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Mel Bochner
Conceptual Art Hand Signed Mel Bochner Lithograph Print Abstract Geometric Ed 30
1991

Name: Conceptual Art Hand Signed Mel Bochner Lithograph Print Abstract Geometric Ed 30
Brand: Mel Bochner
Rating: 4.9 (107 reviews)

$1,800List Price

About the Item

Mel Bochner (American, 1940-2025) Color lithograph (color line photo-engraving on off-white wove paper) Hand signed and numbered in graphite pencil This is a PP (Printers Proof) outside of the small edition of 30. Paper Type: T.H. Saunders, English mould made paper Edition Size: Edition of 30, 5 AP, 5 PP 1991 (based on a drawing from the 1970's) Dimensions: paper is 20 X 15 inches Published and printed by Arion Press The postcard from the Sonnabend show is included for reference and is not included in this sale. Bochner used visual systems, numbers, and geometry to grapple with and express the linguistic and epistemological questions raised by Ludwig Wittgenstein, making philosophy tangible and visible through art. From corner to corner, side to side and up and down, a series of numbers float elegantly across the paper in Mel Bochner’s Minimalist Counting Alternatives (The Wittgenstein Illustrations). They visually explore the philosopher's ideas on language, knowledge, and meaning, echoing Wittgenstein's focus on process, permutations, and the structure of thought, leading to works like Square Branch or Diamond Branch, reflecting philosophical concepts through geometric forms. Bochner, who studied philosophy, was drawn to Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings, particularly the idea that philosophy involves exploring the "grammar" of language and concepts, rather than just stating facts. His "Wittgenstein Illustrations" use simple geometric shapes (branches, squares, lines) to represent the logical structures, permutations, and branching possibilities found in Wittgenstein's philosophical arguments, especially his later work on certainty and knowledge. Bringing his art to the philosopher's exploration of foundational beliefs. In essence, Bochner used abstract, geometric "language" to interpret Wittgenstein's philosophical explorations, turning complex ideas about how we know what we know into visual, conceptual art. A pioneer of Conceptual art, Bochner found a level of comfort in the certainty of a grid and within the universal language of numbers, often using only letters or numbers as the aesthetic embodiment of his subject matter. This work relates to Concrete poetry, Dada art, Minimalism, Alfred Jensen and Alan Shields. Melvin Simon Bochner (1940 – 2025) was an American conceptual artist. He is considered to be one of the founders of Conceptual Art, and credited with reshaping the canon of contemporary art. He attended Carnegie Mellon University and received his BFA in 1962. After graduation, Bochner lived in San Francisco, traveled around Mexico, and eventually landed in Chicago, where he audited philosophy classes at Northwestern University. In 1964, Bochner moved to New York City and worked as a guard at The Jewish Museum. In 1966, he was recruited by the influential art critic Dore Ashton to teach art history at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Bochner was Jewish, and his work sometimes explored Jewish themes. Starting in the 1960s, he evolved several of the exhibition strategies now taken for granted, including using the walls of the gallery as the subject of the work and using photo documentation of ephemeral and performance works. As Richard Kalina wrote in Art in America in 1996, Bochner was one of the earliest proponents, along with Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman, of photo-documentation work in which the artist "created not so much a sculpture as a two-dimensional work about sculpture." His 1966 show at the School of Visual Arts, "Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art", is regarded as a seminal show in the conceptual art movement. Bochner photocopied his friends' working drawings, including a $3,051.16 fabricator's bill from Donald Judd. He collected the copies in four black binders and displayed them on four pedestals. The show was remade at the Drawing Center, New York, in 1998. Bochner began making paintings in the late 1970s, and his paintings range from extremely colorful works containing words (such as Blah! Blah! Blah!) to works more clearly connected to the conceptual art he pioneered. Bochner made his first prints at Crown Point Press in the early 1970s, published by Parasol Press. He taught at Yale University as a teacher's assistant in 1979, as senior critic in painting and printmaking, and in 2001 as adjunct professor. In 2005, Bochner received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon School of Art, his alma mater. His work is represented by Fraenkel Gallery (San Francisco); Peter Freeman Inc. (New York and Paris); and Marc Selwyn Fine Art (Los Angeles). Collections Bochner's work appears in several major museum and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie Museum of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, the Schnitzer Collection, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Exhibitions In 1985, the Carnegie Mellon Art Gallery organized a major survey titled Mel Bochner:1973-1985. In 1989, The Mary Ryan Gallery, New York City: Arc, Circle, Square: Josef Albers, Mel Bochner, Al Held, Donald Judd, Les Levine, Sol Lewitt, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, John Pearson, Tony Smith Andrew Spence. In 1995, Yale University Art Gallery organized a retrospective, Mel Bochner: Thought Made Visible 1966–1973. The exhibit traveled to Brussels and Munich and was accompanied by the publication of a catalog. For his solo show at Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 2000, Bochner layered German and English versions of a text from Wittgenstein. In 2004, Bochner's work was exhibited in the Whitney Biennial and was part of Open Systems: Rethinking Art c. 1970 at London's Tate Modern in 2005. In 2006, "Mel Bochner: Drawing from Four Decades" traveled to the Birmingham Museum of Art (July 9–September 30, 2006), Weatherspoon Art Museum (October 15–December 23, 2006), and San Diego Museum of Art (January 13–March 18, 2007).[7] In 2008, Bochner initiated a four-year painting series titled BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! after the motif of the textual content of the works. In 2011, a retrospective of his work was held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. A survey of Mel Bochner's work - entitled Mel Bochner: If the Colour Changes, was held at Whitechapel Gallery, London, Haus der Kunst, Munich, and Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto during 2012. Tracing nearly 50 years of work, this exhibition commences with "Blah, Blah, Blah" (2011) a huge painting that encapsulates Bochner's ongoing fascination with language and color. The exhibition is accompanied by a first comprehensive monograph, published by Ridinghouse, with essays by Achim Borchardt-Hume, Briony Fer, João Fernandes, Mark Godfrey, and Ulrich Wilmes. 2018 He was included in the show “Under Erasure” at Pierogi Gallery curated by Heather and Raphael Rubinstein. Artists included: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mel Bochner, Jane Hammond, Glenn Ligon, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Nicole Eisenman and Antoni Tapies. In 2024, “Mel Bochner: Words Mean Everything – From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation”, opened at The Schnitzer Collection in Portland, Oregon

