Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard [A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance]
In 1963, Broodthaers abandoned poetry to focus on visual art. In this work, he makes reference to this transition by revealing the graphic, nearly abstract quality of the Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s canonical poem of the same title. On the cover, Broodthaers exchanged the names of Mallarmé and his publisher with his own and those of his galleries, and the word poéme with image. Inside, multiple black bars, whose dimensions and arrangement correspond exactly to that of Mallarmé’s text in the 1914 edition, are repeated on each page, turning writing into image.
Artwork Details
- Title: Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard [A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance]
- Artist: Marcel Broodthaers (Belgian, Brussels 1924–1976 Cologne)
- Author: Stéphane Mallarmé (French, 1842–1898)
- Printer: Vereman, Antwerp
- Publisher: Wide White Space Gallery, Antwerp
- Publisher: Galerie Michael Werner, Cologne
- Date: 1969
- Medium: Artist's book
- Dimensions: 12 13/16 × 9 13/16 in. (32.5 × 25 cm)
- Classifications: Books, Prints
- Credit Line: Purchase, Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation Gift, in memory of Jeffrey P. Klein, 2015
- Object Number: 2015.590
- Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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Marcel Broodthaers
1966
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1966
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
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Multiple artists/makers
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