Gare au dfi Pop Art, Jim Dine, and the Influence of Ren Magritte Author(s): Marcel Broodthaers and

Paul Schmidt Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol. 42, Marcel Broodthaers: Writings, Interviews, Photographs (Autumn, 1987), pp. 32-34 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778262 . Accessed: 12/03/2012 14:58
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Gare au defi* Art, Jim Dine, and the Pop Influence of Rene Magritte

MARCEL

BROODTHAERS

translated by PAUL SCHMIDT

First, let's think back to the ensembles by George Segal shown last month at the Sonnabend Gallery in Paris. This exhibition was the high point of "nouveau realisme" and "pop art," which are so much talked about at the moment. Figurative art, perhaps, but so stripped down that it seems to fall into a special void. Segal's figures are crude casts of human beings caught in moments of everyday life. One man bends over the shining glass top of a pinball machine. Another sits on a crummy bench, holding a cheap china mug. The pinball machine and the mug are real objects. They are products made in a factory, not in an artist's studio. Nothing is to be expected from Segal's figures. Where do they come from? Why do they seem to threaten so? What strange lunar world produced them? I cannot say that they express terror without revealing my own terror. In this case we do not transcend the level of the found object, or rather that of invention. Such an extraordinary invention that it cancels out all the on the contrary, sets them free. That depends on powers of imagination -or, the viewer's tendencies. The result is the same. The viewer has no other point of comparison than himself. This is Narcissus triumphant. This is black humor, so black it blinds us. This is, in fact, a lot of things at once. Segal comes out of the American universe, like Jim Dine, whose work will be shown at the Galerie Aujourd'hui in Brussels beginning in November 1963. It's tempting to compare our city and a middle-sized American city, Boston for instance. Those towers rising against the sky . . . We didn't build them just for the birds. I mean that the show comes to us here appropriately. Jim Dine is also a child of delirium. This gallery space-narrow, perhaps too secretive-is just what he needed. Although they by no means specialize in the genre, the Galerie Aujourd'hui has occasionally shown artists for whom black or absurd humor is the essential ideal. For example, the Italian Piero Manzoni, with his tubes of perfume carefully displayed in glass cases, or his paintings made of pliable mineral wool. Manzoni is dead, I mean physically. He died young. Is there any connection between this premature death and his chosen artistic stance? The humor he employed is clearly no easy position. And if that was the cause, then we have
* The untranslatable title appears to be a Belgian idiomatic expression, meaning "Beware! Defiance!" It possibly refers to Louis Aragon's essay "La peinture au defi."

Marcel Broodthaersand Ren' Magritte, 1968. (Photo: Maria Gilissen.)

34

BROODTHAERS

some serious questions to ask of the art world - of the world in general. Manzoni will certainly be listed in the book of terrors of the twentieth century. Also the Frenchman Arman, who is, thank God, in good health. We remember his accumulation of objects in glass-covered boxes; manometers, dolls' heads, all intended for some industrial museum or other. Beginning November 16th it will be Jim Dine's turn. He will be showing large-scale paintings with a kind of shelf attached, something like a mantelpiece. One is a painting of a bowler hat, and (stroke of genius!) on the shelf is a real bowler hat. Only not quite, because it is covered with a layer of paint (black), and it seems to have stuck. Casual, burlesque, American features that evoke film comedy. His means are rather sparse, elementary, but still pictorial. This bursts the limits . . . although the road to hell (certainly) has none. There is a label for these Americans who fly in the face of harmony and good taste. Pop art, it's called. Pop is an abbreviation for popular, although this art is far from deriving its power from popular or folk sources. Pop art is a blow-up of a soft-drink bottle, also a can of soup painted with photographic precision. Pop art originates in pamphlets, in provocation, in poetry. It hurls a curse, and calls down insult and contempt upon itself in return. In a recent issue of L'Express, Pierre Schneider had this to say about Pop art: "The person who created this art--these paintings that make you laugh with scorn or that turn your stomach--the person whose only means of expression lie in choosing among the consumer goods someone else proposes to him -that person is you." All these artists continue to work on the road to hell that was begun by dada-another international movement. Very well then, long live dada, long live dadapop, long live Jim Dine. Marcel Duchamp and Kurt Schwitters, especially the latter, however destructive their intentions may have been, produced work that belonged within the rigorous domain of the plastic arts. So we cannot look to them, or to Max Ernst, for the original source of this "unfortunate" movement. Let us rather look to Rene Magritte, a Belgian who remained within our narrow frontiers, but who certainly influenced and determined the course of this entire artistic movement now flourishing in New York. Magritte denies the aesthetic nature of painting (which does not prevent him, almost in spite of himself, from creating some beautiful paintings). Ceci n'est pas une pipe is the title of a painting as enigmatic as the smile of the Mona Lisa. It is very well known in New York. All of Magritte's paintings are very well known in New York. Magritte is famous. Still faithful to his initial purpose, he continues to elaborate a poetic language aimed at undermining that upon which we depend. Jim Dine's life-size bowler hat is, I imagine, intended as a salute to Magritte. Does all this need an explanation? Is there any other explanation than the context of a world devoted to advertisements, overproduction, and horoscopes? 1963