More about Mel Bochner
Works by Mel Bochner
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Mel Bochner’s paintings are a good reference to consult if you can’t find your thesaurus.
Bochner’s paintings for the most part are a list of synonyms of different words. For example, his painting Amazing begins with the word “amazing” followed by awesome , breath-taking, heart-stopping, mind-blowing, out-of-sight, cool, wow, groovy, crazy, killer, bitchin’, bad, rad, gnarly, da bomb, shut up, OMG, and finally, yesss. He has quite the assortment of lists that have made it into some of the best art museums in the world.
He wasn’t always at the top of the art world food chain though. Mel started as a guard for The Jewish Museum. One of his friends hooked him up with the job after another guard, who turned out to be another famous artist, Brice Marden, quit. Bochner was earning $1 an hour during the day and would then go home to his $21/month apartment on First Avenue in Manhattan and paint all night. One day, after being particularly tuckered out, Bochner decided it would be ok to take a little nap behind a Louise Nevelson sculpture. Obviously he was fired on the spot. It wasn’t all bad though. Mel soon got an art writing job, which allowed him to get his first teaching job, which allowed him to be a famous artist. So really that was the most important nap of his life. If you learn anything from this article, it should be that napping on the job could be the beginning of your success story. So get out there and nap in the most inappropriate places you can find!
Mel Bochner’s works are words, sure. But he wants to make sure you know that he isn’t, I repeat, is NOT, a poet. At one point Poetry Magazine asked if they could print some of his paintings. The conversation went as follows,
Poetry Magazine : We’d like to do a portfolio of your paintings in color,
Mel Bochner: OK, that would be great, but I just want to make it clear that what I am doing is not poetry.
PM: Oh, we think of it as poetry.
MB: Well, you can’t think of it as poetry.
PM: Well, it’s kind of like concrete poetry.
MB: No, it isn’t, I hate concrete poetry.
PM: Why isn’t it poetry?
MB: Because I don’t know one poet who really cares what the typeface is.
And that was the end of that. Classic heated conversations over fonts. He didn’t need Poetry Magazine anyway.
Sources
Sources
- Hopkins, Christopher Snow. "Drivel, Drool, Babble, Blabber: An Evening With Mel Bochner." Hyperallergic. N.p., 2016. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.
- "Mel Bochner Biography – Mel Bochner On Artnet." Artnet.com. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.
- "Bio : Mel Bochner." Melbochner.net. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.
- Altman, Anna. "Mel Bochner’S Thesaurus Paintings." The New Yorker. N.p., 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.
- Pechman, Alexandra. "Painter Brings New Meaning To The Word 'Blah' | Artnews." ARTnews. N.p., 2014. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.
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Here is what Wikipedia says about Mel Bochner
Mel Bochner (born 1940) is an American conceptual artist. Bochner received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in New York City.
Check out the full Wikipedia article about Mel Bochner
I've read that the sentence, "Language is Not Transparent", is supposed to have been quoted from Wittgenstein. It doesn't seem to appear in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, at least - I checked. It may be from W's later work, however. In an early multiple, "Misunderstandings, a Theory of Photography", various remarks about photography seem to be quoted by Mel from various writers and philosophers. However, he once told me that some of them were made up.