Bruce Nauman: Teachers & Artists | "Exclusive" | Art21

[BRUCE NAUMAN: TEACHERS & ARTISTS]

I’d worked with people around here with horses,

but they didn’t really understand how to explain things very well.

So the first person I worked with

that changed my whole understanding of working with horses

was a man named Ray Hunt.

He is just an old cowboy,

and so cowboys trust him.

But he can outride them all and do it in such a wonderful way.

He taught me to pay attention to the horses

and gave me some tools, of course, to do that.

He was a teacher that really didn’t tell you how to do much,

he just made you pay attention.

And when you met him,

you knew you couldn’t fool him.

[LAUGHS]

He knew what you knew.

In riding horses, for instance,

you can get around bad spots all the time,

and the horse will put up with it.

And then sometimes they won’t

and then you end up in the dirt.

But Ray could always go right to the spot

that you didn’t even want to have to hear about.

And a good teacher can always do that.

And if you want to learn it, that’s what you have to do.

A good teacher is like a good artist.

They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on--

the painting or the sculpture--

and goes right to that spot.

["Model" (1998)]

I knew how to do that in my work, or hoped I did,

and I didn’t know how to do that with horses.

I didn’t see the connection.

When I was in school, when Thiebaud was teaching and I was his teaching assistant--

and that’s what Wayne did,

he taught people how to pay attention.

That's what I saw in him,

was that he showed you how to pay attention to what you were doing--

what was out there.

And that's...I think it’s a rare, rare thing, you know.