Talking to Mel

A trailblazing figure of Conceptual Art, Mel Bochner (1940–2025) became known for his installations of newspaper, chalk, pebbles, photocopies, and text during the 1960s and 1970s. His embrace of painting on canvas during the early 1980s was perceived by some as a betrayal of his Conceptualist roots when the art market turned its attention to Neo Expressionist figuration and New Image formats. Drawn from his prior investigations of language, geometry, and serial systems, Bochner's paintings of numbers, words, measurements and orthogonal grids appeared recondite to viewers accustomed to more agreeable painterly formats. The artworld's fickle attention turned elsewhere. This highly personal account recalls the relationship between Bochner and James Meyer, a dialogue that transpired in facsimiles, letters, emails, phone calls, and numerous studio visits, and that lasted from 1991 until the artist's passing. Drawn from previously unpublished documents, the text recalls Bochner's personal and artistic exchanges with such contemporaries as Robert Smithson, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Mark Rothko, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, among others. As Meyer describes, Bochner's representations of everyday language—words found in the thesaurus and Urban Dictionary, as well as drawn from his own life—would eventually enjoy critical and commercial success, suggesting a synthesis of the “Conceptual” and painterly impulses of his practice

Abstract art · Betrayal · Painting · Phone · Studio · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Art, Technology, and Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory