Marcel Broodthaers

This is the largest Broodthaers monograph ever published

Marcel Broodthaers filled his twelve-year artistic career with more ideas and works than most artists manage in a lifetime. This career began in 1964, following more than two decades labouring in some obscurity as a poet in the Belgian Surrealist circle of René Magritte and Paul Nougé. He also wrote articles on art during these years, including early critiques of Pop art.

‘I asked myself if I could not sell something and succeed in life. I had for quite a while been good for nothing … Finally the idea of inventing something insincere came to me and I got to work immediately’Marcel Broodthaers

Traversing media freely – from installation and sculpture to artist’s books, prints, film and writings – Broodthaers embodied the ‘post-media artist’ for whom any form could be recruited in the service of a larger conception. Those conceptions included institutional critique (of which he is a pioneer), art-historical critique, pastiche and philosophical-linguistic puzzles.

Edited by Broodthaers’ daughter Marie-Puck, the book includes a range of both classic and never-before-seen works, a biography, exhibition chronology and a selected bibliography.