I don't know much about coal, but...
NZPA-Reute. London Three piles of coal went on exhibition at the Tate art gallery in London this week. The piles, made by emptying three sacks on the gallery floor, were designed by the widow of their original creator, a Belgian artist, Marcel Broodthaers. Maria Broodthaers reconstructed the exhibit from memory.
The central pile has a small Belgian flag stuck in the top, and the Tate's keeper of exhibitions, Mr Michael Comton, explained that it was an allegory. “No doubt it refers to the fact that Belgium was once a great coal-mining nation,” he said. He added that turning a sack of coal upside down produced a natural pyramid, a geometric shape which is among the foundations of modern art.
The gallery did not disclose what price it had paid to use the idea, but the coal would have cost about 546 to buy from a merchant. Among visitors to the Tate this week, a Dutch teacher, Loes Rotshuizen, said: “That is the Belgian coal, so these are Dutch coals and these are the French.
“I like it, I think, because it is funny.”
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Press, 19 April 1980, Page 9
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190I don't know much about coal, but... Press, 19 April 1980, Page 9
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