Mel Bochner. Voiceover, 2006-2012; oil on canvas; 36 x 28 in. Pergamont Collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.

Many of the exhibition’s earlier works remind us of Bochner’s role as a formative player in the development of Conceptualism in New York City. Misunderstandings (A Theory of Photography) (1967–1970) consists of prints of nine note cards handwritten by the artist, each recording a statement about photography. Some of the statements are attributed to renowned figures like Marcel Duchamp or Emile Zola, another is a quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and three are revealed to be made by Bochner himself. This work epitomizes the artist’s preoccupation with language’s slippery hold on authenticity and its limitations in describing experience. Also from the ’60s is a series of verbal portraits of Bochner’s artist friends that center more on language’s representational abilities than its shortcomings. The 1966 Portrait of Eva Hesse features hand-drawn words in block lettering, laid out in concentric circles on a circular piece of paper, that effectively evoke Hesse’s art practice: “CLOAK,” “OBSCURE,” “ENSCONSE,” “SECRETE,” and “BURY.”

These initial pieces are emblematic of the Conceptualist strategy of placing concept over form. They are primarily monochrome and sometimes done on standard graph or notebook paper, appearing more like the lists, charts, and scribbles people make to organize their everyday realities than special art objects. Small formal interventions like the offset positioning of the notecard lithographs in Misunderstandings, or the circuitous graphic layout of text in Portrait of Eva Hesse, provide the distance needed to analyze language in visual form, without veering too far into object-hood. The ultimate purpose of these early works is not to exist as artworks, but to trigger inquiries into language and text on the part of the viewer.

Mel Bochner. Going Out of Business, 2012; oil on velvet; 93 1/2 x 70 1/4 in. Private collection. Artwork © Mel Bochner.

Bochner’s later works no longer demonstrate such devotion to pure concept. One series features large canvases of lushly painted synonyms from Roget’s Thesaurus, organized in neat rows. The series recalls Conceptualism’s roots in Dada, particularly the work of Marcel Duchamp, in that the synonyms stand as textual “readymades”—words that litter everyday conversation but here are reappropriated and recontextualized through artistic mediation. But counter to Conceptualism proper, the series also exhibits a deep concern with the materiality of the pieces, many of which have rich, vibrant colors; sumptuous, dripping brushstrokes; and a grand scale that makes them look exactly like a high-value art object.

This painterly self-consciousness endows many of the works with seductive aesthetic charms, which oftentimes clash with their conceptual foundations. When the represented words carry loaded cultural baggage, as in the case of “Jew,” they can elicit serious musings on the potential violence of language and its ability to shape our experience. Others, however, prompt a more ambivalent response. Going Out of Business is a list featuring the phrases “CALLING IT QUITS,” “LOST OUR LEASE,” “EVERYTHING MUST GO,” “ALL SALES FINAL,” and “NO GOOD OFFER REFUSED.” Amazing, which includes the words “AWESOME,” “ BREATH-TAKING,” “HEART-STOPPING,” and “MIND-BLOWING,” strays into lighthearted and downright trivial territory. Both Going Out of Business and Amazing are rendered in a vivid, opulent Technicolor palette. For an artist who once sought to unsettle strict formalism and object-based parameters in fine art, and by extension resist the limitations of marketability, this work looks downright commercial—spectacular in appearance and insubstantial in content. One work in the series, titled Money, may even be a self-aware nod to these works’ significant fiscal capabilities. But did this formal turn have a conceptual underpinning? To this question, the exhibition does not provide much in the way of answers.

Mel Bochner. Dollar Hash Exclamation Plus, 2011; oil and charcoal on canvas; 45 x 60 in. (114.3 x 152.4 cm). Courtesy of Peter Freeman. Artwork © Mel Bochner.

One might view this return to the object as an effort to shore up the value, or at least significance, of language in the face of rapidly proliferating digital communication platforms. While the Thesaurus series does not have the currency needed to support such a reading, other recent works do. For example, the symbols in Dollar Hash Exclamation Plus—regularly used in combination to replace curse words and pass censors—are a relatively recent cultural code. Likewise, the painting Colon Open Parenthesis depicts a large sad-face emoticon. The scale of these works feels appropriate given the ubiquity of these linguistic transmissions in everyday communication, and their execution in charcoal on white-painted canvas is full of satisfying, popping smudge marks that serve to prolong contemplation of these pervasive verbal gestures, rather than to compete with them.

Topical investigations like these demonstrate how much more linguistic territory is open for Bochner to mine. His method of doing so will call for continued scrutiny.

Mel Bochner: Strong Language runs through September 21 at the Jewish Museum. 

Nubuo Sekine. Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969/2005; steel, lacquer, water; 47 ¼ x 47 ¼ in. (diameter) and 11 7/8 x 86 5/8 x 63 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Blum & Poe Gallery, New York.

In 1966, the exhibition Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculptors filled the Jewish Museum with large-scale Minimalist sculptures of steel and plastic and helped define a generation of artists and a new wave of critique. The original show is now visible as a miniature model in the current exhibition, Other Primary Structures. Divided into two parts, Others 1 examines work from 1960–1967, while Others 2 focuses on work between 1967–1970. Curator Jens Hoffman includes artists from Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East who offer more nuanced approaches to the monolithic style of famous Minimalists like Donald Judd or Robert Morris.

In Others 2, non-industrial materials in a monochrome palette contrast with the bright, pop colors and perfect, smooth forms of the 1966 show. Artists Susumu Koshimizu and Benni Efrat break down the solid platonic cube into familiar textures and unstable structures in their respective works, both created in 1969: Paper and Matter on the Move. Koshimizu’s thin paper cube containing a centrally placed granite rock is echoed in silhouette by Efrat’s work, with its sloping sides of foam inset with a slab of steel. A simple gesture by South Korean Lee Ufan, Relatum (1969) consists of two blank, unstretched canvases placed on the ground next to a third canvas hung on the wall. The space is boldly yet subtly activated by their scale and their position: One can feel the room’s axes, the blank quietude, and the residue of movement. In Jiro Takamatsu’s Slack of Net (1968–1969), loose cotton ropes knotted into a grid form a fishing net, countering the perfect grid structure of modernist painting that continues in Minimalist aesthetics. Slight ripples in the water are created on the surface of two large, black lacquered steel rectangular and cylindrical forms with each approaching movement in Phase of Nothingness—Water (1969), a striking work by Nobuo Sekine.

One soon begins to realize that natural materials like those found in Other Primary Structures are absent from the original exhibition. The economy of materials here seems to offer a view that no surface—however common—is unworthy of attention. Instead of high-gloss chrome and Plexiglas, the use of simple fabric, paper, or rough-hewn rocks in a Minimalist piece asserts that the textures of daily life need not be absent from art. Other Primary Structures presents an other minimalism that does not refuse the beauty of imperfect everyday materials and forms.

Other Primary Structures is on view at the Jewish Museum in New York City through August 3, 2014.

Vanessa Thill is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York.