AThis Sunday, everyone who cares about the art of the last century will remember Marcel Broodthaers, who was born in Brussels a hundred years ago, on January 28, 1924. At first he saw himself as a writer, and by his fortieth birthday he had published at least four volumes of poems. But he wasn't satisfied with that, and so he decided to switch to fine art. He formulated his reasoning with disarming openness and a certain sarcasm.
He asked himself whether he could “sell something” in order to still be successful in life. Then he came up with the idea of inventing something “disingenuous” (quelque chose d'insincère). He then immediately went to work and began building objects using, among other things, eggshells and mussels, which were arranged on wooden panels in rows and columns like words or letters. Amazingly, he also immediately found an art dealer where he was able to exhibit his creations just three months later. On the invitation card he praised the gallery for only charging thirty percent of the proceeds from sales.
It all started with mussels
During the twelve years that Broodthaers lived, he actually achieved the success he longed for. This is completely justified, because the art world was enormously enriched by his interventions. It's all the more surprising that there wasn't a retrospective anywhere for his birthday. His oeuvre is generally not particularly present in museums. Only the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection normally grants him a room in their permanent exhibition, but it is currently being used for a special exhibition. Marcel Broodthaers' most important works are currently nowhere to be seen.
But this is also due to the peculiarities of these works themselves. This can best be made clear with an example. On September 27, 1968, around sixty people came to 30 rue de la Pépinière in Brussels to attend the opening of a new museum. It was called the Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. The elegant invitation card announced a cold buffet and a speech by Dr. phil. J. Cladders, museum director in Mönchengladbach. An answer was requested. As usual, there was chatting and drinking at the opening, although it was easy to overlook the fact that no works of art were being shown. There were a few shipping crates leaning against the walls, and a truck from a shipping company that specialized in transporting art was parked in front of the door. But on the walls all you could see were a few postcards with reproductions of famous paintings by nineteenth-century artists. There wasn't a single original, especially not one by Broodthaers.
Pseudo-serious: Marcel Broodthaers (in a gray suit in front of the curtain) speaks in Brussels in 1972 at the opening of his legendary “Museum of Modern Art – Eagle Section”.
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Image: Maria Gilissen/VG BIld-Kunst, Bonn 2024
The “original,” one could deduce, was the installation as such. Broodthaers did not want to limit himself, as usual, to showing individual works. He was concerned with the context into which these works fit. It's not just the spatial ambience that plays a role, but even more so the behavior of those present. The simulated vernissage drew attention to the fact that every work of art is embedded in an environment in which norms, liturgies and patterns of action prevail, of which one is usually not even aware as a participant and which often only becomes apparent through the unprejudiced gaze of outsiders like Broodthaers can be exposed.
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