While Dan Flavin and James Turrell are the cool minimalist and placid metaphysician, respectively, of light as a medium, Bruce Nauman plays upon its flash, gaudy allure and relationship to pop and commercial culture to challenge complacency.

Readers may remember Nauman's neon piece from the 1985 Carnegie International, "Having Fun/Good Life/Symptoms," in which irony and word play mixed with spiraling rainbows of illuminated color, promising merriment and then poking the viewer's sensibilities once he or she approached.

"Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works With Light," at The Andy Warhol Museum, offers an extensive and intimate exchange with the artist through 16 works ranging from naughty to ethereal.

The show originated at the Milwaukee Art Museum, where chief curator Joseph Ketner selected pieces representative of the body of work that Nauman produced between 1966 and 1985.

Included is his earliest neon piece, "Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals," which illustrates the conceptual underpinnings that run through his art -- whether neon, video, performance or other media -- as he challenges established art practices and cultural values.

"Neon Templates," for example, redefines traditional self-portrait by substituting a vertical, spine-like arrangement of curved green uranium-glass neon tubing shaped from a cast of the left side of his body. The glowing ravaged skeletal frame also becomes an apocalyptic reference.

Much of his work is text-based, such as "Raw War," made in 1970 during the Vietnam War. Three blood-red letters light in forward and reverse order, to simple but poetic effect.

The text pieces reach their apex in "One Hundred Live and Die" (1984), a wall of neon phrases such as "live and die, live and live, and eat, love, hate, lie ...," arranged in four columns. The phrases blink in pairings that suggest other associations. When all of them flash on at once, it's like a blaze in the room.

The sensory experience of "Helman Gallery Parallelogram," which owes a bit to Flavin, develops more subtly as the viewer strains beneath its discomforting saturated light and intruding wall angles.

In the 1980s, Nauman began making figurative neons, several of which are in the show, including the raunchy "Five Marching Men," goose-stepping nude figures that critique militarism but also unwittingly parody the now-popular large holiday light shows.

After an intense period of production in 1985, Ketner writes, Nauman ceased working with neon.

"Elusive Signs" is a smart and engaging look at a specific period of an artist who remains vital and influential.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Also at The Warhol is a small exhibition of O'Keeffe watercolors on loan from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M.

Don't expect her familiar vibrant washes of Southwestern landscape or sensual oversized florals. These are paintings from the end of life, when her vision had failed and an assistant was required to position her brush on the paper. But there is something both defiant and poignant in these brief, almost calligraphic markings made by an individual for whom placing brush to surface had become as elemental a function as eating and breathing.

Two stellar, diamond-dust embellished screenprints by Warhol of O'Keeffe, made circa 1979 when she would have been 92, capture her determination, her searching eyes.

Both continue through Dec. 30. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays and until 10 p.m. Fridays. Admission is $12, seniors $8, students and children $7, half-price 5-10 p.m. Friday. For information: 412-237-8300 or www.warhol.org.

Honoring Diane Samuels

The well-deserved accolades continue for North Side artist Diane Samuels. Earlier this month she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania at an awards ceremony held at the governor's residence in Harrisburg. She joins 435 women so honored since 1949, among them Pearl Buck, Grace Kelly, Mamie Eisenhower, Carol Brown, Teresa Heinz, Patricia Prattis Jennings and Barbara Luderowski.

She's also in good company in architectural historian Judith Dupre's handsome "Monuments: America's History in Art and Memory" (Random House, $45), due out next month. Samuel's "Luminous Manuscript," permanently installed in 2004 at the Center for Jewish History, New York, is among 38 sites and/or commemorations in the book. Others include the Statue of Liberty, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Alamo, and 9/11 temporary memorials.

Dia de los Muertos

Mexico Lindo Gallery in Squirrel Hill commemorates the Day of the Dead with open houses from 6 to 8:30 p.m. tomorrow and Friday. Among the honored will be military and civilians killed in the war in Iraq, author Kurt Vonnegut and tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Visitors are invited to bring a note to a deceased loved one to place on special ofrendas, or altars, which remain through Nov. 10 at 2027 Murray Ave. (412-422-9984).

Grynsztejn gets Chicago post

Madeleine Grynsztejn, who curated the 1999-2000 Carnegie International, has been appointed director of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art effective in the spring. She is the first woman to hold the post. Grynsztejn is senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she has been since leaving Carnegie Museum of Art in 2000.