Christopher Knight, writing in the LA Times, has suggested that the slope on the ‘Slant Step’, a old stool originally purchased as an oddity from a thrift store by Bruce Nauman and artist/teacher William Wiley in 1965, but which became an iconic art object, and inspired its own exhibition featuring Nauman and others, may not have been the result of shoddy DIY design, as initially thought.
Knight reveals that Peter Plagens’ new book, Bruce Nauman: The True Artist, includes an email from William Witherup (who organised the exhibition The Slant Step Show, in San Francisco, in 1966), that states that, although they weren’t aware of it at the time, the ‘Slant Step’ was most likely made as a footrest to be used when seated on the toilet, to encourage the best posture for ‘healthy excretion’.
10 June 2014
