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Clear Sky
CLEA RSKY

Item date(s): n.d.

Bruce Nauman

Pages: unpaged
Size: 305mm
Inscription: Signed by the artist

Place publication: n.p.
Publisher: Artists Book

Additional notes:
This book does not indicate publication by Multiples Inc. as with L A Air.

A conceptual book with no text. The back cover with is signed by the artist (who is otherwise not mentioned).

Colour field pages.

See items described and offered in 6 Decades Books 2012 together with LAAIR, where he writes:

CLEAR SKY was a way to have a book that only had colored pages- - pictures of the sky. I like the idea that you are looking into an image of the sky, but it is just a page. LA AIR was the same idea, but it is also a response to CLEAR SKY using polluted colors instead. -- Bruce Nauman.

Few works of contemporary art have so intransigently defied exegesis as this pair of books, and despite the straightforward description of them quoted above, this unresolved quality seems to have been Nauman's point. The words of titles are printed so they don’t immediately register (Clean? Risky? Lair?) and this potential for mis-reading suggests that one might just as easily mis-read the contents. Images of the sky? Or just swatches of color? This difficulty seems even to extend to the problem of describing the books bibliographically. For example,b oth were published with Nauman's signature printed on the back cover, but one frequently sees them described as "signed" in catalogs or library citations. Different reference works render their titles ad Clear Sky, Clearsky, Clea Rsky, LA Air, L.A. Air or Laair. Likewise, there seems to be no general agreement as to the publication date of CLEA RSKY, which different libraries and other reliable sources have listed as being anytime from 1967 to 1970. We think it's 1968 but to be honest we're not absolutely certain either. . .

Ref: GB/13095