Bruce Nauman's hanging chairs become us, part two

Continuing from yesterday's post about Bruce Nauman's 1981 sculptures South America Triangle and Diamond Africa with Chair Tuned, D.E.A.D.: ... Both sculptures reminded me of American behaviors that I'd read about in the 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross report that concluded that the Bush administration tortured detainees. They reminded me of American-made horrors that fill every chapter of Jane Mayer's chronicle of Bush administration extra-legal detention and torture, The Dark Side. 

I started these Nauman posts by posting a strikingly direct example of how Nauman's work recalls Bush-Cheney-era torture techniques and environments so presciently that they provoke intense discomfort. It's tempting to engage Naumans that directly, especially 1974's Double Steel Cage Piece. But Naumans also abstract experiences and environments in ways that can be just as uncomfortable: References absent specifics can be even more uncomfortable than the space created by Double Steel Cage Piece. 

Nauman's two great 1981 sculptures, South America Triangle and Diamond Africa with Chair Tuned, D.E.A.D. (above) are minimalist abstractions: The I-beams may refer to confined space. The hanging chair is ominous. Nauman's sculptures are an affecting gateway toward thinking about how the United States tortured detainees during the Bush-Cheney administration.

On Tuesday I began these posts about Nauman by quoting Abu Zubaydeh's testimony to the International Committee on the Red Cross regarding his treatment at the hands of Americans. For the sake of continuity (I could quote passages regarding many other detainees), here's New Yorker writer and The Dark Side author Jane Mayer on America's treatment of Abu Zubaydeh (she spells his name slightly differently than the ICRC does):

"Zubayda's 'hard time' began when he was locked into the 'tiny coffin' for hours on end, which he described as excruciatingly painful. It was too small for him to stand or stretch out, so small he said he had to double up his limbs in a fetal position. Because of his recently healed injuries, he described this position as particularly agonizing, since it caused his wounds [suffered upon capture] to reopen. He described the box as black, both inside and out, and said that it was covered in towels, which he thought was an effort to constrict the flow of air inside. While locked in the dark interior, he had no way of knowing when, if ever, he would be let out. But he related that most of the sessions lasted less than a day at a time, and were started and stopped during the course of one week. A source familiar with Zubayda's account described the tiny coffin box as "unbearable, most terrible." Article 21 of the Third Geneva Convention -- which applies to all prisoners of war -- specifically prohibits such forms of curelty, which are classified as 'close confinement.' "

South America Triangle presents a confined space, and because of its shape it feels particularly aggressive. And then there's that hanging chair, a particularly eerie stand-in for a person, or for what might happen to a person confined to a chair. From the New York Review of Books, here's journalist Mark Danner's description of some of the treatment to which Abu Zubaydeh was subjected:

A naked man chained in a small, very cold, very white room is for several days strapped to a bed, then for several weeks shackled to a chair, bathed unceasingly in white light, bombarded constantly with loud sound, deprived of food; and whenever, despite cold, light, noise, hunger, the hours and days force his eyelids down, cold water is sprayed in his face to force them up.

One of the difficulties about having a national discussion about America and torture is that the torture techniques the United States used during the Bush-Cheney regime are so far from the experience -- even the imagination -- of most of us that it's hard to understand just what we did. Mainstream news outlets such as National Public Radio, the New York Times and the Washington Post even refuse to refer to American torture as 'torture,' a bizarre mis-locution that takes Americans a further step away from just how cruel and depraved the behaviors carried out in our nation's name really were.

Nauman's sculptures don't fill that void. They don't explain how we became a nation that tortured or what we did to other humans. They certainly don't spotlight the way the Bush-Cheney regime broke American and international law -- fortunately journalists such as Mayer and Danner have patriotically filled in those blanks. Still, the Naumans provide us with a crucial gateway toward some of those answers, toward understanding. Here's hoping both 1981 sculptures are on view again soon.

Earlier this week: Bruce Nauman's Double Steel Cage Piece (1974) and America's torture of Abu Zubaydeh. Bruce Nauman's hanging chairs, part one.

Related consideration of art and torture on MAN: George Grosz at the Hirshhorn, the Abu Ghraib photos part one, part two, the Hirshhorn acquires Martha Rosler's 'The Gray Drape.' 

Nauman in Venice: In addition to this website, the Philadelphia Museum of Art team responsible for the 2009 U.S. pavilion has contributed to a Nauman-in-Venice catalogue. You can buy it here at 35% off.

On Nauman: Accounts of Nauman's literary interests and inspiration can be found in an essay by Neal Benezra in Bruce Nauman, edited by Robert C. Morgan, and in Please Pay Attention Please, a collection of Nauman interviews and writings edited by Janet Kraynak.