Robert Filliou 28 (Comma)

This painting takes as its point of departure the image of Robert Filliou, drawn from a frame of his experimental video Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts, Part II. Here, however, he is depicted wearing his Galerie Légitime—a folded paper hat conceived as a portable exhibition space. The gesture, both restrained and precise, transforms the figure into a site of display where authorship and institution momentarily converge.

The composition engages in a subtle dialogue with the paintings of Candido Portinari, in which the motif of the hat functions as a marker of identity and social context. This reference is not quoted directly but operates as a latent structure shaping the painting’s symbolic logic.

At its core, the work belongs to a lineage of artists who redefined the museum as a poetic and conceptual gesture—from Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise (1935–1941), through Robert Filliou’s Galerie Légitime (1962–1963), to Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (1968–1972). Within this continuity, Davis Museum Barcelona is conceived as an expanded artwork: a readymade structure functioning simultaneously as an object, an archive, and a curatorial device.

Part of The Paintings Section From Davis Museum Barcelona, the painting belongs to a body of work centered on portraits that revisit key figures through condensed visual propositions. The square format—both formal and conceptual—echoes the self-contained logic of the museum itself, reinforcing the painting’s autonomy while maintaining its position within a broader conceptual framework.