Maryland 110

Lecture by Sunny Yudkoff. This lecture will explore the evolving manifestations of Yiddish in the work of the contemporary artist Mel Bochner. One of the founding figures of American conceptual art, Bochner has continuously re-examined the unstable nature of language. The following presentation investigates how Bochner’s postvernacular invocation of Yiddish calls into crisis this central contention of his work. Extending Bochner’s painterly assertion that “language is not transparent,” this lecture asks: What about Yiddish?