Photography After Conceptual Art by Costello Diarmuid; Iversen Margaret; & MARGARET IVERSEN

Author:Costello, Diarmuid; Iversen, Margaret; & MARGARET IVERSEN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

12 Mel Bochner, Measurement Room, 1969. Tape and letraset on wall, size determined by installation. Installation: Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, 1969. Photo: © Mel Bochner.

13 Mel Bochner, The Singer Notes (Sheet 43), 1968. Ink on graph paper, 11 × 8.5 inches. Photo: © Mel Bochner.

PAINTING AFTER PHOTOCONCEPTUALISM

Bochner’s experiment with an art of context was short-lived, however. He became dissatisfied with working on the ontological grounds and ontological boundaries of art by systematic means, and returned to canvas-based painting in 1973 via a transitional phase of wall painting. That is, Bochner started painting again just as his contemporaries, most notably Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke and Michael Asher, were honing their critique of the very institutions where Bochner’s new paintings would be exhibited.

Bochner continues to paint today. In a well-known interview, James Meyer has interrogated Bochner on his return to painting. Meyer inquires in the bluntest terms ‘how can you defend making paintings now?’58 Bochner responds that all of his previous work should be understood as a preparation for his return to painting, stating that ‘without the history of the practice of painting as the background for all my work, it becomes a series of disparate gestures.’59 Later in the interview, Bochner goes even further, ‘I always thought of myself as a painter ... a painter who just didn’t happen to paint’, and concludes, ‘but what I can see in retrospect is that it’s the absence of painting that gives definition to the Photo Pieces, the Measurements, the Theory of Boundaries. They all circulated around that missing signifier.’60

A combative Meyer, avowedly ‘sympathetic to ... the discourse of painting’s insufficiency’, objects to Bochner’s claim, implying that it could be read as revisionist: ‘your work became well known for its investigation of systemic thought... Even your wall paintings of the’ ‘70s and early’ ‘80s were systemically derived. Your current work is not, and I’m wondering whether it hasn’t betrayed the anti- subjectivist, anti-compositional commitments of your early work and writings.’61 Bochner defends his position with the claim that ‘the system predicted the result. It was tautological – a closed as opposed to an open investigation.’62 Consequently, ‘there were two choices: totally abandon the visual or see if I could renegotiate the terms of painting... One goes to painting because of its conventions. I’m interested in painting as a text that is continually rewritten.’63 Yet, as Meyer objects, the problem for Bochner, after conceptual art, is why exclusively, or even primarily, paint? Why fall back on ‘conventions’ that have been undermined? This standoff between Bochner and Meyer is not resolved within the context of the interview.

Yet is not painting once again a ‘good idea’? Such a question cannot be answered in the abstract. In Bochner’s case, a local case would need to be built, entirely based on his practice, demonstrating that his particular return to painting was productive. Bochner negates painting by photography and photography by an art of context, only to return to painting. Thus his position seems to go back on the gains made within the terms of his own project.

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