Chicago Tribune art critic Alan G. Artner reviews The Language Barrier.
Mel Bochner has a way with words — Conceptual Art pioneer's works at Art Institute, Spertus
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South African art activist Kendell Geers has created the second temporary work commissioned by the Spertus Museum on the construction barricade for its new building...
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Kay Rosen's "Hello Again" is the first in a series of site-specific artworks commissioned by the Spertus Museum for the barrier on the construction site of its new addition.
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Site-Specific Artworks
Mel Bochner, The Joys of Yiddish, 2006
Commissioned by Spertus Museum
Photograph by Thomas A. Nowak
Glossary*
- KIBBITZER -- a wiseguy
- KVETCHER -- a chronic complainer
- K’NOCKER -- a braggart
- KUNI LEMMEL -- a simpleton
- NUDNICK -- a nag
- NEBBISH -- a sad sack
- NUDZH -- a pesterer
- GONIF -- a shady character
- DREYKOP -- an annoying person
- CHAZZER -- a greedy person
- CHAIM YANKEL -- a nobody
- ALTER KOCKER -- a crotchety old man
- MOISHE PUPIK -- a contrarian
- MESHUGENER -- a crazy man
- TUMLER -- a prankster
- TSITSER -- a useless bystander
- SHMOOZER -- a gossiper
- SCHMO -- a fall guy
- SHLEMIEL -- a social misfit
- SHLIMAZEL -- a born loser
- SHVITZER -- a show-off
- PISHER -- a callow person
- PLOSHER -- a blowhard
- PLATKE-MACHER -- a troublemaker
*compiled by Mel Bochner
The Language Barrier
Mel Bochner
October 2006 - March 2007
Mel Bochner has long focused his artistic practice on language and questioning the authority of knowledge over perception. His recent paintings of synonyms suggest the transience and instability of meaning, affirming his assertion that "language is not transparent." For his new work, The Joys of Yiddish, commissioned by Spertus Museum as the third and final installment of The Language Barrier series, Bochner turned toward the Yiddish language.
"Yiddish is an outsider's language, a communal code developed to cope with a foreign and often hostile reality. As such it developed an ironic and picaresque view of human nature and its foibles. While capable of expressing the deepest of sentiments, it is also a language of intense self-criticism and moral invective—direct, unrefined, and indifferent to polite taste. My intention in The Joys of Yiddish is to foreground this complexity and to celebrate the language in all its humor and humanity." — Mel Bochner, 2006
Bochner lives and works in New York. His work has been widely exhibited both in the United States and abroad, including solo exhibitions at The Drawing Center, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva; and Centro de Arte Helio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro. In 2004, Bochner was included in the Whitney Biennial. His work is in the collections of the Tate, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Bochner has been the recipient of numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Art Institute of Chicago will be presenting the exhibition Mel Bochner: Language 1966-2006, from October 5, 2006 to January 7, 2007. Including works on paper, painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, the exhibition brings together, for the first time, Bochner's language-based works created over four decades.
Kendell Geers
May - September 2006
Kendell Geers’ BE/LIE/VE was the second in a series of commissions conceived by Spertus Museum to activate the construction site, to engage contemporary artists, and to connect with the public. BE/LIE/VE is Geers' attempt to transform text into pattern, to create an abstraction beyond language that embodies skepticism yet stimulates fervor.
Kay Rosen
January - April 2006
Kay Rosen's Hello Again was the first artwork presented on the Spertus construction barricade. Her text greeted viewers with two HI's but also challenged them to find multiple meanings in the juxtaposition of the two words THEIR and HEIR. As Spertus prepares to move into its new facility, the concepts of heritage and legacy are increasingly germane. Describing how the arrangement of the letters themselves echoes the subject of the work, Rosen wrote, "It's important to me that THEIR passes down part of itself, HEIR, to posterity as indicated by its position after THEIR. HEIR inherits four letters from THEIR. The T falls away, just as nothing is inherited or passed down in its entirety. Some things are lost to the past." At the same time, it is this rich past that Spertus builds on as we look toward the future.