Objects in display cases

In the wooden display cases, which are similar to the ones Broodthaers used in his exhibitions and which you will find in any museum, be it of natural history, minerals or old masters, you can see a selection of objects. Starting with Pense-Bête set in plaster, Broodthaers made objects throughout his short career, while working on more ambitious projects like Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles or Décors (where he also exhibited some of the objects he made). In these cases, objects are exhibited in groups. This is how Broodthaers himself liked to exhibit them, grouping them regardless of chronology (he often mixed old and new works), visual similarity, subject matter or materials used. Such combinations produced ephemeral narratives, poetic meta-spaces based on rhythm, elusive subtexts, sensory impressions, and feeling.

Two of his favourite materials were eggshells and mussel shells. On the one hand, he ascribed both with deep symbolic meaning, comparing them to the Sun and the Moon—two universal forces like yin and yang. "A more beautiful form than an eggshell?" he wrote. "No. If so, the mussel shell. The hull. The hull. Two complete forms, balanced, teeming with germs. Two egalitarian forms. Everything is eggs. The world is egg. The world was born of the great yolk, the sun.’ On the other hand, Broodthaers knew what he was doing when he made works that were extremely hard to ship or preserve (today we have more advanced packing techniques that cannot be compared to the ones that existed in the 1970s). This was another test for the institutions and individual collectors who wanted to buy his works.