017 - MPM3
Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'abolira le Hasard
Image
Marcel Broodthaers (book artist)
Stéphane Mallarmé
Galerie Wide White Space and Galerie Michael Werner; Antwerpen, Holland and Köln
1969
325mm
unpaged
Edition: One of 90 copies
Notes: This image was pulled on 25 November 1969 in Antwerp. 10 copies on anodised aluminium numbered I to X, and 90 copies on mechanographical transparent paper numbered 1 to 90. The whole constituting an original edition. The model for this approximate image is the original edition of the poem A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance by Stephane Mallarmé, published on 1914 by the Librairie Gallimard. This work is a homage to the 1887 modernist poem of which Broodthaers wrote: "Mallarmé is at the source of modern art. . . . He unwittingly invented modern space." Mallarmé’s poem proposed to liberate language from conventions of space and typography by stretching sentences across spreads and using multiple typefaces to abstract both form and content. In designing his edition, Broodthaers blocked out the lines of the original work with solid black bars of varying width, dependent on the original type size, turning the original text into an abstract image of the poem (Broodthaers also replaced the word Poème, on the title page, with Image). Mallarmé's poem was published in three different editions with varying paper types; Broodthaers copied this approach: one with translucent paper, one with standard paper, and one on individual aluminium plates.