MEL BOCHNER

Compound/Complex (V)

Details

MEL BOCHNER
Compound/Complex (V)
signed and dated 'MEL BOCHNER 1973' lower right
graphite and colored chalks on paper
38 x 50in. (96.5 x 127cm.)
Drawn in 1973

Provenance

Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above by the late owners on Sept. 18, 1974 for $3,000

Literature

exh. cat., Mel Bochner/Barry LeVa/Dorothea Rockburne/Richard Tuttle, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, 1975, p. 7 (illustrated)

Exhibited

Baltimore, Museum of Art, Mel Bochner: Number and Shape, Oct.-Nov. 1976, p. 49, no. 57 (illustrated)

Lot Essay

In his larger-scale shape drawings of 1973, Bochner was developing pictorial ideas concerning shape and measurement which are derived from his earlier installation works. He was interested in discovering ways to re-configure diagrams which he had conceived from points and lines making greater perceptual demands on the spectator. In Compound/Complex (V), for example, Bochner takes geometric shapes of equal area which are made-up (compounded) of similar elements (square, triangle and pentagram) and places them on the sheet so that it is difficult to comprehend their equivalence.