19th and 20th Centuries

In June 1975 Broodthaers opened the exhibition Décor, A Conquest by Marcel Broodthaers at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Cathleen Chaffee quotes curator Barry Barker, who helped coordinate the exhibition and compared the experience to "being a magician's assistant, procuring whatever objects the artist required: two cannons palm trees, a photograph of cowboys."

Broodthaers stated its theme was "the relationship between war and comfort." The exhibition occupied two spaces: a 19^th-century room and a 20^th-century room. One had windows towards Waterloo Place, the other towards the Mall, which connects Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square, built in the early twentieth century for grand ceremonies involving British royalty.

In the 19^th-century room Broodthaers brought together Victorian comfort—an expensive woolen rug, furniture, lobsters, a game of cards, old candlesticks—and cannons that seemed to have come off a picturesque battle painting. In the 20^th-century room, he exhibited Kalashnikovs—the most popular weapon of the century—and most trivial objects associated with leisure, such as a parasol, a table and a set of plastic chairs. It was hard not to see the parallels he drew between the 19^th-century wars and the interests of the elite on the one hand, and mass leisure and the uncontrolled violence of the century that followed on the other. What is behind the military apparatus of today? Whose comfort do the wars of the twenty-first century cater for? And what is the main weapon of our time?

In Broodthaers Décor 19^th century, green spotlights point towards the scene while red and green spotlights point to a detail (the crab and the lobster). In the Décor 20th century, red spotlights point to the puzzle. Décor also became the set for Broodthaers’s last major film work, The Battle of Waterloo.

This important work is displayed in Russia for the first time courtesy of VAC Foundation.