Studies for Holograms (e) 1970

Bruce Nauman made this print, "Studies for Holograms (e)," in 1970. Here we see a mouth, pulled wide open by two fingers, baring teeth. The mouth is this pale, sickly yellow, as are the fingers and the surrounding skin. The background is a muted grey, further enhancing the disturbing effect of the mouth. I can imagine Nauman thinking about the limits of the body, the grotesque, the abject. It’s a bit like those Francis Bacon paintings of distorted figures, or maybe even some of Mike Kelley's unsettling sculptures and performances. Look at how the mouth seems stretched, unnatural, almost as if it’s a mask. What is concealed behind it? How can an expression be so telling, and yet ultimately unknowable? That gesture of pulling the mouth open: is it a forced smile, a silent scream? It's like Nauman is playing with the idea of capturing something fleeting, turning it into a fixed image, and what that might mean. There is something both humorous and also deeply unsettling about this work. It reminds me that as artists, we're all just trying to figure things out as we go along.