Ethnographers and anthropologists often occupy an in-between state known as “liminality.” Their dual roles—of participant and observer—become irresolvable. Something similar can happen with works of art. Think of Jasper Johns’s flags, endlessly asking, Is this a “painting” of a flag or a “flag” in place of a painting? They stand at a threshold. Denouement deferred. This suspension drags on in Bruce Nauman’s anguished Clown Torture, 1987, crushing you under its repeating silliness, an obsessive ritual: The fishbowl slips from the broom every time; the clown, the fool, never learns. The