Bruce Nauman

(American, born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941)
Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II), 1975
Graphite on paper
30 5/8 x 39 7/8 inches (778 x 1013 mm)
Inscription: Diamond Mind/Circle of Tears/Fallen All Around me/Fallen Mind/Mindless Tears/Cut like a Diamond/Layout -/12 pc. stone 7 1/2º Rhomboids/Granite 15" on a side.
Gift of the Modern and Contemporary Collectors' Committee; 2008.10

Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.
© 2008 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

One of the most influential American artists of the Post-Minimalist generation that gained prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nauman produced sculpture, performance, video, photography, and film. A superb draftsman, he created a large body of drawings that reveal the creative process behind his works in other mediums. Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II)is a preliminary drawing for a sculpture composed of twelve rhomboid blocks distributed in concentric circles, now in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands. In the drawing, Nauman worked out the placement of the blocks. Arrows, corrections, and erasures show the artist thinking his way through the particular space of the installation. Inscriptions on the sheet include not only practical instructions and dimensions, but also a poetic text, that recalls Nauman's interest in language and play on words.