Marcel
Broodthaers
Marcel
Broodthaers
Broodthaers
Belgian, 1924 — 1976
Marcel Broodthaers' work combining films, artists’ books, installations and photography questions the very meaning of art as representation. Words, images and situations are treated as an interdependent whole, sometimes darkly, always spiritedly.
Born in Saint-Gilles, Belgium, Broodthaers began his career as a poet at the end of the war, showing a deep admiration for the paradoxes painted by René Magritte. He formalised his definitive turn towards the visual arts by making 50 plaster copies of his collection of poems Le Pense-Bête (1963), transforming them into a sculpture with which he began to meticulously explore the artificial relationships between form and content, signifier and signified. He also ironically tackled the museum’s normative role, which he provocatively subverted in Museum of Modern Art (1968-1972), a work/exhibition presented at Documenta 5 in Kassel.
Broodthaers' work was first presented by the Pinault Collection during the 2008 “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille.
Born in Saint-Gilles, Belgium, Broodthaers began his career as a poet at the end of the war, showing a deep admiration for the paradoxes painted by René Magritte. He formalised his definitive turn towards the visual arts by making 50 plaster copies of his collection of poems Le Pense-Bête (1963), transforming them into a sculpture with which he began to meticulously explore the artificial relationships between form and content, signifier and signified. He also ironically tackled the museum’s normative role, which he provocatively subverted in Museum of Modern Art (1968-1972), a work/exhibition presented at Documenta 5 in Kassel.
Broodthaers' work was first presented by the Pinault Collection during the 2008 “Passage du temps” (“Passage of Time”) show at the Tri Postal in Lille.
