Foreword

Salatino, Kevin

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Foreword

Kevin Salatino (Editor)

Mel Bochner Drawings: A Retrospective

For nearly sixty years, Mel Bochner’s art has taken many forms, including drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and books. Of these, drawing—as concept, process, object—has been fundamental to his practice, yet no museum exhibition has focused exclusively on this essential medium. Mel Bochner Drawings: A Retrospective is the first to use...

Author

Kevin Salatino (Editor)

PublisherArt Institute of Chicago

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-22593

Foreword

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Description: Self/Portrait@80 by Bochner, Mel

Mel Bochner. Self/Portrait@80, 2021. 30 × 24 in. (76.2 × 61 cm). Charcoal on canvas, Collection of Lizbeth Marano

For nearly sixty years, Mel Bochner’s art has taken many forms, including drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and books. Of these, drawing—as concept, process, object—has been fundamental to his practice, yet no museum exhibition has focused exclusively on this essential medium. Mel Bochner Drawings: A Retrospective is the first to use drawing as its organizing principle, foregrounding the importance of this body of work within the artist’s practice. It illuminates Bochner’s evolving ideas about seriality, temporality, language, and the slippage between word and image, demonstrating his pioneering role in redefining the traditional boundaries of drawing.

The Art Institute of Chicago has a long history of celebrating Bochner’s work, which was included in the Seventy-second American Exhibition in 1973, Idea and Image in Recent Art in 1974, and most recently in Mel Bochner: Language 1966–2006 in 2006. The artist’s relationship with the museum dates back to the 1960s. After graduating with a BFA from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and spending a year in San Francisco and Mexico, he moved to Chicago to study philosophy at Northwestern University. During that time, he spent many hours visiting the Art Institute’s collections, developing a warm relationship with the legendary curator of prints and drawings Harold Joachim, who took the young artist under his wing. Fortunately, this spirit of dialogue and collaboration between Bochner and Art Institute curators—especially Mark Pascale, Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator—has continued over the succeeding decades.

The ambitions of this catalogue, which was ably shepherded by Kevin Salatino, Chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator, Prints and Drawings; and Emily Vokt Ziemba, Director, Curatorial Administration, Prints and Drawings, match those of the exhibition. In addition to insightful essays that trace the theoretical threads of Bochner’s practice, the book features a plate section crafted by the artist himself, including works not on view, in order to illustrate the full scope of his drawings, which migrate from paper to floor to wall and explore both visual perception and philosophical concepts. I am grateful to Mel Bochner for his devotion to shaping this definitive project. Many thanks are also due to the individuals and institutions whose loans allowed us to tell this encompassing story and to an anonymous donor for their generous support of the exhibition.

Today the Art Institute of Chicago is proud to hold a robust collection of Bochner’s earliest drawings, made between 1966 and 1969, a testament to their foundational importance within the artist’s oeuvre. It is an honor to explore Bochner’s creative practice and recognize its deep influence on contemporary art, which continues today.

James Rondeau
President and Eloise W. Martin Director
The Art Institute of Chicago

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