Dirk Snauwaert: The Figures

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The Figures

DIRK SNAUWAERTtranslatedby KAATJE CUSSE

The developmentof Marcel Broodthaers'swork was discontinuous, aral-lelingshiftsn the art of the 1960s and '70s. Yet, even thoughBroodthaers'simagesoftenfluctuatedn relationwith hangingtrends nd fashions, unction-ingas a commentary pon them, everalthemesrecurred, ne of whichwas theletteror number:painted,written, rinted.As a poetBroodthaershad dealt with uchmaterial nthebuilding f a text.Remaining poetthroughout isartistic areer,he continuedto be engagedwithletters nd numbers--writtenor printed,positive nd negative.First used in late 1966, the designations "Fig. 1, 2, 3 .. .." persistedthrough he ast works.Broodthaersused thisdesignationnlargeensembles forexample, Theorie desFigures), in his books (Charles Baudelaire. Je hais le mouvementqui deplace es lignes), in slide projections,films, nd drawings.In tracingBroodthaers'sbeginnings s an artist,we are led to the workswith ggshells,mussel hells, nd mason ars withphotos,but n themhe avoidedusing the objects as coded symbols, hat is, as elements with fixedmeanings.Strippedof theirquotidianfunction, heyweregivena new meaningwithin nart context.Yet, to preventthemfrombeing seen within particular estheticperspectivethatofDuchamp's readymade),he respectedtheir pecific ualities.Broodthaerscarefully elected his objects for their characteristics s frames,molds,and voids. Presenting hemonlyin confrontationwith one another,heconstructed discursive elation withoutrecourseto words.ObviouslyBroodthaers'smanner of working nd his frequentreferenceslead one toMagritte,who also uxtaposed instantly ecognizable veryday bjectswith ne another, husobtainingnew,unknown ituations nd underminingachobject's conventionalmeaning. In "Words and Images" Magrittewrote,"Thevague figureshave a meaningas necessary nd perfectas the precise ones."'Under this sentenceis the drawingof an undefinablefigurenext to that of a1. Rene Magritte, Les mots et les images,"La Revolutionurreraliste,o. 12 (December 1929),p. 32.

MarcelBroodthaers.heorie des Figures detail).1971.

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128 SNAUWAERT

ReneiMagritte. Les mots t es images" detail),LaRevolutionSurrealiste,no. 12, 1929.

Une forme quelconque peut remplacerI'imaged'un objet :

Un objetne fait amais e meme fficeueson nom ou que son image

cube. In the other propositions of "Word and Image," Magritte used the termsobject, mage, orm,word,and name, along with the termfigure. It appears that thelattercan be considered a summary of all the others. This enables us to define theword figureas "picture," "image," or "gestalt."Even though Broodthaers generally used words with varied and ambiguousmeanings, his usage offiguremightbe elucidated as follows: itapplies to the stageof observation when things are on the point of being named, when the object isabout to be connected with a concept. Figure thus implies seeing, observing, butnot yet explaining. Unlike the symbol, which is recognized and defined withinadiscourse, the figure is open and unconstructed. In this respect it corresponds toa work of art, which is open and ambiguous as well, and operates by evadingdefinition. Figure cannot be reduced to a single meaning. The figure tendstoward the real, while the symbol originates through a visual sign. Figure impliesemphasizing the unstructured experience of the object. Broodthaers's inscription"Fig." indicates the position of an object between observation and translationinto an image.Broodthaers used the inscription "Fig." in the manner of a didactic systemwithpedagogical ends, a systemwhich originates in encyclopedias and dictionar-ies, where it is used as the linkbetween a symbol (often geometric) and a word, orbetween an illustrationand 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 captionwith the "fig." indication. He varied the numbers 0, 1, 2, 21, or the lettersA andB, but never in a systematic, clearly readable way.

