On 26 October, John C. Welchman, Professor of Art History at the University of California, will give a lecture on Marcel Broodthaers' “Pense-Bête”.
To mark the centenary of Marcel Broodthaers (1924-1976) and the 60th anniversary of his seminal piece Pense-Bête (1964), S.M.A.K. commissioned art historian John C. Welchman, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, to write a close reading on this seminal work. Welchman will present his findings in a series of rolling lectures, seminars and discussions at S.M.A.K. and various partner institutes. The book will unfold by way of half a dozen “chapters” or platforms, each of which foregrounds a leading question or isolates a material or other signifying component of the work’s formation, organization, and semantic journey: the stakes of its exhibition; three key aspects of the material make-up of Pense-Bête and the processes by which it was elaborated – wrapping, the use of plaster, and the deployment of balls. Welchman also reflects on the work’s contexts and situations caught up in ideas about thought and thinking (pensée); cause and effect (chicken and egg); discussion of animals and beasts and the anthrozoological interface; and a meditation on how Pense-Bête relates to the Surrealist genre of the poème objet (Poem-Object) and to Surrealism and object-production more generally.
