
Clown Torture
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Pas exposée actuellement
Où est « Clown Torture » aujourd’hui ? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Pas exposée actuellement. Vérifié 29 septembre 2026.
Chicago, États-Unis
Elle appartient à la collection, mais n’est pas présentée en ce moment.
- Vérifié
- Dans cet état depuis
- Source
- Le musée
À propos de l’œuvre
Bruce Nauman’s wildly influential, relentlessly imitated work explores the poetics of confusion, anxiety, boredom, entrapment, and failure. One of the artist’s most spectacular achievements to date, Clown Torture consists of two rectangular pedestals, each supporting two pairs of stacked color monitors; two large color-video projections on two facing walls; and sound from all six video displays. The monitors play four narrative sequences in perpetual loops, each chronicling an absurd misadventure of a clown (played to brilliant effect by the actor Walter Stevens).
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In “No, No, No, No (Walter),” the clown incessantly screams the word no while jumping, kicking, or lying down; in “Clown with Goldfish,” the clown struggles to balance a fish bowl on the ceiling with the handle of a broom; in “Clown with Water Bucket,” the clown repeatedly opens a door booby-trapped with a bucket of water that falls on his head; and finally, in “Pete and Repeat,” the clown succumbs to the terror of a seemingly inescapable nursery rhyme. The simultaneous presentation and the relentless repetition creates an almost painful sensory overload. With both clown and viewer locked in an endless loop of failure and degradation, the humor soon turns to horror.
Art Institute of ChicagoCC BY 4.0
Notice
- Numéro d’inventaire
- 1997.162
Ce qu’elle montre
Au catalogue
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image : Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder


















