Marcel Broodthaers 10
This painting by Davis Lisboa revisits an iconic image of Marcel Broodthaers, isolating the figure from its original context to intensify the contained tension of his gesture and expression. Built through a restrained palette dominated by blue, the work finds a point of balance between portraiture and conceptual structure.
Situated within a lineage that connects with Marcel Duchamp and Robert Filliou, the piece forms part of the Davis Museum Barcelona—a project in which the museum itself operates as an artwork. Both autonomous and embedded within this framework, the painting articulates a precise reflection on the museum as form.
Original · Signed · Certificate
€800
Product Details
Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 10, 2017. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).
The painting takes as its point of departure a well-known black-and-white photograph of Marcel Broodthaers, taken by Maria Gilissen during the filming of Un Voyage à Waterloo (Napoléon 1769–1969). The artist appears wearing a plastic nose and a subtly ironic smile. In the original image, the background includes the rear door of an art transport truck, an element that has been removed here in order to concentrate the scene on the figure and the tension of his gesture. The composition preserves the performative character of the image while shifting it toward a more contained and autonomous presence.
The work is situated within a genealogy in which the museum is conceived as an artistic form. From Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp to La galerie légitime by Robert Filliou, and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, the museum apparatus is redefined as portable, fictional, and self-reflexive. Within this framework, the Davis Museum Barcelona emerges as a coherent extension of this line of inquiry.
Conceived as a symbolic gesture and articulated through its digital circulation, the Davis Museum Barcelona operates simultaneously as a digital archive, a cultural institution recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya, and a collective art project. Its scale and structure propose a reconsideration of the conditions of visibility and production, while maintaining a precise relationship to key moments in contemporary art. The paintings that form its core function both as autonomous images and as elements within this expanded framework.
Executed in oil on linen, the work adopts a square format that echoes the cubic logic of the Davis Museum. A dominant blue organizes the surface and establishes continuity across the series. Within this economy of means, the figure remains poised between portrait and conceptual construction, between pictorial presence and structure.
Additional information
| Weight | 2.5 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm |
