On February 14th, MoMA opened the first
retrospective of Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers in New York. He might be the
most well-know artist you don’t know before. Broodthaers was a militant poet before.
In the year of 1964 he decided to turn himself into a visual artist. This
Retrospective covers the whole art career of Broodthaers and contains more than
200 pieces of works.
Marcel Broodthaers’ works have characters of both poet
and artist. In his early works, he used the elements mussel shells and egg
shells very often. For example the work Moules
sauce blanche (Mussels with white sauce) and Armoire Blanche et Table Blanche(White closet and desk). The use of
symbols in these works also has some kind of surrealism associations, so he
also got called the “Romantic –Realist”. A
big part of this show is his work Musée
d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, which is a fictional museum. In this
piece, Broodthaers played many roles, such as curator, museum director and art
historian. It is very critical about the
art world at that time. It showed that the museums were full of unspoken
ideology. Most of his works are installations and videos.
I think this retrospective is successfully showed us the
importance of Marcel Broodthaers in the art history, and this show will give
him a deserved place in the art world.
Moules sauce blanche (Mussels with white sauce)
Armoire Blanche et Table Blanche(White closet and desk)
Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles
You do a very nice job of setting up the critic with all of the pertinent information. This helps the reader really understand the art in the context of the artist in his life time, and how it relates to the retrospective. However, it would have been good to highlight a specific piece a little more thoroughly, using it as the framework for the rest of the discussion. For example, how does one piece reflect some of the qualities Broodthaers was most notable for? You do elude to this, but it could really strengthen the piece to add to it.
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