Marcel Broodthaers | Film als Objekt-Objekt als Film

Marcel Broodthaers
Film als Objekt-Objekt als Film
Monchengladbach, Germany: Stadtisches Museum Monchengladbach, 1971.
8.25 x 6.25 x 1.5"
Edition of 220 copies

Four nested boxes with the text Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 0 and Fig. 12. The text Fig. A is printed on the bottom of each box. Text by curator Johannes Cladders.


"As you can see in the Monchengladbach museum cardboard box, a clock, a mirror, a pipe, also a mask and a smoke bomb, and one or two other objects I can't recall at this point; accompanied by the expression Fig 1 or Fig 2 or Fig 0 painted on the display surface beneath or to the side of each object. If we are to believe what the inscription says, then the object takes on an illustrative character referring to a kind of novel about society. These objects, the mirror and the pipe, submitted to an identical numbering system (or the cardboard box or the clock or the chair) become interchangeable elements of the stage of a theatre. Their destiny is ruined. Here I obtain the desired encounter between different functions. A double assignment and a readable texture - wood, glass, metal, fabric - articulate them morally and materially. I would never have obtained this kind of complexity with technological objects, whose singleness condemns the mind to monomania: minimal art, robot, computer.

The numbers 1, 2, 0 appear figural. And the abbreviations Fi. poorly in their meaning."

- Marcel Broodthaers