Marcel Broodthaers

Marcel Broodthaers was born on this day in 1924, and died on this day in 1976, at the age of 52. 

Marcel Broodthaers

Marcel Broodthaers was born on this day in 1924, and died on this day in 1976, at the age of 52. 

Bottles

 

Jannis Kounellis | Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis

Kounellis

Monchengladbach, Germany: Städtisches Museum, 1978.

[5] pp., 19.5 x 15 cm., loose leaves, boxed

Edition of 440 numbered copies

Accompanying his exhibition, which ran from May 11th to June 11th in 1978, this boxed catalogue consists of a printed cardboard box containing four cards and a multiple by Kounellis. Three of the cards feature a continuous text of the poem Die Skythen, a poem written in 1918 by Russian lyrical poet Aleksandr Blok. The fourth is the title or colophon page. The multiple is made of compressed board, and features a metal rod embedded in white tissue. The rod is laminated in explosive powder the the work is intended to be ignited. 

When lit, the fuse produces a “bright hissing glow that leaves a black smoke trail on the grey-white plate”. 

This was the final boxed work in the Städtisches Museum series that began with Joseph Beuys in 1967 and also included editions by Carl Andre, Hanne Darboven, George Brecht & Robert Filliou, Piero Manzoni, Stanley Brown, Daniel Buren, Jasper Johns, Marcel Broodthaers, Lawrence Weiner, Gerhard Richter, and James Lee Byars, amongst others. 

The price during the run of the exhibition was DM 6. The work can now be purchased from Printed Matter, here, for $1800.00 US. 

Marcel Broodthaers | The Manuscript Found in a Bottle

Marcel Broodthaers
The Manuscript Found in a Bottle
Berlin, Germany: Edition René Block, 1974
30.5 x 8 x 7.5 cm.
Edition of 120 signed and numbered copies

Broodthaers had made several works both involving wine bottles and referencing Edgar Allan Poe long before he made this edition for René Block less than two years before his death at the age of 52.

The text on the bottle refers to "MS. Found in a Bottle", a short story by Poe about an unnamed narrator on a capsized cargo ship who pens a manuscript and casts it out to sea. The author's first published fiction, the story won first prize - and fifty dollars for the struggling writer - from a newspaper prose contest. It was published in the October 19, 1833, issue of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. The story can be read here, in it's entirety.

Broodthaers tautological work consists of an empty wine bottle (empty of both wine and manuscript), boxed with an accompanying crumbled page. Originally priced at $200 (see advertisement, above), a copy sold at Christies auction house two years ago for 10,625 Euros.

Broodthaers was born on this day in 1924, and died on this day in 1976.

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