Eagle/Pipe/Urinal

Abstract

There is no need for Marcel Broodthaers's objects to struggle to assert their claim to mythical status, for they already possess it-on two levels, in fact. First, because they are indeed exhibited as museum pieces; second, because, as signs, they already bear a heavy symbolic burden. The eagle, in whatever form it is encountered, is after all strongly invested with emblematic, mythological significance. It variously connotes strength, virility, rigor, freedom, authority, aspiration toward the absolute. Put another way, the eagles Broodthaers puts on display all operate on the symbolic level (this is even true of the stuffed eagle, expressing as it does a certain ideology of nature), and to the extent that Broodthaers refers us to this, he connects the eagle back to a first level of natural/objective speech. By identifying the symbolic presence in every conceivable eagle, Broodthaers engages in an incessant defusing of the eagle's mythic power. The mythical character of the domineering German imperial eagle is tamed, for example, by placing the national emblem in conjunction with the pale imitations of the DLRG, the ADAC, and the DFB (the German Life Saving Association, the German Soccer Leagues Association, and the German Automobile Club). In many cases, particularly those belonging to the sphere of common contemporary usage, the eagle exhibition's oppositional pairings reveal for the first time that these birds are truly mythical creatures. The series of German product logos demonstrates this most clearly. Caught within the net of cross-references evoked by the sequence of the arrangement, the bird loses the mythical aura of its traditional plumage. is one result of the principle of serialization. It is an effect we could call mythoclastic. A second effect, already hinted at, consists of the suspension of the hierarchy, in effect, among the objects themselves. Every exhibited eagle becomes as important as any other, at least during the moment of observation. The running caption, This is not a work of art, is almost, therefore, superfluous. It functions as a continually struck keynote, reasserting the methodological intention underlying each object. No object