Marcel Broodthaers 1

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 1, 2012. Oil on linen, 30 × 30 × 3.5 cm (11.8 × 11.8 × 1.38 in).

Inspired by a photograph of Marcel Broodthaers wearing a false nose, taken by Maria Gilissen during the filming of Un Voyage à Waterloo (Napoléon 1769–1969), this painting approaches the artist through an image already charged with theatricality, irony, and self-construction. The portrait transforms that moment into a concentrated and atmospheric pictorial presence.

Its softened handling and tonal restraint draw on the legacy of Eugène Carrière, allowing the figure to emerge through a muted and unstable field rather than through descriptive precision. The image remains partially suspended, balancing symbolic gravity with a subtle sense of absurdity.

That tension is central to the work. Broodthaers appears here not only as a portrait subject, but as a figure whose image already contains the instability between role, performance, and institutional critique that defines much of his practice.

Part of The Painting Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work belongs to the only section of the museum in which artworks are available for acquisition. Within this broader framework, it extends a lineage shaped by Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou’s Galerie légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, where the museum itself becomes an artistic medium.