Mel Bochner - Profile Image

Mel Bochner

Conceptual Art

December 13, 2014

An American artist, Mel Bochner is one of the pioneers of Conceptual Art. He is best known for the so-called Thesaurus paintings, which consist of synonyms displayed together

Born in 1940 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Bochner currently lives and works in New York City. In high school, Bochner studied Art with Joseph Fitzpatrick. He received his BFA in 1962 and honorary Doctor of Fine Arts in 2005 from the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Bochner studied philosophy for a short time at Northwestern University in Chicago. After moving to New York, he began working as a guard at the Jewish Museum and then teaching art history at the School of Visual Arts. His first exhibition Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art was held in this school in 1966. Featuring photocopies of working drawings from his friends placed into four black binders on four pedestals, it was seen as a defining example of the Conceptual Art movement.

Bochner soon began to explore the usage of words in fine art, and the intersection between painting and language. He introduced language to the visual aspect of art, asking and exploring many interesting and novel questions, such as who is the audience and who is the speaker of the words. Through these works and more recent Thesaurus series, the artist examined words’ ability to muddy meaning.

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