Measurement: 12 inches Between

Bochner’s Measurement works comprise a significant portion of the artist’s oeuvre and served as his primary investigation into the limits of language. Throughout this series of inquiry, Bochner prioritized standard American construction sizes, as in Measurement: 12 inches Between. This work consists of a large rectangular canvas painted in red with a square cut out of its center. Bochner explicitly specifies the size of this square by painting a twelve-inch sign to the right of the central void along with two arrows pointing outward, which, together, indicate the width span of this measurement. Attached to the right border of the red painting,
at the same height as the square excised from its center is a white canvas whose measure mirrors that of the gap: 12 x 12 inches. In this work, what is missing becomes just as much the subject as
the two canvasses themselves. By elevating the significance of this negative space, Bochner asks us to consider not only what has been removed but also the conditionality of measurement—how it
can only have meaning in relation to something else. Like the “blahs” in his Blah, Blah, Blah, painting and the words in Language Is Not Transparent, measurement reveals an inherent emptiness and opacity when explicitly invoked. All of the components surrounding it are ultimately essential to defining and contextualizing its overall signification.