'Paintings' is a work from one of eight sets of five works each consisting of nine canvases printed with words referring to various areas of art and culture. The words in 'Paintings' name basic constituents of a traditional painting ranging from brush and colour to price. There are sixteen different words appearing in various combinations so that each canvas represents the concept of a different painting although all are related. The most frequently occurring of all the ingredients is 'figures' which, taken with the large scale of the whole work, suggests that Broodthaers might have had in mind the tradition of magisterial figure painting exemplified by, for example, the Flemish (Belgian) painter Rubens whose name forms the title of another group in the series to which 'Paintings' belongs. The work both wittily and grandly evokes, and simultaneously throws into question, that tradition, but it is also possible that Broodthaers, in the midst of the avant-garde, was wryly pleading for a return to traditional approaches.
Simon Wilson, Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion, Tate Gallery, London, revised edition 1991, p.273