Jurgen Harten / Marcel Broodthaers: An Attempt to Retell the Story

The Project for a Discourse of all Figures in Three Parts, previously unpublished and documented here in facsimile, is based on one of the blue school exercise books that Marcel Broodthaers (1924-76) worked on in Autumn 1970, after moving from Brussels to Dusseldorf. Tucked away in each of these originals is an envelope containing a 100 mark note from which the eagle has been cut out. The project recalls the founding of the legendary Musee d'Art Moderne Departement des Aigles in 1968 and formulates ideas which Broodthaers would go on to realize in 1972 in the Kunsthalle in Dusseldorf in the Section des Figures of his institutional fiction. Curator and art historian Jurgen Harten describes his collaboration with Broodthaers on this project in this unique artist’s book and narrative hybrid, addressing the artistic and art-critical questions with which Broodthaers’ project confronted us.