Mel Bochner

Produced in honor of the 50th anniversary of his first Measurement Room, Mel Bochner: Measurements (1968–1971) revisits this defining period early in the New York–based artist’s renowned career. One of the most important conceptual artists of the 1960s and 1970s, Bochner (born 1940) applied various abstract systems in his artistic practice. Here, measurements—a numerical means of ordering the world—highlight the interplay of architecture and the viewer’s relationship to it. Subverting a simple yet meticulous procedure by rendering it as aesthetics, the work challenges conventional understandings of dimensions in space and by consequence one’s place in the world. Here, preparatory drawings, poetic artist’s notes and archival photographs of the first Measurement Rooms reveal Bochner’s thinking and process beyond this pivotal series while a contemporaneous interview with Elayne Varian and an essay by Dia curator Alexis Lowry add essential context.

A New York Times Book Review 2019 holiday gift guide pick
One of Time Magazine's best photo book of 2019

For more than 50 years, American conceptualist Mel Bochner (born 1940) has been shaping dialogs between art and language through exhibition concepts, paintings and sculptures that embrace systems and structures to reveal their cracks and limitations, undermining the means we use to comprehend the world. Bochner created his first prints in 1973 at the invitation of publisher Robert Feldman of Parasol Press (who introduced a generation of minimalist and conceptual artists to printmaking through his work at Crown Point Press). Since then, Bochner has employed many different forms of printmaking, using and abusing its material possibilities and its unpredictability to counter the methodical fashion in which plates and stencils are cut, characters per line are fixed, or print runs set. This volume surveys Bochner's longstanding engagement with various types of printmaking, from aquatints to monoprints.

Published in conjunction with a major retrospective, this monograph takes colour as its guiding thread to highlight Mel Bochner’s rich and thought-provoking approach to photography, installation and painting.

One of the founding figures of Conceptual art, and one of its most astute critics, Mel Bochner combines colour and language in his work.

This monograph focuses on the role of colour, the purity of thought and visual pleasure in Bochner’s most recent work – such as his series of paintings in which he used a thesaurus to generate humorous word chains – in relation to the artist's famous works from the 1960s and 1970s.

Alongside over 140 colour illustrations, Achim Borchardt-Hume discusses the role of colour in Bochner’s latest work; Ulrich Wilmes looks at new paintings in relation to past work; João Fernandes explores language; and Briony Fer considers notions of corruption in Bochner’s art.