Bowdoin College Homepage
Bowdoin College Museum of Art Logo and Wordmark

Advanced Search
Preview image of work. multiple parts in mixed media,  Composition Trouvee 37083

2018.31.2

Recommend keywords

Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.

 
 

Composition Trouvee

Export record as: Plain text | JSON | CDWA-Lite | VRA Core 4

Artist

Guillaume Bijl (Antwerp, Belgium, 3/19/1946 - )

Title

Composition Trouvee

Creation Date

1990

Century

late 20th century

Dimensions

91 x 143 x 47 1/2 in. (231.14 x 363.22 x 120.65 cm)

Classification

Sculpture

Creation Place

Europe, Belgium

Medium and Support

multiple parts in mixed media

Credit Line

Gift of The Foundation, To-Life, Inc.

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2018.31.2

This large-scale assemblage of found objects is the first work of installation art to enter the Museum’s collection. Since Marcel Duchamp anonymously submitted a signed urinal to the Society of Independent Artists in 1917 and titled it Fountain, artists have gleefully decontextualized everyday items and inserted them into exhibitions and art discourses. Bijl selected a range of objects from Europe and the United States for this work that has the appearance of a junk shop window display. Referencing the past as well as past notions of the future, at a time when the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc gave rise to the idea of the End of History (Francis Fukuyama), he envisions and illustrates the “archeology” of contemporary society. With Lazy Hardware (1945), Marcel Duchamp had already presented an installation as a window display in Gotham Bookmart, New York, to advertise the publication of André Breton’s book, Arcane 17.