Drawing for "48" Standards" 1969 - 1972

Curator: Mel Bochner's "Drawing for '48' Standards'," a small work currently housed at the Harvard Art Museums, presents two rectangles seemingly floating on the paper, each meticulously labeled "48"," with a vertical line indicating "36." Editor: My first thought? It feels so…deliberately uneventful. Like a blueprint for a perfectly ordinary piece of lumber. Is it supposed to be challenging my expectations of art? Curator: Precisely. Bochner, emerging in the conceptual art scene, often questioned traditional art values. The work challenges the very notion of art production and invites us to consider the underlying structures that dictate what we perceive. Editor: I get it. He's turning the mundane into something worth contemplating. It still feels like I am missing something, but maybe that is the point. Curator: Perhaps. It's a quiet rebellion against the spectacle, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Absolutely. An exercise in finding meaning in the expected, maybe.