You can see in the Monchengladbach Museum a cardboard box, aclock, 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.heorie des Figures detail).1971.otherobjects I can't recall at thispoint, accompaniedbythe expres-sion Fig. 1 or Fig. 2 or Fig. 0 paintedon thedisplay urfacebeneathor to the side of each object. Ifwe are to believewhat theinscriptionsays,thenthe object takes on an illustrative haracterreferringo akindof novel about society.These objects,themirror nd thepipe,submitted o an identicalnumbering ystemor thecardboard box ortheclockor thechair)become interchangeable lementson thestageof a theater. Their destiny s ruined. Here I obtain the desired en-counterbetweendifferentunctions. double assignmentnd a read-able texture- wood, glass,metal,fabric--articulatethemmorallyand materially. would never have obtained thiskindofcomplexitywithtechnologicalobjects,whose singlenesscondemnsthe mind tomonomania:minimal rt,robot,computer.The nos. 1, 2, 0 appear figuratively.nd the abbreviations ig.poorly n theirmeaning.2This statement, roodthaers'sonlyprogrammatic ommentary n his useofthe"Fig." inscriptionsefers o the The'orieesFigures,n ensembleofobjects

2. Marcel Broodthaers, Ten Thousand FrancsReward,"p. 43.



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Marcel roodthaers.a Collection. 971.thatwas exhibited ntheMonchengladbachMuseum n 1971. Theorie esFiguresis a centralexample of a seriesof works thatincludes the installations ipe etFormes Acadeimiques (1969-70), Ma Collection (1971), Section desFigures1972), Fig.A,Fig. 2 (1972), thefilm e Poisson1971), thebook CharlesBaudelaire.Jehais e mouvementui deplace es ignes1973), and theroomFigures-Figurenn the exhibition logedu Sujet 1975). The ensemble Theorie esFiguresrepresentshe"Section Cinema" (originallynstalledna basement nDuisseldorfin 1970) oftheMus6e d'ArtModerne,D6partementdes Aigles. It served thereas the d6cor of a room,paintedblack, in whichBroodthaers's filmswere pro-jected onto a screenalso stenciledwithregularly paced "Fig." inscriptions.In what is possibly he earliestexample,thedrawingBrusquement,966-67, Broodthaers ombined the"Fig." inscriptions ith redand a blue square,varying he inscribed ymbols Fig. 1" and "Fig. 0" withthe squares,marked"Fig. 1" and "Fig. 2" respectively.After break,Figs. 1 to 6 follow. n theplaque PipeetFormesAcadeimiques,igs. 1 to 10 appear understereometric ormsand thepipe, ust as inMa Collection, hereFigs. 1 to 24 are placed under the



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The Figures 131

photographsof catalogues. Not until Theoriedes Figuresdid Broodthaersuse"Fig. 12," and a little ater "Fig. 21" and "Fig. A." The referencesystembecomes graduallymore complex, from the interchanging f 0 and 1 to thecombining f 12 and 21, and the ntroductionf another ign ystemhrough heletterA. The oppositionalrelation0/1 giveswayto the enumeration f differentmeanings.Suzanne Langerclaimsthat fundamental rinciple sat thebasis ofhumanreason: the capacityforsymbolization.

Symbol s understood n itsdouble meaning:on the one hand as it isused inmathematics nd logic.There, symbols re distinguished romfacts.Mathematicalconstructions re symbolicconstructions; heyonlyhave a meaningwithin he mathematical ystem fnumbers.Theuse ofsymbolss based on convention. n thepsychologicalnd philo-sophicalsense,on the otherhand,symbol ndicates he humanimagi-nationwherethemeaning-structureroducedthrough eflectionn afirst act s transposedonto a second fact, hesymbol.This process sbased on analogy.sThe varyinguse of the numbers n relation to the symbols n dictionaries ndencyclopedias s based on thisprocessof analogy.Pipe et FormesAcademiques ook a radical stand against this reductionistmethodbycontrasting eometricfigures o a symbolfrom different omain:Magritte'spipe.The idea that the structureof the world can be understood throughareductionto geometric tructures s a positionthat, n thenineteenth entury,had a certain currency.The "Fig." inscriptions eem to come straightfrommanuals of the nineteenth-centuryrawingmethodsof Riz-Paquot,Guillaume,Darches,or Malaval.4Manuals (also illustratedwithdrawings nd "Fig." inscrip-tions)taughta wayof drawingbased on straight ines in order to instill signlanguagemeant fordailyuse- both for ndustrial esignand for esthetic nds.Around 1968 a wave of American minimal art arrived in Europe.Broodthaersdefined hisposition gainstthismovement nworks uch as II n'ypas de structuresrimaires1968). Several minimal rtists sed simple geometricformsformescademiques?), hichthey rranged nserial or modularsequences.At the end of the statement uoted above, Broodthaers makes a facetious ndprovocativeconnection between minimal art and the robot's and computer'sforms f artificialntelligence. he "thinking"of a digitalcomputer llowsonlyformutualrelationships etween 0 and 1 (whereasBroodthaers eft and 1after3. Suzanne Langer, Philosophyn a New Key,Cambridge,Massachusetts,Harvard UniversityPress, 1942, p. 24.4. See MollyNesbit,"Ready-Made Originals:The Duchamp Model," October, o. 37 (Summer1986), p. 163.



