Bruce Nauman on Lenny Tristano

Joan Simon: “What do you think about when you’re working on a piece?”

Bruce Nauman: “I think about Lenny Tristano a lot. Do you know who he was? Lenny Tristano was a blind pianist, one of the original - or maybe second - generation bebop guys. He’s on a lot of the best early bebop records. When Lenny played well, he hit you hard and he kept going until he finished. Then he just quit. You didn’t get any introduction, you didn’t get any tail - you just got full intensity for 2 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever. It would be like taking the middle of (John) Coltrane - just the hardest, toughest part of it. That was all you got.

From the beginning I was trying to see if I could make art that did that. Art that was just there all at once. Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down. I like that idea very much: the kind of intensity that doesn’t give you any trace of whether you’re going to like it or not.”

Breaking the silence: an interview with Bruce Nauman. Joan Simon (1988)