fig. 1,,, For reference: Marcel Broodthaers

A Voyage on the North Sea


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQPKG1efWGg

'The ostensibly related subject of both book and film consists mutually of 19th and 20th century nautical images including: 1. photographic reproductions and details of an amateur’s 19th century painting of a fleet of fishing ships and 2. photographs of a contemporary sailboat. Bringing together film, books, ephemera, drawing, and the artist’s original maquette for the book, this specific exhibition sets out to map the local coordinates of A Voyage on the North Sea’s maiden launch on January 28, 1974 at the London offices of Petersburg Press.'

'Both book and film components of A Voyage on the North Sea deliver a befuddling, progress-defying narrative, pairing images of an amateur’s 19th century painting of fishing vessels with photographs of a 20th century sailboat. The film is structured like a book with 15 paginated titles interspersed between static images of the boats while the layout of the book, on the other hand, is structured like the comparative grid of the art historian’s slide show. Broodthaers’ complex dialogue between painting, photograph, book and film plays hide-and-seek with the original, exploring a frustrating journey through the conditions of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.'

See also: Departement Des Aigles