Marcel Broodthaers 15

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 15, 2021. Oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).

The painting takes as its point of departure a still from La Pluie (Projet pour un texte), the experimental film by Marcel Broodthaers, translating it into a painterly register. The image, reduced to a contained structure, remains legible while enveloped in a monochrome blue atmosphere that softens its contours and imparts a diffuse quality.

Across the surface, the letter “W” emerges, referencing the WordPress logo. This element establishes a direct link to writing in the digital age, set against the figure’s manual act of writing, creating a tension between two modes of textual production.

The work operates through appropriation: a pre-existing image is reinterpreted through its shift in medium. The temporality of the film is condensed into a single surface, where the image loses definition and asserts itself as a material presence.

It forms part of a series dedicated to artists who developed their own institutional frameworks—such as Marcel Duchamp with Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou with Galerie Légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles—integrating into an archive that projects these strategies into the present. Its format reinforces the work’s concentration and precision.