Mel Bochner

New York-based Conceptual art pioneer Mel Bochner writes in this monograph, "What I try to do is stay open to the work as it develops, not impose myself on it, but permit it to take me somewhere. If I had a model, I suppose it would be those ancient Chinese artists who changed their name three times during their lifetime, in order not to become the prisoner of a style." The book introduces new riffs--produced for an exhibition at Domaine de Kerguehennec, in Brittany, France--on several well-known bodies of work, including Bochner's recent ongoing series "The Thesaurus Paintings," in which a group of often humorous synonyms ("lazy, lethargic, crazy, vulgar" and "irascible," for instance) are painted in brightly colored block letters, and the "Measurement Pieces" (conceived in the 1960s), in which the walls are highlighted with numbered arrows indicating their measurements.