Imagine the following scene: it is the summer of 1966 and we are standing before a somewhat derelict storefront in San Francisco (fig. 1). Above the ripped awning a sign reads “California Grocery” and adjacent to it a “Drink Coca-Cola” advertisement is still in place. The former storeowner has clearly vacated the premises and whereas the space appears to have a new tenant, its current function is not apparent. Therefore, let us step inside, uninvited, in order to investigate. There are not many intelligible signs of activity that strike our eye upon entry. The room is furnished in a sparse manner with a single table and chair. In the far corner an untidy group of various objects — cans, bags, bottles, and cups — are randomly dispersed along the wall or perch precariously upon a few wooden shelves. The walls are devoid of decoration, the floor unswept. The messy interior is occupied by a solitary figure, not as a dwelling apparently, but as a place of work. Yet in the absence of any recognizable tools, in so far as we can detect, it becomes difficult to ascertain his trade. And if we stay long enough, his conduct provides no obvious clues to his profession, either, as he is not so much indolent, as engaged in highly repetitious, seemingly mundane forms of activity. His customary behavior appears to consist of sitting in the chair while sipping coffee or, alternatively pacing back and forth across the floor. There is little work being done of any recognizable fashion.

This strange little tableau provides a fictional glimpse into the artist's studio of Bruce Nauman. Although the scene is meant to convey a kind of phenomenological “limit-experience” of the studio space, which, as I shall argue, Nauman explored in the later sixties, my description of the young artist's studio space is not purely fictional. It has been compiled from such diverse sources as contemporary photographs that Nauman took to record his earliest works — many of which were ephemeral in nature and subsequently destroyed — and from the various interviews the artist gave in these years (fig. 2). Taken together, these photographic and verbal testimonies provide a remarkable insight into Nauman's working methods or what I shall call, in a very precise meaning of the word, his studio habits.