Marcel Broodthaers 29

The painting establishes a dialogue between two decisive moments in the history of institutional critique. At its center appears an imagined portrait of Marcel Broodthaers, who wears as a folded paper hat Robert Filliou’s “Galerie légitime” (1962–1963) and holds one of André Cadere’s “Barres de bois rond” (1970), conceived as mobile interventions that called into question the stability of the exhibition space. Behind the figure, a museum stanchion with a burgundy cord alludes to “Propriété Privée,” from the “Section Publicité” of the “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles,” presented at Documenta 5, Neue Galerie, Kassel, in 1972. In the lower register, a second, incomplete and fragmentary “Galerie légitime” emerges, underscoring the logic of repetition, displacement, and difference.

The composition adopts a restrained frontal structure inspired by the portrait of “Adrián Pulido Pareja” (1639), attributed to Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo. This reference to Spanish Baroque painting introduces an almost ceremonial gravity that reinforces the emblematic presence of the figure.

Within “The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona,” the work functions as a pictorial archive of the genealogy of artist-founded museums, articulating a critical continuity between painting as a medium and the institution as a historical form.