Lot 178 D

This artwork is on preview 20.Nov./21.Nov. from 10-17 hours in our office in Brussels.

Marcel Broodthaers undermines common viewing habits and the traditional understanding of art on many levels in his work; an infinite number of references between his writings, objects and installations create a complete work of sheer inscrutable depth, philosophical-literary aspiration and subversive humour.
“Socle”, a narrow wood pedestal with black and white colouring, presents initially only itself and the strikingly applied monogram of the artist and the dating on the black front. The artist's monogram is repeated many times on the white side panel.
The constant repetition of Broodthaers' monogram is often found within his oeuvre, such as in the 1971 installation “Miroir (La Signature de l'artiste)”. There the artist's efforts at establishing close connections between text and image become obvious, but also his questioning of the common mechanism of artistic creation.
In the 1971 exhibition “Figures anciennes et modernes” at the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp, the pedestal actually fulfilled its most innate function and presented Broodthaers' glass vessel with shells, “Pot moule coeur” from 1966.