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Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

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Daniel Spoerri

Brote (Bread), from Edition MAT

1965

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A founding member of the Paris-based movement Nouveau Réalisme, Daniel Spoerri incorporates into his artwork materials and events encountered in everyday life. His found-object assemblages, coming out of a Surrealist or Dadaist aesthetic, frequently focus on food and the ritual of eating. This work is made up of actual bread embedded with trash and ceramic shards, baked by Spoerri and mounted in a box. Spoerri produced the first of these bread dough objects for a 1961 exhibition at the Galerie Koepcke in Copenhagen, calling them the Catalogue Tabou (taboo catalogues) for the show. Just as an exhibition catalog serves as a record, preserving the event for posterity, these sculptures preserve commonplace ephemeral objects as artworks. While Brote illustrates a creative fusion of form and material, it also isolates in time and space both decay and petrification. [Permanent collection label, 2016]

  • Artist Daniel Spoerri (Swiss, b. Romania, 1930)
  • Title Brote (Bread), from Edition MAT
  • Date 1965
  • Medium Bread, glazed ceramic, and refuse in Plexiglas box on painted wood
  • Edition description 82/100
  • Dimensions unframed | 22 1/8 x 22 1/8 x 6 in.
  • Credit line University purchase with funds from Aurelia Gerhard Schlapp, by exchange, 2013
  • Object number WU 2013.0005.0009

Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959–1965
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 02/07/2020 - 01/03/2021

The Modern Meal: Sustenance through Ritual
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 03/31/2017 - 08/06/2017

Moving Parts: Time and Motion in Contemporary Art
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 05/09/2014 - 08/31/2014

Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959–1965 2020

4/3/2013 (Received, Discretionary purchase)
Galerie Der Spiegel (Cologne, Germany)

This artwork record may be incomplete or need refinement. Our staff actively researches the collection and revises records when new information is available. If you have questions or comments about this record, please contact us.

Related Content

go to Food page
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Theme

Food

go to Moving Parts: Time and Motion in Contemporary Art page
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Exhibitions

Moving Parts: Time and Motion in Contemporary Art

May 09, 2014–August 31, 2014
go to The Modern Meal: Sustenance through Ritual page
Installation view, The Modern Meal: Sustenance through Ritual, 2017
Exhibitions

The Modern Meal: Sustenance through Ritual

March 31, 2017–August 06, 2017
go to Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959–1965 page
View of Ebsworth Gallery
Exhibitions

Multiplied: Edition MAT and the Transformable Work of Art, 1959–1965

February 07, 2020–January 03, 2021

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