Marcel Broodthaers, Poet in the Pop Trap. Archival Notes on an Artist’s Narrative.

Article (peer-reviewed)

Hannah Bruckmüller, Marcel Broodthaers, Poet in the Pop Trap. Archival Notes on an Artist’s Narrative,
Oxford Art Journal, 2021, kcab012,
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcab012

Abstract
Marcel Broodthaers is widely known as a major representative of the European post-war avant-garde and often named a founding father of institutional critique. In 1964, the author put his books of poetry into plaster and exhibited them as a work of art: this marks the initiation of the well-established narrative of Broodthaers’ origin, the unsuccessful poet, who turned to art. Instead of contributing to this simplified narrative, my article unfolds a more complex story of Marcel Broodthaers, the ‘grocery boy’. Close-reading archival material such as articles, invitation cards and announcements reveals Broodthaers’ participation in the competition of the Prix de la Jeune Sculpture Belge 1963 with an artwork entitled Monument Public No. 4. By examining the historical picture in detail, the canonized story starts to unfold into a plurality of narratives. My project aims to make a more complex way of knowing circulate and draws upon the theoretical framework of Avital Ronell, D. Diane Davis and Hélène Cixous’ écriture feminine. Adding archival notes to an artist’s narrative resists closing the case of the single (white male) artist and aims at destabilizing, unsettling and pluralizing the idea of the origin. 



Hannah Bruckmüller, Marcel Broodthaers, Poet in the Pop Trap. Archival Notes on an Artist’s Narrative, Oxford Art Journal, 2021, kcab012, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcab012