Dossier - Marcel Broodthaers
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Marcel Broodthaers
1924, Brussels - 1976, Cologne

Marcel Broodthaers, born in Brussels (1924) as the son of a maître d’hôtel, studied chemistry for a few years. After the war, he decided to become a poet, publishing his first poem in 1945 in the Surrealist-oriented magazine Le Ciel Bleu. Broodthaers made his living in a variety of ways: as a bookseller, journalist and art critic, and by giving guided tours in the Palais des Beaux Arts. When he still did not make a breakthrough with his fourth collection of poems, entitled Pense-Bête (= mnemonic, but also ‘think stupid’), Broodthaers decided to cast the remaining fifty copies partly in plaster, along with two bullets, so that they became illegible and were turned into a sculpture. It was an attempt at ‘insincerity’, as Broodthaers described it himself.
It was insincere in that the visual artist (unlike the poet, who can remain completely true to his vision as he is not being paid for it) produces ‘goods’. However trivial the objects were that Marcel Broodthaers made from then on until his death in 1976 (such as piles of eggshells or mussel shells) or however minimal his actions were (such as merely writing his signature), everything was immediately incorporated into the circulation of goods.
The transformation of art into merchandise and the power of the museum to accord an object the value of a work of art would remain important themes in Broodthaers’ work. According to Marcel Broodthaers, the context of a work of art was paramount, and there was no escaping this mechanism. The idea that a work of art should be able to appeal directly to the viewer, without prior knowledge or cultural conditioning, was radically rejected by Broodthaers.
Broodthaers had the gift of being able to raise complicated issues in his work, such as ‘the conditions for the existence of visual art’, dealing with them in a penetrating yet light-hearted and humorous way. Broodthaers’ real theme is the museum, the gallery, the signature, the pedestal, the showcase and the frame, or in other words the emptiness and the lack of content. Broodthaers: ‘Mussels, eggs; objects without content, unless air, and without grace. Their shells on their own are forced to emphasise the emptiness. It is the pedestal that one should be looking at. In fact, I show you reality in my work’.
 
From 1974, a series of retrospectives were created on the theme of scenery. In these exhibitions, Broodthaers experimented with continually changing arrangements of old and new work, thus exposing the contextual dependency of meanings and also escaping a definitive interpretation of his work.
In 1987, from the ‘scenery’ series, the museum acquired L’Entrée de l’Exposition, a work from 1974 and a film entitled Une seconde d’eternité from 1970. The museum also has a collection of 400 photos taken in South Limburg between 1967 and 1970.
 
L'Entrée de l'exposition (zesdelig), 1974

Images
Collection Bonnefantenmuseum
Studie, 1971-1974
L'Entrée de l'exposition (zesdelig), 1974
Tank, 1967-1970
Une Seconde d'eternité, 1970
Marcel Broodthaers in Zuid-Limburg (209x), 1967-1970
M.B., 1970-1971
Porte A