Marcel Broodthaers (1924 - 1976)

What is art? What is the role of the artist? What is the social function of the museum? In his efforts to explore these fundamental questions, Broodthaers established, in 1968, in Brussels, the Museum of Modern Art, department of Eagles, declaring as he did so: "This museum is a fiction." Meanwhile Broodthaers realised his complex ideas on the topic of the museum in a series of installations, including the Section Publicité - the "Marketing Department" - which was made for documenta 5 in Kassel. Beneath the logo of a gilded bronze eagle the visitor sees a sequence of disparate pictures and documents, relating to the highly charged iconography of the eagle motif as well as to pictorial and symbolic representation as a whole. The idea of the museum is called into question both playfully and more seriously. Broodthaers's masterly ability to mingle references, associations and signs has had a lasting influence on younger artists, which is why the Section Publicité could almost be read as an artistic "programme" for the Kunstsammlung im Ständehaus. ___