January 22, 2025

Robert Broner was a painter and printmaker recognized for his contributions to technical experimentation and innovation, modern art criticism and advocacy, and arts education. Born in Detroit in 1922 to a family with Austrian roots, he is an alumnus of Cass Technical High School, Wayne State University, and the Art School of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts; the latter two offered reciprocal fine arts programming and a balance

between “real jazzy stuff” and a cooler “academic approach,” respectively.1 After graduating with his MFA in 1946, Broner spent time in California and New York, later studying with Stuart Davis at the New School for Social Research and Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, whose 1945 exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts Broner cites as a foundational influence.2 Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Broner experimented extensively with a “whole range” of printmaking processes—including etching, lithography, woodcuts, aquatint, intaglio, and silkscreen—eventually developing his monotype “texture imprints” of found objects.3

The Queen’s Kitchen is one such print, characterized by household objects: A flattened box grater, work gloves, and tin lids, joined by a rainbow gradient and a blocky E, all flattened over a background gradient. The resulting collage seems to emphasize texture and form; Broner retains a sense of three-dimensionality with each object, despite its prostrate attachment to the picture plane. Brown and orange ink settles in the pits of the gloves’ textured surface, as the green does in the lipped edges of the letter E. Two lids, one stamped with Australia and the other with Canada, are sliced and folded onto themselves. Most noticeably, the grater’s variously sized holes still appear sharp, jagged, and dangerous to the touch. In his exploration of form, Broner seems to de-emphasize linearity, as each object is marked by curvature and slight distortion.

In some ways, these recognizable objects are removed from their everyday context and given new meaning through composition, association, and identification. Considering the title, perhaps Broner was evoking the patriarchal conflation of domesticity and femininity, or social power dynamics more generally. He was married to Esther M. Broner, notable feminist author, for over 60 years; perhaps the glove-as-woman reaching for the grater-as-weapon speaks to one’s assertion of agency and nascent feminist ideals. In another sense, the composition looks like a landscape, since there is a horizon line separating the blue ‘ground’ from the red ‘sky.’ The organic shapes of the gloves mimic plants, while the grater could represent a tree (volume-wise) or a building (texture-wise). Imagining a playful note, the gradient strip approximately inverts the background gradient and, together with the Australia lid, forms an exclamation mark.

From midcentury on, Broner found success as an artist and educator in both Detroit and New York; he exhibited internationally and taught at the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies), Wayne State University, and Cooper Union. Beyond Wayne State, Broner’s work is included in the collections at the Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art.4 Several prints housed at these institutions are remarkably similar to The Queen’s Kitchen, evidencing the impact of Broner’s conceptual and technical explorations.

Written by Sarah Teppen

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