The Figures Author(s): Dirk Snauwaert and Kaatje Cusse Source: October, Vol.

42, Marcel Broodthaers: Writings, Interviews, Photographs (Autumn, 1987), pp. 126-134 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778270 . Accessed: 18/02/2014 16:48
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The Figures

DIRK

SNAUWAERT

translatedby KAATJE CUSSE

The developmentof Marcel Broodthaers'swork was discontinuous, paralleling shiftsin the art of the 1960s and '70s. Yet, even though Broodthaers's functionimages oftenfluctuatedin relationwithchangingtrendsand fashions, a themes one of which as several was the them, recurred, commentary upon ing letteror number: painted, written, printed. As a poet Broodthaershad dealt withsuch materialin the buildingof a text. hisartistic career,he continuedto be engaged with Remaininga poet throughout lettersand numbers--writtenor printed,positiveand negative. throughthe lastworks.Broodthaersused thisdesignationin large ensembles(for
First used in late 1966, the designations "Fig. 1, 2, 3 .. .." persisted example, Theoriedes Figures), in his books (Charles Baudelaire. Je hais le mouvement and drawings. qui deplaceles lignes), in slide projections,films,

In tracingBroodthaers's beginningsas an artist,we are led to the works witheggshells,musselshells,and masonjars withphotos,but in themhe avoided using the objects as coded symbols,that is, as elements with fixed meanings. Strippedof theirquotidian function, theywere given a new meaning withinan art context. Yet, to preventthem frombeing seen withina particularaesthetic perspective(thatof Duchamp's readymade),he respectedtheirspecificqualities. Broodthaers carefullyselected his objects for their characteristics as frames, withone another,he molds, and voids. Presentingthem only in confrontation constructeda discursiverelation withoutrecourse to words. Obviously Broodthaers's manner of workingand his frequentreferences who also juxtaposed instantly lead one to Magritte, recognizableeveryday objects withone another,thusobtainingnew, unknownsituations and undermining each object's conventionalmeaning. In "Words and Images" Magrittewrote, "The vague figureshave a meaning as necessaryand perfectas the precise ones."' Under this sentence is the drawing of an undefinablefigurenext to that of a
1. Rene Magritte,"Les motset les images," La Revolution no. 12 (December 1929), Surreraliste, p. 32.

MarcelBroodthaers. Theorie des Figures(detail).1971.

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128

SNAUWAERT

Une forme quelconque peut remplacer I'imaged'un objet :

Un objet ne faitiamaisle memeoffice que son nom ou que son image :

"Les mots Renei et les images"(detail),La Magritte. Revolution Surrealiste,no. 12, 1929.

cube. In the other propositions of "Word and Image," Magritte used the terms object,image,form,word, and name, along with the termfigure. It appears that the latter can be considered a summary of all the others. This enables us to define the word figure as "picture," "image," or "gestalt." Even though Broodthaers generally used words with varied and ambiguous meanings, his usage offigure might be elucidated as follows: it applies to the stage of observation when things are on the point of being named, when the object is about to be connected with a concept. Figure thus implies seeing, observing, but not yet explaining. Unlike the symbol, which is recognized and defined within a discourse, the figure is open and unconstructed. In this respect it corresponds to a work of art, which is open and ambiguous as well, and operates by evading definition. Figure cannot be reduced to a single meaning. The figure tends toward the real, while the symbol originates through a visual sign. Figure implies emphasizing the unstructured experience of the object. Broodthaers's inscription "Fig." indicates the position of an object between observation and translation into an image. Broodthaers used the inscription "Fig." in the manner of a didactic system with pedagogical ends, a system which originates in encyclopedias and dictionaries, where it is used as the link between a symbol (often geometric) and a word, or between an illustration and the caption below it: fig. 1 refers to this, fig. 2 to that, and so forth. In Broodthaers's case the image or object is not linked by a caption with the "fig." indication. He varied the numbers 0, 1, 2, 21, or the letters A and B, but never in a systematic, clearly readable way. You can see in the Monchengladbach Museum a cardboard box, a clock, a mirror, a pipe, also a mask and a smoke bomb, and one or two

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The Figures

129

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MarcelBroodthaers. Theorie des Figures(detail).1971.

