Gift of John Andrew MacMahon '95

The work features letters in reverse as if chiseled into stone to, according to the artist, “give a sense of sculptural relief in those prints.” Nauman is giving us “puzzling utterances” to match his Conceptual pursuit of art as activity. According to David Pagel in Bruce Nauman, ed. Robert C. Morgan, 2002, the top half is “the name of the French physicist credited for formulating the unit measure of electrical current.” “RAPE MEE” in reverse in the second line is a rearrangement of the physicist’s name -- Andre-Marie Ampere. It is further interpreted as: “By retarding the speed of the act of reading, Nauman forces his readers/viewers to return to the ways they learned their language. Like school children, his audience must slowly sound out the strangely arranged yet familiar symbols until their message becomes clear.”

Bruce Nauman, ed. Robert C. Morgan, 2002, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore