Talking the Talk, from the Right Distance

The Outsiders in 1966. Public domain image courtesy KLRA Beat and Wikimedia Commons. Last night, I watched the first episode of Art21, which featured a bit on Louise Bourgeois—and then this morning, found David Byrne tossing out an aside about her in Bicycle Diaries. I love that sort of coincidence. But it was one of the artists Byrne didn’t mention, Bruce Nauman, who had me putting show and book together.1 Prior to the Art21 episode, I’d heard Nauman’s name, but knew nothing about him. Lo and behold, there was a totally average-looking guy running a New Mexico ranch part of the time and working there in his studio the other part. And the art wasn’t the sort of cowboy stuff you might expect from a rancher: sculptures of buffalo or paintings of drovers getting a herd from one place to another. His video installations might indeed have featured some post hole digging or horseback riding, but heritage celebrations they were not—and his stairs to nowhere would have been, among the…