Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
October 12, 2002 – January 12, 2003
The early photographs of Mel Bochner (b. 1940) are on view in Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum Gallery. Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 showcases 34 important, little-known works that demonstrate Mel Bochner’s role during the formative years of the Conceptual art movement.
Mel Bochner, a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is best known for installations and paintings that probe the abstract concept of measurement. In the late 1960s, Mel Bochner, like other Conceptual artists, turned away from self-expression, choosing instead to explore organized systems of thought, such as language and mathematics, through artistic practices that used minimal aesthetics.
Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969 reveals the artist’s contributions to Conceptualism by highlighting the importance of his photography in the movement’s development. For Mel Bochner, photography was well suited to exploring the abstract ideas and systems behind artistic practice, which interested him more than focusing on the representation of objects.
Mel Bochner’s photographs treat a variety of subjects, investigating a range of artistic phenomena such as perspective, color, scale, and language. A number of pieces in the exhibition record Bochner’s experimentation working outside standard photographic formats, including several multi-panel and large-format works that the artist cut and manipulated. When installed several inches from a wall, these works produce an effect that blurs the distinction between two-dimensional media and sculpture.
Some pieces in the exhibition deal with mathematical ideas. 36 Photographs and 12 Diagrams (1966) depicts a numerical sequence, emphasizing the whole, as well as showing the incremental changes in its creation. To do this, Mel Bochner built and photographed a series of stacked wooden blocks, emphasizing the mathematical principle of the arrangement step-by-step.
Works like Surface Dis/Tension (1968) delve into the depiction of perspective. Beginning with a photograph of a grid, Mel Bochner soaked the print and peeled away the image-bearing surace, allowing it to wrinkle while drying. He then photographed the image of the grid as it appeared on this crumpled membrane. Next, Mel Bochner made positive and negative prints of the distorted grid on the same piece of paper, simultaneously revealing the original perspective as well as its altered form.
Other works probe how presentation affects perception. H-2 (1966–67), for example, minimizes the difference between sculpture and photography. The piece is a gelatin silver print of stacked wooden blocks in a cruciform arrangement, cut in silhouette and mounted on Masonite. When viewed head-on, the work gives the illusion of depth. Viewed obliquely, the third dimension disappears. This mutability hints at Bochner’s awareness of art’s power to bridge, as well as widen, the gap between object and representation.
According to exhibition curator Scott Rothkopf, “People often think that Conceptual art is hard to understand, and that it doesn’t offer the viewers a lot visually. Bochner, however, cared very much that his photographs be as interesting to look at as they are to think about.”
The 185-page exhibition catalogue Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–1969, by Scott Rothkopf, includes an essay by Elisabeth Sussman and 40 color plates, as well as 119 black-and-white illustrations. The catalogue, published by Yale University Press in conjunction with Harvard University Museums, is available in the Carnegie Museum of Art Store.
Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–69 was organized by Scott Rothkopf for the Harvard University Art Museums.
CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART
4400 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
