Mel Bochner - Working Drawings - König 1997

In 1966, Mel Bochner, then-young instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to organize a “Christmas show on drawings,” to run from December 2–23, 1966. Bochner asked artist he liked (such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Eva Hesse, Dan Graham, Jo Baer, Robert Moskowitz, Robert Smithson, Al Jensen, to name a few) for drawings that weren’t necessarily “work[s] of art.” The gallery, upon seeing the drawings, dismissed them, claiming “we don’t have enough money to frame them.” They had unlimited access to a large Xerox machine to photocopy the drawings, making them able to go about reducing and enlarging them to a uniform size. Presenting photocopies within a gallery setting was not yet common in 1966. To increase the sheet counts, Bochner sought other materials. He compiled the sheets into four bound books and mounted each on a white wooden pedestal.
Working Drawings exposed minimal art’s dependency on the readymade, and its “flirtation” with the mechanisms of mass production and consumption. Bochner’s installation reconfigures minimal shapes into “furniture,” metaphorically supporting an analysis of its own construction. 

This edition of the Working Drawings and Other Visibles Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art by Mel Bochner was published on the occasion of the exhibition Mel Bochner, Projets à l'étude, 1966-1996 at the Cabinet des estampes du Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva, 1997. The edition was printed from the 1966 installation contained in the first binder of the Working Drawings.
For the present edition, 450 slipcased sets of four identical volumes and an accompanying brochure were printed.

5 vol. [4 vol. 240p, 1 vol. 34 p] - FR/EN - 29 x 27.7cm - softcover - perfect condition