival the wit of an Ed Ruscha or a Kenneth Price. Nauman's reputation is an example of terrorism-by-art-history. Nowhere does he address himself to life, prosaic or imaginative. Instead, he poses fidgety little conundrums about the limits of aesthetic activity. Art about art about art: an infinite regress, like a camera staring at the monitor. How anyone can still obtain a reputation by squatting in that overpopulated cul-de-sac is one of the enduring mysteries of the world art scene.