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Brusquementor 0, 1, 2, 12, 21, A). Factual data are reduced to numericalcombinationswhich,serially, an varyendlessly.Minimal art seemed to havereduced itself o formalmodels,conforming nlyto an internal ogic.Broodthaersmoved beyond the principleof a merelyformaland binaryrelationby presentinghis "Fig." inscriptionsn relation to actual objects orimages.His combinations f numbersrefer o a complexitynpatterns f think-ing, frontal ttackon thebinary rinciple0, 1)which ntroduces implicityndstabilityntoa domain as complex as the structure f humanrepresentation.According to Broodthaersthe instability f his use of the abbreviation"Fig." makes thevieweruncomfortable.5 nd it is precisely hemeaningofthewordfigurethat opens onto a descriptionof Broodthaers's approach to theobjects.As discussed above figure ndicates the distancebetween the moment ofseeingand the transformationntoa symbol.Thus in the ensemble Theorie esFigures, bjectsremaindefinedbytheirfunction, exture, nd form,while t thesame time theybecome discursiveobjects in the context establishedby theinscriptions. o the extent thattheybecome legible,they appear to lose theirqualities as objects. The repetitionof the same inscriptions isturbsnorms ofreading. In at least two instances Fig. 0" is used to identify hat sobviouslykeyreferencewithin he series ofdiscursive nscriptions. hus, inMa Collection,1971, itappliesto a photograph fStephaneMallarm&.And inSection esFigures,1972, "Fig. 0" identifies he onlyobject in the exhibition hat does notrepre-sentan eagle, an anonymous andscape paintingdepicting castle.Broodthaersassigned a caption to the paintingtaken fromone of his earliestpoems, "O,melancolie,aigre chateau des aigles.")The book Charles Baudelaire. Je hais le mouvementui deplace les lignes s oneof Broodthaers'smosthermeticworks.On its first age, Baudelaire's poem "LaBeaut&" appears with one of its verses,"Jehais le mouvementqui deplace leslignes" ("I hate the movementwhichdisplaces the lines"), printed n red. Thepage is inscribed Fig. 1." At the bottomofeach of thefollowing ages,whereone wouldexpecta caption,the next wordin thesequence ofthe verseappears.By contrast,the field of the page, where one would expect image or text,contains n evenlydistributed eries of "Fig." inscriptions.La beaute" appearsagain in itsentiretyn the finalpage, this ime with les &toiles,"printed nred,replacing"toutes les choses" in the penultimateverse.' This page is inscribed"Fig. 2."5. See Marcel Broodthaers, The Figure0," text read on the occasion of theprojectionof thefilm a clef e l'horloge,t the MonchengladbachMuseum in 1971.6. The last stanza of the poem reads "Car j'ai, pour fascinerdes dociles amants,/ De pursmiroirsqui font toutes choses plus belles: / Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartes&ternelles "("Since, tohypnotizemy nslaved overs, havepuremirrors hatmagnifyhebeautyof all things or"the stars"in Broodthaers'sversion]-my eyes, myvasteyesfilledwith ternal ight ").



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MarcelBroodthaers. harles Baudelaire.Je hais lemouvement ui deplace les lignes.1973.



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Dirk Snauwaert: The Figures