Marcel Broodthaers 12

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 12, 2017. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).

This painting originates from a photograph taken by Maria Gilissen, in which Marcel Broodthaers performs an apparently trivial gesture: inserting his index finger into his nose. Lisboa repositions this image within a more enigmatic register, where the everyday acquires a reflective and subtly ironic dimension.

The image is constructed through a controlled blurring that recalls Gerhard Richter’s painterly investigations. Contours dissolve, the figure loses definition, and the monochromatic surface occupies an intermediate space between photographic record and pictorial interpretation.

The work forms part of a series of portraits dedicated to artists who reimagined the museum as an artwork, including Marcel Duchamp—with his Boîte-en-valise (1936–41), Robert Filliou—with La galerie légitime (1962–63), and Broodthaers himself—with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968–72). These practices challenged systems of artistic legitimation and find continuity in the Davis Museum Barcelona, conceived by Lisboa as a readymade sculpture, a collective art project, and a cultural entity recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya.

Executed in oil on linen, the painting adopts a square format that echoes the cubic geometry of the Davis Museum Barcelona. Blue, the project’s defining color, dominates the surface and visually articulates the relationship between the work and its broader conceptual framework.