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BODY, THE GAZE, AND ABSTRACTION: FROM SAMUEL BECKETT TO BRUCE NAUMAN o> LLEWELLYN BROWN ABSTRACT Artist Bruce Nauman’s video “Beckett Walk” is directly inspired by Samuel Beckett’s works such as Watt and Molloy, showing shared preoccupations. Watt’s walk follows abstract coordinates, testifying to the absence of a unified bodily image. In Nauman’s walk, the body as subjectivity persists through geometrical forms. The use of the video undercuts the impression of surveillance, since the spectator is immobile, by contrast with the performer, whose movements escape his limited gaze. The walk as performance subordinates the specular image to the force that drives the pacing, and reveals the creation to be addressed to the spectator as other. Described as one of the greatest contemporary American artists,’ Bruce Nauman (b. 1941) read Beckett in the sixties,” and took inspiration from him, raising the question as to what may be involved in this creative encounter. One creation is particularly worthy of attention in this respect: “Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk)” (1968), a one-hour monochrome video that explicitly pays tribute to Beckett’s writings. This work belongs to his “Studio Films, a series of filmed performance pieces Nauman made in 1967-68, and which have since attained the status of signature works." A comparison will enable us to see the way the two artists are indeed concerned by common preoccupations, particularly in their relation to abstraction and the body. Steven Connor underscores that both “Beckett and Nauman have found a compulsion in the act of walking.” Indeed, Beckett 1 Gérard Wajcman: Mother Fuckers, Elucidation 3 (2002), 13. Coosje van Bruggen: Bruce Nauman, New York, Rizzoli, First Edition edition, 1988, 18. 3 https://vimeopro.com/user3539702/ubuweb/video/121813096, (accessed 22 October 2017). Title henceforth abbreviated as Beckett Walk. Janet Kraynak: Bruce Nauman’s Words, in Janet Kraynak (ed.): Please pay attention please: Bruce Nauman’s Words, Cambridge [Mass.], MIT, 2003, 14. Steven Connor: Shifting Ground, http://stevenconnor.com/beckettnauman.html, (accessed 22 October 2017). English version of an essay published in German as Auf schwankendem Boden, in the catalogue of the exhibition Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman (Vienna, Kunsthalle Wien, 2000), 80-87. + 101 +
