Description
Third Drawer Down in collaboration with Marcel Broodthaers Estate presents L'Alphabet embroidered tea towel. vacuum-formed plastic reliefs, of which was industrially fabricated, painted by commercial craftsmen. The artist called them "Industrial Poems," alluding to their manufacture as well as their play with language. Broodthaers used plastic, he said, to "free [himself] from the past," wittily adding, "These plaques are fabricated like waffles, you know" �a nod to his Belgian heritage. By embroidering the red characters we hint at the depth created from the original artwork.

About the artist
Marcel Broodthaers (1924 - 1976) was a Belgian poet, photographer, film-maker and artist. Broodthaers was a poet from age 16-17 for most of his life. During these years he had some contacts with the Belgian Surrealists, especially Magritte, who gave him a copy of Mallarm̩'s Un Coup de D̩s. (Magritte's paintings with words, in which there is a contradiction between the painted word and the painted object, were later a crucial influence on him). From 1958 he begun to publish articles illustrated with his own photographs, but it wasn't until 1963 in the last 13 years of his life that he decided to become an artist and began to make objects. He first one-man exhibition was at the Galerie St Laurent, Brussels, 1964 where he exhibited everyday objects, words, lettering, child-like drawings etc., often with verbal-visual puns; made books, catalogues, prints on everything from canvases attached to the wall to reliefs in plastic.

Specifications
-Screen print and embroidery on 100% Linen
-50 x 70cm (19.6 �x 27.4�۝)
-Gift packaged

Artwork
L'Alphabet, 1969. Painted vacuum-formed plastic plate � Marcel Broodthaers Estate. Licensed by Viscopy / SABAM

This collection has been produced in conjunction with Marcel Broodthaers retrospective at MoMA in New York and travelling thereafter.