Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers #9, 2017. Oil on canvas, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.75 × 15.75 × 1.38 in)
Conceived from a still from La Pluie, Projet Pour Un Texte (1969), Marcel Broodthaers #9 brings the figure of Marcel Broodthaers into the space of painting through a logic of reduction and distance. The image is neither presented as citation nor reconstruction, but as a contained visual presence in which the portrait remains deliberately suspended.
The composition unfolds through softened contours, blurred transitions, and a surface that oscillates between definition and erasure. This controlled instability situates the work at a point of tension between photographic memory and pictorial construction, reinforcing its intensity without relying on descriptive excess.
The blue palette, characteristic of this body of work, concentrates the image and heightens its structural clarity. The square format contributes to this economy, giving the portrait a compact and frontal presence.
As part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work is embedded within a broader reflection on artists who redefined the museum as a form of artistic practice, including Marcel Duchamp with Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou with La galerie légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. In this context, the painting operates both as a portrait and as an image shaped by history, authorship, and institutional form.
The Peter Verstraeten Collection, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium.
