Serial Aesthetics and the Concept of Technique: Mel Bochner and the 1960s

This dissertation explores Minimalist artistic practices with regard to recent developments in science and technology in 1960s Europe and America. Focusing on key players in both music and the visual arts, it specifically makes use of Mel Bochner's early work to establish the coordinates of a new aesthetic approach to the object in art that emerged in relation to the theory and practice of post-War serial composition. Bochner's fundamental insight concerned the materiality of language and language-like structures. While Bochner's realization also came about in intense discussion with his peers, the emphasis of this study is on his reception of Donald Judd's "specific objects" and Dan Flavin's aesthetic application of standardized fluorescent lamps, as well as his interest in music theory. In particular, I argue for taking the category of the subject into account in Bochner's understanding of the material condition of the work. Drawing parallels to Theodor W. Adorno's post-Marxist critique of the Darmstadt School of musical serialism, this dissertation explores in depth areas of aesthetic discourse that are commonly treated separately, ultimately arguing for the temporal significance of the structural material of artistic work.;The dissertation begins with a dispute over artistic technique among participants at the "Primary Structures" symposium in New York, in 1966. For artists at the time, recent advances in science and technology cast conventional artistic strategies into doubt. The status of the work had also, however, undergone significant changes in the reception of Marcel Duchamp's readymade in America. In this context, Bochner's interest in musical serialism yielded profound insight into the altered state of artistic technique, which Bochner addressed, in his writings as well as in his own work, in terms of the historical significance of specific ordering procedures in art.;The dissertation then proceeds to examine the implications of a shifting conception of artistic practice for the subject in art, discussing the work of artists who followed John Cage, such as Allan Kaprow, La Monte Young and Robert Morris. The study concludes with Bochner's inaugural exhibition, "Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art" (1966).