other objects I can't recall at thispoint,accompanied by the expression Fig. 1 or Fig. 2 or Fig. 0 painted on the displaysurfacebeneath or to the side of each object. If we are to believe whatthe inscription characterreferring to a says,then the object takes on an illustrative kind of novel about society.These objects, the mirrorand the pipe, submitted to an identicalnumbering (or the cardboard box or system the clock or the chair) become interchangeable elementson the stage of a theater. Their destinyis ruined. Here I obtain the desired encounterbetweendifferent functions. A double assignment and a readable texture- wood, glass, metal, fabric--articulate them morally I would never have obtained this kind of complexity and materially. with technologicalobjects, whose singlenesscondemns the mind to monomania: minimalart, robot, computer. The nos. 1, 2, 0 appear figuratively. And the abbreviationsFig. in their poorly meaning.2 on his use This statement, Broodthaers'sonly programmatic commentary desFigures, of the "Fig." inscriptions refersto the The'orie an ensembleof objects
2. Marcel Broodthaers,"Ten Thousand Francs Reward," p. 43.

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130

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thatwas exhibitedin the MonchengladbachMuseum in 1971. Theorie desFigures is a central example of a series of works that includes the installations Pipe et Formes Acadeimiques (1969-70), Ma Collection (1971), Section des Figures(1972), Fig. A, Fig. 2 (1972), the filmLe Poisson(1971), the book Charles Baudelaire. (1973), and the room Figuresqui deplaceles lignes Je hais le mouvement in du the exhibition The desFigures ensemble Theorie Eloge Sujet (1975). Figuren "Section Cinema" in the installed a in basement Duisseldorf represents (originally in 1970) of the Mus6e d'Art Moderne, D6partementdes Aigles. It served there as the d6cor of a room, painted black, in which Broodthaers'sfilmswere projected onto a screen also stenciledwithregularlyspaced "Fig." inscriptions. In what is possiblythe earliestexample, the drawingBrusquement, 1966witha red and a blue square, 67, Broodthaerscombined the "Fig." inscriptions varyingthe inscribedsymbols"Fig. 1" and "Fig. 0" withthe squares, marked Aftera break, Figs. 1 to 6 follow. In the "Fig. 1" and "Fig. 2" respectively. et Formes forms Figs. 1 to 10 appear under stereometric plaque Pipe Acadeimiques, where Figs. 1 to 24 are placed under the and the pipe,just as in Ma Collection,

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The Figures

131

photographs of catalogues. Not until Theoriedes Figuresdid Broodthaers use "Fig. 12," and a little later "Fig. 21" and "Fig. A." The reference system of 0 and 1 to the becomes gradually more complex, from the interchanging of and of another and the introduction 12 21, combining signsystem throughthe letterA. The oppositionalrelation0/1 giveswayto the enumerationof different meanings. Suzanne Langer claimsthata fundamental principleis at the basis of human reason: the capacityfor symbolization. Symbol is understood in its double meaning: on the one hand as it is from are distinguished used in mathematics and logic. There, symbols facts. Mathematical constructionsare symbolic constructions;they of numbers.The the mathematical system onlyhave a meaningwithin and philouse of symbols is based on convention.In the psychological on the other indicates the human hand, symbol imagisophical sense, on a nationwherethe meaning-structure produced throughreflection first factis transposedonto a second fact,the symbol.This process is based on analogy.s The varyinguse of the numbers in relation to the symbolsin dictionariesand encyclopediasis based on this process of analogy. took a radical stand against this reductionist Pipe et FormesAcademiques domain: method by contrasting geometricfiguresto a symbolfroma different Magritte'spipe. The idea that the structureof the world can be understood through a is a position that,in the nineteenthcentury, reduction to geometricstructures had a certain currency.The "Fig." inscriptions seem to come straightfrom manuals of the nineteenth-century drawingmethodsof Riz-Paquot, Guillaume, withdrawingsand "Fig." inscripDarches, or Malaval.4 Manuals (also illustrated a of based on tions) taught way drawing straightlines in order to instilla sign meant for use both for industrial language daily design and foraestheticends. Around 1968 a wave of American minimal art arrived in Europe. Broodthaersdefinedhis positionagainst thismovementin workssuch as II n'ya (1968). Several minimalartistsused simple geometric pas de structures primaires forms(formes whichtheyarranged in serialor modular sequences. academiques?), At the end of the statementquoted above, Broodthaersmakes a facetiousand provocative connection between minimal art and the robot's and computer's formsof artificial The "thinking"of a digitalcomputerallows only intelligence. formutualrelationships between0 and 1 (whereasBroodthaersleft0 and 1 after
in a New Key, Cambridge, Massachusetts,Harvard University 3. Suzanne Langer, Philosophy Press, 1942, p. 24. 4. See Molly Nesbit, "Ready-Made Originals: The Duchamp Model," October, no. 37 (Summer 1986), p. 163.

