Marcel Broodthaers 21
A painting conceived through references to European conceptual art, where Marcel Broodthaers enters into dialogue with the conceptual universe of Robert Filliou in a scene that never existed. Inspired by the Section Cinéma of the fictional Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, the work depicts the artist wearing La Galerie Légitime — Filliou’s imaginary portable gallery — as a paper hat. Portraiture, institutional fiction, and a Spanish Baroque atmosphere converge through chiaroscuro and subtle transitions of light.
Original · Signed · Certificate
€1,750
Product Details
Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 21, 2024. Oil on linen, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.5 × 31.5 × 1.38 in).
This painting is inspired by a photograph of Marcel Broodthaers, a central figure in conceptual art and a precursor of institutional critique. The scene refers to an image in which the artist appears beside a small children’s piano that formed part of the Section Cinéma installation from his Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, presented in its celebrated Düsseldorf iteration in 1972.
Through this visual reference, the painting revisits some of the fundamental tensions present in Broodthaers’ work surrounding institutional language, museographic fiction, and the mechanisms of representation.
Pictorially, the sombre atmosphere and the gradual transition between light and shadow evoke the Spanish Baroque tradition and, more specifically, the silent psychological density found in the paintings of Velázquez. At the same time, the image introduces a decisive departure from the original photographic document: Broodthaers appears wearing a white paper hat that alters the scene and shifts its reading toward a more speculative, even ironic dimension.
This element refers to La Galerie Légitime, the portable and imaginary gallery conceived by Robert Filliou in the 1960s. The painting thus establishes an improbable conceptual link between two artists who were fundamental to the critical reinvention of cultural institutions, particularly the museum and the art gallery. Between portrait, institutional fiction, and painterly construction, the work proposes an image that operates simultaneously as homage, historical displacement, and conceptual convergence.
Additional information
| Weight | 5.2 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm |
