Joe Scanlan

Oluwatobiloba Ajayi / Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
Thorsten Baensch / Christine Dupuis
Gary Canonne / N. H. Pritchard
Furen Dai / Annalisa Alloatti & Mirella Bentivoglio
Demetrius Oliver / Mirtha Dermisache

Freedom of speech is very much in fashion, but I don’t believe in it.
—Marcel Broodthaers

One of the less examined aspects of Marcel Broodthaers’ work is his “position,” so to speak, on the efficacy of language. As a long-time poet turned visual artist, Broodthaers never expressed an allegiance to (nor was he critically aligned with) multiple language-based movements that were going on all around him during his adult life, from Concrete Poetry and Neo-Dada to Fluxus and Mail Art.

Indeed, when Broodthaers was a poet he was a rather conventional poet, and when he became an artist he was, at first, a rather conventional artist. It was only when his art took a linguistic turn that he began to distinguish himself. His signature gesture involved discarded mussel shells, their homonymic forms composed into a kind of ekphrasis that described art in a way that words apparently could not. However, if ekphrasis remains the proper term for poetry that describe works of art, then Broodthaers’ artworks proposed a new condition, one that we might call amphiphrasis, that is, a genre capable of operating both ways.

In that spirit, the Broodthaers Society of America is pleased to present Amphiphrasis, a series of exhibitions by six artists for whom the visual play of language is crucial to their thinking and who are willing to take a stab at fleshing out this idea. Each has been paired with a poet chosen for the affinities shared by their respective work.

Details are coming soon, including individual exhibition dates. For now, let’s appreciate “La Grenouille,” an unpublished poem that Broodthaers scrawled into the margins of a copy of Pense Bête not long after he had become a visual artist, but long before the copy ended up in our archive. Yes, that Pense Bête, an amphibious artwork if ever there was one.

La Grenouille
Elle se gonfle. Elle va y lasser.
Ça y est, elle éclate dans
ce monde faisable ou le boeuf est bouilli