Art Factories: Museums of Contemporary Art and the Promise of Artistic Production, from Centre Pompidou to Tate Modern

Abstract

In 1966, the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers made the sculpture entitled 'Building (Les Yeux)'. It consists of a structure of four iron bars and five floors made of different glass plates, loaded with a collection of jam jars filled with cut-out images of eyes. Relative to similar gazing structures of that year, such as 'La camera qui regarde' or 'La Tour visuelle', 'Building (Les Yeux)' is undoubtedly the most architectural. It reads as a model of a modernist structure, almost paraphrasing Le Corbusier's 'Domino' project. However, 'Building (Les Yeux)' is no direct translation of the modernist paradigm of 'la machine habiter'.