Creator:
Mel Bochner (1940, American)
Creation Year:
1991
Dimensions:
Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 15 in (38.1 cm)
Medium:
Lithograph
Movement & Style:
Conceptual
Period:
1990-1999
Condition:
good. never framed. stored in portfolio.
Gallery Location:
Surfside, FL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU38217347092

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Mel Bochner

Mel Bochner experimented with a range of styles before finding his eventual success as a pioneer in Conceptual art. An audacious 1966 show at School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan that he presented, “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art,” remains a seminal touchstone for Conceptualism.

Bochner was born to a Pittsburgh sign painter in 1940. While attending the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) in the late 1950s, he studied color theory and modernist movements as well as classical drawing, a balance that was formative in his career. After graduation, he moved to San Francisco, creating paintings influenced by Clyfford Still and Jean Dubuffet.

It wasn’t until Bochner “found his way out of the labyrinth of late Abstract Expressionism,” as he put it to The Brooklyn Rail, that he began to create his most meaningful work. Following a stint auditing philosophy classes after a friend introduced him to the work of Heidegger, Bochner relocated to New York, finding work as a guard at the Jewish Museum. In Manhattan, he ran in the same circles as Dan Flavin, Brice Marden and Donald Judd.

“One of the conversations going on in New York in the late ’60s was about the relationship of the object to the art experience,” Bochner said. “...Younger artists like myself were talking about what it would mean to eliminate the object altogether.” This idea would become the foundation of the Conceptual movement, in which Bochner was instrumental. The artist is probably best known for his text-focused paintings, including a series that plays with the phrase “Blah Blah Blah.” He produces work that regards art as an experience, rather than an object, centering on the process of creation and viewership as opposed to the finished product.

Bochner’s “Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art” featured drawings, notes and outlines from the likes of Milton Glaser, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt and others as well as pages from Scientific American. Bochner, then an art history professor at SVA, photocopied the assemblage of works, added them to binders and positioned them on pedestals for the exhibition because the show’s organizers lacked the funds to frame the pieces.

Bochner’s works can be found in the collections of many major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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1970s Conceptual More Prints

Materials

Paper, Screen

Maris Argalis
The New Year graphisms & 12. 1979, paper, silk screen, 15x21.5 cm, 1979

$363 Sale Price

Lithograph