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MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard:
Image. (Antwerp and
Cologne: Wide White Space and Michael Werner Gallery, 1969). 32 pp.
Artist’s book, etc.
From the
edition of 300
The book’s colophon
reads as follows: “The model of this approximative image is the first edition
of the poem, Un coup de dés jamais
n’abolira le hasard by Stéphane Mallarmé published in 1914 by Librairie
Gallimard.” The book as vessel was a
great object of fascination for Broodthaers — indeed, one of the artist’s central
concerns, a fact that has not been fully appreciated by the artist’s critics.
He did not simply employ the book to fill with ideas or as an alternative
distribution vehicle (as did most others makers of artist’s books from the
1960s and 1970s), but the Belgian was fascinated — like Mallarmé — by the
diminishing poetics of mechanical printing, and by the form of the book
itself. Broodthaers frequently explored
the book as “an object of prohibition” and Un
coup de dés realizes the mystery of this enigma-wrapped-in-a-riddle more
consequentially than anywhere else, perhaps, except for his rectified book of
poetry, Pense Bête (1964).
© Todd Alden 2012 Enquire
© Todd Alden 2012 Enquire