Strong Language, currently on view at the Jewish Museum, chronicles Mel Bochner’s longstanding dedication to the critique of language. The exhibition features over seventy text pieces the artist made between 1966 and 2013. While linguistic examination remains the common thread throughout the forty-plus years of work on display, the exhibition also evidences a recent turn by Bochner toward creating more conventional and easily commercialized fine-art objects. Though the artist continues to mine his subject matter with great acuity, this shift necessarily provokes a strong ambivalence.
Mel Bochner. Voiceover, 2006-2012; oil on canvas; 36 x 28 in. Pergamont Collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.
Many of the exhibition’s earlier works remind us of Bochner’s role as a formative player in the development of Conceptualism in New York City. Misunderstandings (A Theory of Photography) (1967–1970) consists of prints of nine note cards handwritten by the artist, each recording a statement about photography. Some of the statements are attributed to renowned figures like Marcel Duchamp or Emile Zola, another is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and three are revealed to be made by Bochner himself. This work epitomizes the artist’s preoccupation with language’s slippery hold on authenticity and its limitations in describing experience. Also from the ’60s is a series of verbal portraits of Bochner’s artist friends that center more on language’s representational abilities than its shortcomings. The 1966 Portrait of Eva Hesse features hand-drawn words in block lettering, laid out in concentric circles on a circular piece of paper, that effectively evoke Hesse’s art practice: “CLOAK,” “OBSCURE,” “ENSCONSE,” “SECRETE,” and “BURY.”
These initial pieces are emblematic of the Conceptualist strategy of placing concept over form. They are primarily monochrome and sometimes done on standard graph or notebook paper, appearing more like the lists, charts, and scribbles people make to organize their everyday realities than special art objects. Small formal interventions like the offset positioning of the notecard lithographs in Misunderstandings, or the circuitous graphic layout of text in Portrait of Eva Hesse, provide the distance needed to analyze language in visual form, without veering too far into object-hood. The ultimate purpose of these early works is not to exist as artworks, but to trigger inquiries into language and text on the part of the viewer.
Mel Bochner. Going Out of Business, 2012; oil on velvet; 93 1/2 x 70 1/4 in. Private collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.
Bochner’s later works no longer demonstrate such devotion to pure concept. One series features large canvases of lushly painted synonyms from Roget’s Thesaurus, organized in neat rows. The series recalls Conceptualism’s roots in Dada, particularly the work of Marcel Duchamp, in that the synonyms stand as textual “readymades”—words that litter everyday conversation but here are reappropriated and recontextualized through artistic mediation. But counter to Conceptualism proper, the series also exhibits a deep concern with the materiality of the pieces, many of which have rich, vibrant colors; sumptuous, dripping brushstrokes; and a grand scale that makes them look exactly like a high-value art object.
This painterly self-consciousness endows many of the works with seductive aesthetic charms, which oftentimes clash with their conceptual foundations. When the represented words carry loaded cultural baggage, as in the case of “Jew,” they can elicit serious musings on the potential violence of language and its ability to shape our experience. Others, however, prompt a more ambivalent response. Going Out of Business is a list featuring the phrases “CALLING IT QUITS,” “LOST OUR LEASE,” “EVERYTHING MUST GO,” “ALL SALES FINAL,” and “NO GOOD OFFER REFUSED.” Amazing, which includes the words “AWESOME,” “ BREATH-TAKING,” “HEART-STOPPING,” and “MIND-BLOWING,” strays into lighthearted and downright trivial territory. Both Going Out of Business and Amazing are rendered in a vivid, opulent Technicolor palette. For an artist who once sought to unsettle strict formalism and object-based parameters in fine art, and by extension resist the limitations of marketability, this work looks downright commercial—spectacular in appearance and insubstantial in content. One work in the series, titled Money, may even be a self-aware nod to these works’ significant fiscal capabilities. But did this formal turn have a conceptual underpinning? To this question, the exhibition does not provide much in the way of answers.
Mel Bochner. Dollar Hash Exclamation Plus, 2011; oil and charcoal on canvas; 45 x 60 in. (114.3 x 152.4 cm). Courtesy of Peter Freeman. Artwork © Mel Bochner.
One might view this return to the object as an effort to shore up the value, or at least significance, of language in the face of rapidly proliferating digital communication platforms. While the Thesaurus series does not have the currency needed to support such a reading, other recent works do. For example, the symbols in Dollar Hash Exclamation Plus—regularly used in combination to replace curse words and pass censors—are a relatively recent cultural code. Likewise, the painting Colon Open Parenthesis depicts a large sad-face emoticon. The scale of these works feels appropriate given the ubiquity of these linguistic transmissions in everyday communication, and their execution in charcoal on white-painted canvas is full of satisfying, popping smudge marks that serve to prolong contemplation of these pervasive verbal gestures, rather than to compete with them.
Topical investigations like these demonstrate how much more linguistic territory is open for Bochner to mine. His method of doing so will call for continued scrutiny.
Mel Bochner: Strong Language runs through September 21 at the Jewish Museum.
