ART CITIES:Eindhoven-Marcel Broodthaers

“I, too, wondered whether I could not sell something and succeed in life. For some time I had been no good at anything. I am forty years old… Finally the idea of inventing something insincere finally crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway. At the end of three months I showed what I had produced to Philippe Edouard Toussaint, the owner of the Galerie St Laurent. ‘But it is art’ he said ‘and I will willingly exhibit all of it.’ ‘Agreed’ I replied. If I sell something, he takes 30%. It seems these are the usual conditions, some galleries take 75%’’.-Marcel Broodthaers

By Efi Michalarou
Photo Van Abbemuseum Archive

‘’Poet and Artist’’, the exhibition displays more than seventy books and artworks on paper by the Belgian poet and conceptual artist Marcel Broodthaers from Manfred Schmidt’s collection. The exhibition is supplemented with a number of works by Broodthaers from the Van Abbemuseum collection. Marcel Broodthaers (28/1/1924 – 28/1/1976) was a Belgian poet, filmmaker and artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art works. Broodthaers made his first film in 1957, and from 1967 he produced over 50 short films in documentary, narrative, and experimental styles. Broodthaers later worked principally with assemblies of found objects and collage, often containing written texts. He incorporated written language in his art and used whatever was at hand for his raw materials, most notably the shells of eggs and mussels, but also furniture, clothing, garden tools, household gadgets and reproductions of artworks. In his Visual Tower (1966), Broodthaers made a seven-story circular tower of wood. He filled each story with uniform glass jars, and in every jar he placed an identical image taken from an illustrated magazine, of the eye of a beautiful young woman. For Surface de moules (avec sac) (1966), he glued mussels in resin on a square panel in 1974 the artist added a discreet metal hook to the center of the work designed to support a shopping bag filled with mussel shells. From 1968 to 1975 Broodthaers produced large-scale environmental pieces that reworked the very notion of the museum. His most noted work was an installation which began in his Brussels house which he called Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles (1968). This installation was followed by a further eleven manifestations of the ‘museum’, including at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf for an exhibition in 1970 and at Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972. In 1975 Broodthaers presented the exhibition “L’Angelus de Daumier” at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, at which each room had the name of a color. For such works he is associated with the late 20th century global spread of both installation art, as well as “institutional critique,” in which interrelationships between artworks, the artist, and the museum are a focus.

 

Info: ‘’Poet & Artist’’, Curating: Willem Jan Renders, Van Abbemuseum Library, Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven Netherlands, Duration:22/2-9/5/15, Days & Hours:Thu-Fri: 11:00-17:00, http://vanabbemuseum.nl