It is mainly witty, with a gallows aftertaste. It does a lot with a little. In this it is similar to Richard Deacon's intermittent series of awkwardly scaled floor sculptures, which have the look of small-industrial fabrication. His stunning works with the taxidermy forms of animals simultaneously deliver maximum charges of pathos and of formal detachment that feel like cruelty. In Nauman's work, clowns try to amuse while telling circular stories or performing routines devised by the artist, without end.
Life's a joke.
Then you die. It's only art. It is art absolutely. Sculpture reigns today not because it offers answers but because it sharpens questions. It meets our need for visceral acknowledgment of our routine discomfiture and sometime terror.