Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo

Bruce Nauman

1972

White glass tubing, clear glass tubing, and suspension frames

Dallas Museum of Art

Bruce Nauman’s "Perfect Door/Perfect Odor/Perfect Rodo" is a deceptively playful work. The piece initially involves simple word play and letter inversions in three shades of commercially white neon tubing. The phrase “Perfect Door” expresses the artist’s interest in perfection as a philosophical concept, but Nauman also rejects that notion by changing the words to the sillier phrase “Perfect Odor.” The next version, “Perfect Rodo,” turns something familiar into something completely absurd with the use of the non-word “Rodo.” This work is a striking example of Nauman’s exploration of art expressed simultaneously as both an idea and a