Marcel Broodthaers
Encyclopedia
Marcel Broodthaers was a Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 poet, filmmaker and artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 works.

He was born in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, Belgium, where he was associated with the Groupe Surréaliste-revolutionnaire  from 1945 and dabbled in journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. After spending 20 years in poverty as a struggling poet, he performed the symbolic act of embedding fifty unsold copies of his book of poems Pense-Bête in plaster, creating his first art object. That same year, 1964, for his first exhibition, he wrote a famous preface for the exhibition catalogue;

"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%.

What is it? In fact it is objects."

He worked principally with assemblies of found object
Found object
A found object, in an artistic sense, indicates the use of an object which has not been designed for an artistic purpose, but which exists for another purpose already. Found objects may exist either as utilitarian, manufactured items, or things which occur in nature...

s and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

, often containing written texts. 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 Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 Kunsthalle for an exhibition in 1970 and at documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972. For such works he is associated with the late 20th century global spread of both installation art, as well as "institutional critique,"
Institutional Critique
Institutional Critique is an art term that describes the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, for instance galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists such as Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and Hans...

 in which interrelationships between artworks, the artist, and the museum are a focus.

Broodthaers died in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 on his 52nd birthday. He's buried at Ixelles Cemetery
Ixelles Cemetery
The Ixelles Cemetery , located in Ixelles in the southern part of Brussels, is one of the major cemeteries in Belgium....

 in Brussels under a tombstone of his own design.

External links

  • http://www.broodthaersmp.be
  • http://www.michaelwerner.com
  • http://www.mk-g.org/index.php?id=364 Marcel Broodthaers events at Milton Keynes Gallery (UK) February 2008 supported by the Open University http://www.open.ac.uk
  • http://www.mk-g.org/index.php?sectionmenu=2 Marcel Broodthaers exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery (UK) 26 January - 30 March 2008.
  • Haidu, Rachel, "On Décor: a Conquest by Marcel Broodthaers," ArtForum, Summer, 2007.
  • MARCEL BROODTHAERS, The Living Mirror Valery Oişteanu
    Valery Oisteanu
    Valery Oişteanu is a Soviet-born Romanian and American poet, art critic, essayist, photographer and performance artist, whose style reflects the influence of Dada and Surrealism. Oişteanu is the author of more than a dozen published books of poetry, a book of short fiction, and a book of essays...

     writes about Broodthaers for The Brooklyn Rail
    The Brooklyn Rail
    The Brooklyn Rail is a political, artistic and literary magazine based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Coverage includes political andliterary essays, art criticism, interviews, original fiction and poetry, and reviews....

    , published in October 2010
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK