The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 1, 2026

A horizontally oriented cream index card, lined in faint blue with a pink top margin, is inscribed with thick, black handwritten capitals. Across two lines, the text reads: "IN MY OPINION, YOU CANNOT SAY YOU HAVE THOROUGHLY SEEN ANYTHING UNTIL YOU HAVE A PHOTOGRAPH OF IT." Below the text, justified to the right, "EMILE ZOLA" is written in matching script. Small dark marks appear in the upper left corner.

Untitled

1970

Mel Bochner

(American, 1940–2025)
America
offset lithograph
Sheet: 12.7 x 20.3 cm (5 x 8 in.)
Gift of Barbara Tannenbaum in memory of Carl Schneider 2023.132.6
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Mel Bochner has stated that the quotations in Misunderstandings “might (or might not) suggest the impossibility of a ‘theory’ of photography.”

Description

When Mel Bochner began producing photographs, he explored historical and critical writings on medium and found that “the more I read, the more I began to see it all as a colossal misunderstanding.” This artwork juxtaposes quotations from his reading that present contradictory views of the medium and its relationship to reality and reproduction with a photograph: a negative of the artist’s forearm and hand alongside a measuring stick (a symbol of verifiable fact).
  • ?–2023
    Barbara Tannenbaum, Beachwood, OH, given to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    September 11, 2023–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • {{cite web|title=Untitled|url=false|author=Mel Bochner|year=1970|access-date=01 September 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2023.132.6