Lot Essay
In 1965, Marcel Broodthaers wrote: "Il y a 18 mois j'ai vu à Paris une exposition de moulages de Segal; ce fut le point de départ, le choc qui m'entraîna jusqu'à produire moi-même des oeuvres. Puis ce furent Lichtenstein, Jim Dine et Oldenburg qui achevèrent la germination des graines qu'avait semé l'irritable, le maladroit, le grand Magritte" (Marcel Broodthaers par Marcel Broodthaers).
Two years earlier, the artist is seen taking photographs at the popular Place du Jeu de Balle Sunday market in the Brussels' Quartier des Marolles, a place where the essence of many Belgian homes was on sale. The everyday objects he saw there were the alphabet with which he constituted his artworks of the early sixties. It was the "object comme un mot zéro" together with Duchamps vision "Valise!!!! en general, le tableau est l'apparition d'une apparence" which could have been at the origin of La valise belge.
The theme of the suitcase , objet par excellence of the travelling artist was used in several other works: Valise charbon (1966), Valise oeufs (1968), Hôtel (1974) and Sculpture (1974). It is also a metaphor for the container which Broodthaers so often uses in the form of the mussel and the egg, but in this work it reminds one also of the conjurers box, the prestidigitateur wearing a helmet and trying to hold his balance on a rope while throwing seven black eggs into the air, needing the help of an umbrella to achieve this tour de force. The broken black umbrella together with the black falling eggs could mean the trick did not work this time, désastre obscur, Mallarmean Igitur in his fall returning to the Blackness of Death and Timelessness. The suitcase by itself could also be seen as a kind of rectangular mussel, opening itself to show off the pearls hidden in its interior.
The critic Freddy De Vree wrote about this work and another one, Le Sang du Poète: "Here gold, black and red are tempered and modulated but continue to overpower the composition, although in a lesser way than in La valise belge which, theoretically, only holds day by day objects: an umbrella, an egg, a ball (sic). In the same way that the collage for Cocteau still reminded of the first scenes of Cocteau's film (the shaving mirror), this legged suitcase shows a kind of Magrittian touch because the handle of the umbrella is added outside of the central image, in the suitcase itself."
The metaphor becomes a metonymy of Broodthaersian spirit; as the well-known Fémur d'un homme belge (1964/65) is a bone of a Belgian citizen because it shows the colours of the Belgian flag, the Valise belge is Belgian for the same reason. The seven black eggs refer to other early works as Le Problème noir en Belgique (1963), Cycle de Vie (1964) and Ovale d'oeufs 1234567 (1965).
Although tributary from Magritte, he formulates his unique position to American Pop Art and French Nouveau Réalisme as follows: "Mes premiers objets et images - 1964-65 - ne pouvaient donner lieu à cette confusion. La littéralité liée à l'approche du réel ne me convenait pas car elle traduisait une acceptation pure et simple du progrés dans l'art et...ailleurs. Ceci dit, rien ne peut empêcher un spectateur de se méprendre, s'il y tient. Et je n'assume ni la bonne foi du spectateur ou du lecteur, ni sa mauvaise foi." (Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, 1974).
Two years earlier, the artist is seen taking photographs at the popular Place du Jeu de Balle Sunday market in the Brussels' Quartier des Marolles, a place where the essence of many Belgian homes was on sale. The everyday objects he saw there were the alphabet with which he constituted his artworks of the early sixties. It was the "object comme un mot zéro" together with Duchamps vision "Valise!!!! en general, le tableau est l'apparition d'une apparence" which could have been at the origin of La valise belge.
The theme of the suitcase , objet par excellence of the travelling artist was used in several other works: Valise charbon (1966), Valise oeufs (1968), Hôtel (1974) and Sculpture (1974). It is also a metaphor for the container which Broodthaers so often uses in the form of the mussel and the egg, but in this work it reminds one also of the conjurers box, the prestidigitateur wearing a helmet and trying to hold his balance on a rope while throwing seven black eggs into the air, needing the help of an umbrella to achieve this tour de force. The broken black umbrella together with the black falling eggs could mean the trick did not work this time, désastre obscur, Mallarmean Igitur in his fall returning to the Blackness of Death and Timelessness. The suitcase by itself could also be seen as a kind of rectangular mussel, opening itself to show off the pearls hidden in its interior.
The critic Freddy De Vree wrote about this work and another one, Le Sang du Poète: "Here gold, black and red are tempered and modulated but continue to overpower the composition, although in a lesser way than in La valise belge which, theoretically, only holds day by day objects: an umbrella, an egg, a ball (sic). In the same way that the collage for Cocteau still reminded of the first scenes of Cocteau's film (the shaving mirror), this legged suitcase shows a kind of Magrittian touch because the handle of the umbrella is added outside of the central image, in the suitcase itself."
The metaphor becomes a metonymy of Broodthaersian spirit; as the well-known Fémur d'un homme belge (1964/65) is a bone of a Belgian citizen because it shows the colours of the Belgian flag, the Valise belge is Belgian for the same reason. The seven black eggs refer to other early works as Le Problème noir en Belgique (1963), Cycle de Vie (1964) and Ovale d'oeufs 1234567 (1965).
Although tributary from Magritte, he formulates his unique position to American Pop Art and French Nouveau Réalisme as follows: "Mes premiers objets et images - 1964-65 - ne pouvaient donner lieu à cette confusion. La littéralité liée à l'approche du réel ne me convenait pas car elle traduisait une acceptation pure et simple du progrés dans l'art et...ailleurs. Ceci dit, rien ne peut empêcher un spectateur de se méprendre, s'il y tient. Et je n'assume ni la bonne foi du spectateur ou du lecteur, ni sa mauvaise foi." (Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, 1974).