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Bruce Nauman  born 1941

Bruce Nauman Raw-War 1971
© ARS, NY and DACS, London 2002
Raw-War  1971

Lithograph on paper
image: 567 x 717 mm
on paper, print

Purchased 1992

P77582
This is one of a series of lithographs made by Nauman involving word-play. The artist has drawn the palindrome, 'Raw-War' repeatedly in a semi-transparent perspective grid. There are four receding parallel rows of the same three letters, and in the first, the letter R is reversed, so that the first row may be read as RAW or WAR. In the second row 'War' may only be read backwards and similar reversals take place in the other two rows. This is one of Nauman's first lithographs, and relates to an earlier neon sign work, which flashes orange and red. Nauman uses the association of colour, sound and image to enrich and to broaden meaning. He has acknowledged that there is a political dimension to this work.
 (From the display caption August 2004)