Art Review: Mel Bochner, "Strong Language" and Dialogue and Discourse

Mel Bochner, 2008

I was thrilled to attend the event, Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner and Norman Kleeblatt at The Jewish Museum to view and hear about Bochner’s new show, “Strong Language”, on exhibit until September 21, 2014. The show features Bochner’s distinctive and provocative text-based works that span his five-decade career. The dialogue and exhibition were both enlightening and inspiring and conveyed depth and insight into Bochner’s process, transitions and impact on Conceptual Art.

Norman Kleeblatt (L) and Mel Bochner (R)
The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014

The artist dialogue revealed the motivation behind Bochner’s ideas that often encompassed humor, intellectual representation, and his affinity for synonyms. What was even more revealing was Bochner’s body language. As he took the stage with Mr. Kleeblatt, Bochner shifted away from the spotlight cast upon him and moved his chair into the shadows. Needless to say, he could not escape the limelight and he brought subtle humor to his aversion of being the center of attention, which he richly deserves.

Bochner’s early works from the 1960’s were spawned from words, from the cerebral and the mathematical that are mindfully penned on graph notepaper. These early works can be easily connected to his recent paintings that are large scale, full of lush color, and inspired by language and the Thesaurus. His later works are divergent, but clearly an evolution of his earlier endeavors and accomplishments.

Self/Portrait, 2013, Oil on canvas

Curator Norman Kleeblatt began the dialogue with a new self-portrait Bochner created in 2013 to commence the exhibition appropriately titled Self/Portrait, 2013. For Bochner portraiture is representational (like language) and when you enter the gallery, you are enveloped with a large self-portrait that is exemplary of Bochner and his methods. This new work echoes a previous self-portrait created in 1966, which reads as a manicured, inked list on graph paper, rather than a painting. During the dialogue, he described how hard it would be to pick one word (and the synonyms) to describe himself as he did in his conceptual portraits in the late 60’s for friends like Eva Hesse and Marcel Duchamp. So instead he choose the ideas, the words, to embody the idea of the self-portrait.

Left: Portrait of Eva Hesse, 1966, Ink on graph paper Right: Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, 1968, Ink on graph paper

From the Exhibition: From 1966 to 1968 Bochner undertook a series of artists friends whom he admired. Each drawing refers to the creative work of the subject. The central concept WRAP is enclosed within eleven circles of words associated with the sculptor Eva Hesse. The concentric format reflects the circular motifs found in her sculpture at that time.

Photo from
Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner and Norman Kleeblatt
The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014

The 1966 self-portrait was highly conceptual and now Bochner reinvents and transforms it into a fresh painting that looks like it was painted with sweeping drips of vanilla gelato with urban grit. His love for synonyms is on full display as the words Self and Portrait headline the composition and he creates two lists of synonyms that provoke questions about the idea of the portrait. However, when read across the words become phrases that take on new meaning, which Bochner frames as sometimes being evocative or just silly. He keeps the spine (empty Colum in center) in his work, which can be read as figurative and he deliberately has 18 words on display, which is symbolic and meaningful in Judaism. The number 18 is represented by the Hebrew letters חי, “chai” and means life in Hebrew. So there are “hidden” meanings in his composition and in relation to himself.  Bochner also revealed that the painting is as tall as he is. 

Panoramic photo of the exhibition at The Jewish Museum, ©Monica Hopenwasser

Bochner made the distinction that he doesn’t paint words–he paints letters!  Each one is hand painted, without a stencil but with a very steady hand, which he held up for the audience that laughed. Each letter is unique, from a dreaded S with all its curves to the letter O, which he exclaimed is a really hard letter to paint. Each O is different and you can see the subtle differences up close in his work. He makes lettering look easy, which it is definitely not. He also revealed that perhaps his father being a sign painter influenced his work and technique. There is no plan with the text and letter in his recent works. He looks at it as an “instant improvisation”, like going from note to note in a musical composition. For Bochner getting from the idea to the object entails much physical work that he stated as matter-of-fact. 

Crazy, 2005, Oil and acrylic on canvas

Bochner is very interested in words especially the idea of what a synonym is, which is a vehicle for his thoughts. Ironically, no words or phrases can mean the same thing and he bluntly stated, “there is no such thing as a synonym”.  Many of his Thesaurus inspired works from the past decade have one word titles like Contempt, Die and Nothing. Bochner's works explore the relationship between words and although his paintings are flat, at the same time they deny their flatness through his fluctuating, flickering colors that are arbitrarily chosen. Bochner stated some simple yet profound statements about color like “Color is, what color does” and “Color always means trouble… especially something you can’t control”… These concepts fascinate him. 

(Small) Fart, 2003, Oil and acrylic on canvas

His humor is on full display with his painting (Small) Fart, 2003 that was for his 8-year-old daughter. This sweet story was revealed when Bochner exclaimed to Kleeblatt and the audience... “Aren’t we going to discuss and show the Fart painting”, which generated a roar of laughter from the audience. Kleeblatt jested back that is it on display downstairs for everyone to enjoy and this opened up to the funny story of how the painting came about. Bochner gave his daughter the opportunity to choose a word and he would create a painting for her birthday. (On another note, he doesn’t really do commissions and paints for himself). She wisely picked the word Fart that is amusing and childish and can make anyone laugh.  

Jew, 2008, Oil on Canvas

Bochner’s sociopolitical side can be seen in his painting titled Jew, 2008 which was created in response to coming across a vulgar website that listed slanderous words and names for a Jew. He exploits these stereotypical words of the Jew in drippy, yellow letters that signify the yellow stars Jewish people were mandated to wear during Nazi rule in Europe. If this painting was not done by a Jewish person and featured in a Jewish museum the text could be read as offensive and malicious, rather than demonstrating that anti-Semitism is alive and well and living on the Internet. It is intended to have implications beyond the literal meaning of the words and one audience member contributed that she felt safe viewing it in the Jewish Museum. However, if it were somewhere else it could be read entirely differently.  

Photo from Dialogue and Discourse: Mel Bochner (L) and Norman Kleeblatt (R)The Jewish Museum, May 15th, 2014

Mel Bochner was a great guest in discourse with curator Norman Kleeblatt. The event was educational and illuminating in this beautifully conceived show. Bochner was genuinely interested in the audiences’ questions and Bochner stated that for him that was the best part of the conversation… Hearing what the audience had to say in relation to and about his work and how his work is perceived.  Bochner ‘s artwork and concepts can easily be introduced in to the art classroom because of the many cross-disciplinary connections that can be made to language and mathematics, as well as techniques to painting letters and color mixing. There are so many connections and teaching points that cane be generated from his approach and methods. There is more to learn and see at the show then the above mentioned. For example, how Bochner reinvents the idea of the reproduction and how he used photography in his early works. He was a gentleman and a true artist and this is a show surely not to be missed.