Lithograph on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/bruce-nauman-1691" aria-label="More by Bruce Nauman" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Bruce Nauman</a>
Double Face
Presented by Karsten Schubert 2001
abstraction
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
gestural
non-representational
pun
repetition
text
universal concepts
<p><i>Double Face</i> is a typical Nauman word-play work. It is a print, consisting of the word 'face', in capital letters, doubled to provide a literal representation of itself. Although at a first glance the word appears to be mirrored, in fact the second 'face' has been rotated by 180 degrees. Turned upside down the image appears the same. The two halves have the same format but messy shading, with the appearance of inky brushstrokes, renders them different. The lithograph is number thirty in an edition of fifty and was printed by Christine Fox and Charly Ritt and published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles. It was created using two runs from one stone and one aluminium plate. In the same year Nauman produced a related drawing <i>Face Mask</i> (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and two other related lithographs, also published by Gemini in editions of fifty, <i>Life Mask</i> and <i>Pearl Masque</i>. These three works consist of their title words printed in the same format as the words of <i>Double Face</i>, one below the other, but not always reversed. They hint at issues around the word and concept 'face' Nauman was thinking about at that time. In all these works the artist plays with the ways that pairs of words influence readings of each other, together with notions of similarity, difference and reversal or inversion.</p>
paper print lithograph
14 October 2006 – 8 January 2007
2007-01-08
19 May 2006 – 28 August 2006
2006-08-28
2006-05-19
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
14 October 2006 – 8 January 2007
2007-01-08
2006-10-14
Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina (Museo MADRE) (Naples, Italy)
2006-10-14
Bruce Nauman: Make Me Think Me
Loan-out
11 December 2009 – 31 January 2010
2010-01-31
11 December 2009 – 31 January 2010
2010-01-31
2009-12-11
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw, Poland)
Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw, Poland)
2009-12-11
Bruce Nauman
Loan-out
Double Face
unconfirmed: 660 × 914 mm
Presented by Karsten Schubert 2001
<p><i>Double Face</i> is a typical Nauman word-play work. It is a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a>, consisting of the word 'face', in capital letters, doubled to provide a literal representation of itself. Although at a first glance the word appears to be mirrored, in fact the second 'face' has been rotated by 180 degrees. Turned upside down the image appears the same. The two halves have the same format but messy shading, with the appearance of inky brushstrokes, renders them different. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/lithography" title="Glossary definition for 'Lithography'"><span>lithograph</span></a> is number thirty in an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/edition" title="Glossary definition for 'Edition'"><span>edition</span></a> of fifty and was printed by Christine Fox and Charly Ritt and published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles. It was created using two runs from one stone and one aluminium plate. In the same year Nauman produced a related <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> <i>Face Mask</i> (The Museum of Modern Art, New York) and two other related lithographs, also published by Gemini in editions of fifty, <i>Life Mask</i> and <i>Pearl Masque</i>. These three works consist of their title words printed in the same format as the words of <i>Double Face</i>, one below the other, but not always reversed. They hint at issues around the word and concept 'face' Nauman was thinking about at that time. In all these works the artist plays with the ways that pairs of words influence readings of each other, together with notions of similarity, difference and reversal or inversion.<br/> <br/>Nauman began working with words and their literal representation in the late 1960s in both <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/photograph" title="Glossary definition for 'Photograph'"><span>photographs</span></a> and <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculptures</span></a>. He had been exploring what he calls 'front/back interplay' in his sculptural work with fibreglass, inverting forms and focusing on the insides of moulds. Through the process of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>printmaking</span></a> he discovered the automatic reversal of his initial image or text, feeding naturally into the front/back interplay of works like his first print <i>Raw-War </i>1971 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nauman-raw-war-p77582" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P77582</span></a>). Print-making thus provided an important new <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/medium" title="Glossary definition for 'Medium'"><span>medium</span></a> for an investigation into language as a system of signs, in which Nauman was deeply influenced by his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein's <i>Philosophical Investigations </i>(1953). Nauman has said: 'I am really interested in the different ways that language functions. That is something I think a lot about, which also raises questions about how the brain and the mind work  the point where language starts to break down as a useful tool for communication is the same edge where poetry or art occurs.' (Quoted in Cordes, p.25.) 

</p><p>Nauman's word prints explore the dual role of the print both as a mimetic object, which imitates and reverses an original, and also an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/abstract-art" title="Glossary definition for 'Abstract art'"><span>abstract</span></a> representation. Words, although consisting of the concrete entity of a group of letters, lead to a more or less abstract area which is their meaning. Nauman's juxtaposition and reversal of words hones in on the existence of multiple potential readings and highlights the paradoxes and illogicalities on which language and verbal communication are based. <i>Double Face </i>puns on such notions as 'face-to-face' and 'face-off', providing a particularly efficient example of what Christopher Cordes has called 'language describing its own limitations' (in Cordes, p.15). 

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Christopher Cordes, <i>Bruce Nauman: Prints 1970-89</i>, New York 1989, pp.14-15, reproduced p.83, pl.43<br/>Neal Benezra, Kathy Halbreich, Joan Simon, <i>Bruce Nauman</i>, exhibition catalogue, Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis 1994<br/>Coosje van Brugge, <i>Bruce Nauman</i>, New York 1988

</p><p>Elizabeth Manchester <br/>January 2002<br/></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities gestural non-representational pun repetition text universal concepts