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Mel Bochner

The Jewish Museum presents “Mel Bochner: Strong Language”, a survey of Bochner’s career-long fascination with the cerebral and visual associations of words.

The exhibition “Mel Bochner: Strong Language” includes over 70 text-based works.

Among the highlights are his mid-1960s Portrait Drawings, never before exhibited in New York, and paintings from the last decade using synonyms derived from the latest edition of Roget’s Thesaurus. Bochner was inspired by the Thesaurus’ new permissiveness to broaden his linguistic references juxtaposing proper with vernacular, formal against vulgar, high against low.

A founding figure of the Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s, his Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to be Viewed as Art is considered to be the first Conceptual Art exhibition. Mel Bochner (b. 1940) emerged at a time when young artists considered painting exhausted. A pioneer in incorporating language into visual art, Bochner has taken an unusual turn toward painterly expressiveness during the past two decades. “Mel Bochner: Strong Language” reveals the artist’s longstanding engagement with the possibilities of language as image, medium, and content.

Going Out Of Business

Left: Mel Bochner, Voiceover, 2006-2012, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 in. (91.4 x 71.1 cm). Pergamont Collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner. Right: Mel Bochner, Going Out Of Business, 2012, oil on velvet, 93 1/2 x 70 1/4 in. (237. 5 x 178.4 cm). Private collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.

Silence!

Dollar Hash Exclamation Plus

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.

Amazing!

Left: Mel Bochner, Amazing, 2011, oil and acrylic on two canvases, 100 x 75 in. (254 x 190.5 cm). Private collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner. Right: Mel Bochner, Self/Portrait, 1966, ink on graph paper, 5 3/8 x 4 1/2 in. (13 x 11.4 cm). Private collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.

until September 21, 2014
Mel Bochner
Strong Language
organized by Norman L. Kleeblatt, Susan and Elihu Rose
exhibition design by Tsao & McKown Architects
The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street
New York