Chair 1936

This drawing of a chair was made with what looks like ink and watercolor by Jack Bochner sometime, I guess, before 1995. The thing that grabs me is the pink—it's so present and flat. It's got that draftsman's thing of diagramming, of laying out a concept plainly. It makes me think of art school in the 1980s, when the echoes of conceptual art were still bouncing around. I wonder if Bochner was thinking about design, or maybe mass production, something about the way we live with objects. It's so matter-of-fact, but something about the color makes me wonder. Was he thinking of Hockney's bright swimming pools? Or maybe the color is a sly wink, like a joke in the guise of serious instruction. Painters are always talking to each other, and I’m struck by how something so simple can spark all these questions.