Marcel Broodthaers: Cinéma Modèle

The Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976), besides creating books, graphic art and objects, also produced a number of films that are a significant part of his work. Programmatically, Broodthaers in 1970 assembled five short films under the title Cinéma Modèle. They were devoted to poets and artists from different eras, each of whom embodied to him a poetic model: La Fontaine, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Magritte and Schwitters. Broodthaers’ film program is part of a fictional Musée d’art moderne. Museum and cinema are institutions with symbolic power that unite literary, pictorial and filmic reflection.