Mel Bochner, an artist who produced heady and often witty work in a multitude of mediums, exploring the boundaries of art — and the power of language — in drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, books, installations and public art, died on Feb. 12 in Manhattan. He was 84.
His wife, Lizbeth Marano, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of a fall.
In 1966, Mr. Bochner (pronounced BOK-ner) was in his 20s, living in a cold-water flat in the East 70s in Manhattan, writing art mini-reviews for $2.50 apiece, teaching art history at the School of Visual Arts and trying to figure out what it meant to be an artist. He was making what he thought was “quite awful” work — triangles he cut out of Styrofoam, for example, and covered with fiberglass. The fumes from that process were awful, too, so he stopped....