The Extremes of Art

I was fascinated with reading about Nauman's issues of identity and the idea of human extremes. Nauman clearly wanted to get a reaction out of his audience; most likely a reaction of incredible discomfort and emotional pain. "Clown Torture" is seemingly barbaric and cruel in its nature- it's random and confusing but also painful to watch. We don't know why the clown is screaming, "No, no, no" and "I'm sorry, I'm sorry", but we're captivated anyway because we feel something from such sorrow and helplessness. It's like a bad car crash that we just can't look away from, and I think that kind of ideology is exactly what Nauman was going for in his work. In Nauman's "Slow Angle Walk", it's both frustrating and slightly unnerving to watch a man struggle to walk around a studio. Nauman used his audience to make his work seem intense and provocative. By arousing his audience's emotions through awkward and uncomfortable settings, his art becomes something much bigger than simply what it appears on screen. He's evoking a message in each piece of his art, a message that can be interpreted differently by anyone who watches his work.

This video, titled "Natural Beauty", by Dutch artists Lernert and Sander, is an experiment in make-up. What they did was apply 365 layers of make-up on a supermodel. The end result is pretty horrific. This video can be interpreted in various ways- it can be interpreted as a message on the dangers of how many chemicals we put on our face in a year, or it can be a message on society's twisted views of what is beautiful and what is not. However you choose to interpret it doesn't matter so long as you interpret something and so long as you feel something from watching it. This video reminded me of Nauman's work because I felt very uncomfortable while watching a woman placed under such an "extreme" circumstance, as the subjects of Nauman's films are, as well. I couldn't exactly figure out why it was making me squirm, but I think it might have been imagining myself in that woman's position and having to sit through all of those layers of make-up smothered all over my face. It's definitely a provocative piece, and it's certainly intended to make viewers feel uncomfortable, otherwise I don't think the video would have any meaning, and viewers would really gain nothing from watching it. Sometimes, the only way to truly get your point across is to make your audience extremely uncomfortable, which is what I believe Nauman tried getting across in his videos on identity and behavior. Overall, though we don't typically view the process of applying make-up as an extreme behavior, I think this video does an excellent job of portraying the little things that we go through, every day, to make ourselves look better, and how those little things eventually add up into something extreme and undesirable.