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for 0, 1, 2, 12, 21, A). Factual data are reduced to numerical Brusquement combinationswhich, serially,can vary endlessly. Minimal art seemed to have reduced itselfto formalmodels, conforming only to an internallogic. Broodthaers moved beyond the principle of a merelyformaland binary in relation to actual objects or relation by presentinghis "Fig." inscriptions in patternsof thinkrefer to a of numbers His combinations complexity images. and which introduces on the a frontal attack 1) (0, simplicity binaryprinciple ing, the structure of human as as a domain into representation. complex stability of his use of the abbreviation According to Broodthaers the instability And it is preciselythe meaningof the "Fig." makes the vieweruncomfortable.5 word figurethat opens onto a description of Broodthaers's approach to the

objects. As discussed above figureindicates the distance between the moment of into a symbol.Thus in the ensemble Theorie des seeing and the transformation texture,and form,whileat the objects remaindefinedby theirfunction, Figures, same time they become discursive objects in the context established by the To the extent that they become legible, theyappear to lose their inscriptions. disturbsnorms of as qualities objects. The repetitionof the same inscriptions 0" at least two instances is used to is obviouslya what "Fig. reading. (In identify the series of in reference within discursive Ma Collection, Thus, key inscriptions. it to a of And in des Section Mallarm&. 1971, applies photograph Stephane Figures, the only object in the exhibitionthat does not repre1972, "Fig. 0" identifies sent an eagle, an anonymouslandscape paintingdepictinga castle. Broodthaers assigned a caption to the painting taken from one of his earliest poems, "O, melancolie,aigre chateau des aigles.") of Broodthaers'smost hermeticworks.On its first page, Baudelaire's poem "La Beaut&" appears with one of its verses, "Je hais le mouvementqui deplace les lignes" ("I hate the movementwhich displaces the lines"), printedin red. The page is inscribed"Fig. 1." At the bottomof each of the followingpages, where one would expect a caption,the next word in the sequence of the verse appears. By contrast,the field of the page, where one would expect image or text, series of "Fig." inscriptions. containsan evenlydistributed "La beaute" appears in on the final this its time with "les &toiles," again entirety page, printedin red, choses" in "toutes les the verse.' This replacing penultimate page is inscribed 2." "Fig.
5. See Marcel Broodthaers,"The Figure 0," text read on the occasion of the projectionof the filmLa clefde l'horloge, at the Monchengladbach Museum in 1971. The last stanza of the poem reads "Car j'ai, pour fascinerdes dociles amants, / De purs 6. miroirsqui font toutes choses plus belles: / Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartes &ternelles!" thatmagnify the beautyof all things[or ("Since, to hypnotize myenslaved lovers,I have pure mirrors "the stars" in Broodthaers'sversion]-my eyes, my vast eyes filledwitheternal light!").

The book Charles Baudelaire. Je hais le mouvement qui deplace les lignes is one

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Charles Baudelaire. Je hais le Marcel Broodthaers. mouvementqui deplace les lignes. 1973.

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134

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Marcel Broodthaers. Untitled(recto/verso). 1973- 74.

Broodthaers'sconclusionsregardinghis theoryof figures are perhaps best summed up in two later statements.On the back of two numberscut out of cardboard,a 0 inscribedwith"Fig. 0," "Fig. 1," "Fig. 2," and "Fig. A"; and a 1 in the formof a smokingchimney,he wrote: "A theoryof the figureswould serve only to give an image of a theory.But the Fig. as a theoryof the image?" (1973-4). And in a text used as the cover of a magazine in 1972, he wrote: View according to which an artistictheorywill functionfor the artistic product in the same way as the artisticproduct itselffunctionsas forthe order under whichit is produced. There willbe no advertising other space than thisview according to which,etc. .. Approved by Marcel Broodthaers7

7.

Marcel Broodthaers,Interfunktionen (Cologne), no. 11 (Fall 1972), cover.

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