Robert Filliou 12

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 12, 2011. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in)

The portrait is constructed through an operation of displacement: Robert Filliou is evoked through the figure of Austin Lane Crothers, Governor of Maryland in the early twentieth century, whose top hat here functions as a formal equivalent of the Galerie légitime. The painting does not describe; it establishes a correspondence in which figure and display device converge within the same pictorial field.

The work is resolved through a strict visual economy. The brushwork remains open, while a reduced palette structures the surface without fully fixing it. The affinity with Édouard Manet operates as a method rather than a reference—sustaining a balance between presence and distance.

The painting is part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, where each work functions as an active extension of the museum. Within this framework, the painting is not presented as an autonomous object, but as part of a structure in which image, archive, and institutional device remain inseparable.

In this sense, its genealogy is structural: from the Boîte-en-valise of Marcel Duchamp to Filliou’s Galerie légitime and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles of Marcel Broodthaers, the work situates itself within a lineage in which exhibiting is itself a form of production. The square format and restrained blue-and-white palette reinforce this continuity, inscribing the painting within the visual identity of the Davis Museum Barcelona.