Mel Bochner: If the Colour Changes

First published in conjunction with a major retrospective, this monograph takes colour as its guiding thread to highlight Mel Bochner's rich and thought-provoking approach to photography, installation and painting. One of the founding figures of Conceptual art, and one of its most astute critics, Mel Bochner combines colour and language in his work. This monograph focuses on the role of colour, purity of thought and visual pleasure in Bochner's most recent work such as a series of paintings in which he used a thesaurus to generate humorous word chains and relates it back to the artist's renowned works from the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside 140 colour illustrations, Achim Borchardt-Hume discusses the role of colour in Bochner's recent work; João Fernandes explores language; Ulrich Wilmes looks at new paintings in relation to past work; and Briony Fer considers notions of corruption in Bochner's art. AUTHORS: Achim Borchardt-Hume was Director of Exhibitions at London's Tate Modern. Prior to this, he worked at several London museums: as Chief Curator of Whitechapel Gallery and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tate, along with roles at the Barbican Art Gallery and Serpentine Gallery. Borchardt-Hume died in 2021. João Fernandes is the Director of the Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil. He was formerly Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves in Porto, Portugal. Ulrich Wilmes is the former Chief Curator at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He previously held senior roles at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Munich's Lenbachhaus and Portikus in Frankfurt. Briony Fer is a UK-based art historian, critic and curator whose research focuses on Modern and Contemporary art. Fer is Professor of History of Art at University College London. SELLING POINTS: . American artist Mel Bochner (b.1940, Pittsburgh) is recognised as one of the leading figures in the development of Conceptual art in New York in the 1960s and 1970s . Bochner was a pioneer of the use of language in the visual. He is perhaps best known for his Word Art paintings, where language sometimes repetitive or under a theme and sometimes colour are used to explore how words and meaning are communicated and received . Bochner has consistently probed the conventions of both painting and of language, the way we construct and understand them, and the way they relate to one another, to reveal the unspoken codes that underpin our engagement with the world . The cover image of this book is from one of his most famous painting series, BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!, and is indicative of Bochner's particular take on Word art, where text and colour are deployed 140 colour illustrations