Solar System & Rest Rooms by Mel Bochner

Solar System & Rest Rooms by Mel Bochner

Reviews, art criticism, theoretical texts, interviews, catalog statements, notecards, magazine interventions, and other writings on art and art in the form of writing by a leading conceptual artist; many pages reproduced in facsimile.

Artist Mel Bochner became a writer, he says, almost by accident. In 1965, as a young artist in New York, he was out of a job; Arts Magazine paid him $2.50 for every review he turned in, whether they published it or not; a month of review-writing paid his rent--$28.00 a month. His reviews and articles provoked a range of unexpected reactions. "At that time, artists who wrote were looked at suspiciously, as if writing somehow tainted their visual practice," he writes. A painter friend attacked him publicly for "joining the enemy." Bochner soon began testing the boundary between writing-as-criticism and writing-as-visual-art. Solar System & Rest Rooms collects both Bochner's writings on art and his writings as art, offering more than fifty pieces--reviews, art criticism, theoretical texts, interviews, catalog statements, notecards, and his groundbreaking "magazine interventions"--many reproduced in facsimile. Bochner is a leading figure in conceptualism; his 1966 installation at the School of Visual Arts Gallery Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art is considered to be the earliest exhibition of conceptual art. Solar System & Rest Rooms chronologically documents the work and ideas of this important artist over a span of forty years, as well as providing a unique perspective on the conceptual and post-minimal art scene in New York. This book offers a rare insight into what it means to be an artist whose visual practice is inseparable from the sustained practice of writing. Mel Bochner has lived and worked in New York City since 1964. His work has been exhibited internationally and is included in major museum collections throughout the world.

Melissa Ho is an artist and art historian who assisted in organizing the exhibition Barnett Newman at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2002. Other contributors to the volume include Mel Bochner, Yve-Alain Bois, B. H. Friedman, Mark Godfrey, Ben Heller, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, Robert Murray, Suzanne Penn, Sarah K. Rich, Nan Rosenthal, Pierre Schneider, Gabriele Schor, Richard Shiff, and Allan Stone.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262026314
ISBN 10	0262026317
Title	Solar System & Rest Rooms
Author	Mel Bochner
Series	Writing Art
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2008-05-09
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.