Mel Bochner — Thank You For Sale

Mel Bochner's Thank You is one of the most enduring phrases in his Thesaurus paintings, a body of work he developed from lists of synonyms drawn from Roget's Thesaurus — a source he first began mining in 1966 for early conceptual "portrait" drawings built entirely from words. Across nearly two decades, Bochner returned to Thank You in radically different materials and processes, each version testing how the same two words could be reactivated through technique.

An earlier 2016 silkscreen edition used sixteen colours with colour-shifting inks at 158.8 x 118.1 cm, in an edition of 30, letting the text visibly change hue as a viewer moved past it. A 2023 etching, printed in Prussian Blue Charbonnel ink and measuring 16 x 10 inches, was published by Two Palms Press in an edition of 25 to benefit the International Print Center New York, translating the phrase into a smaller, more intimate scale for a philanthropic edition. Most recently, a 2024 iteration abandoned printmaking altogether: each work is cast in a single sheet of pigmented paper, with the lettering physically raised and projecting several inches toward the viewer, so that light and shadow across the sculpted letterforms become part of the work's colour.

Across all three approaches, Thank You stays true to Bochner's central conceit — that a plain, almost throwaway phrase, subjected to enough formal pressure, can carry the full weight of a serious artistic statement.