Marcel Broodthaers

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 a period of 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. Traversing media freely from installation and sculpture to artists 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, and with a range of both classic and never-before-seen works, a biography, exhibition chronology and a selected bibliography, this volume is the largest and most authoritative Broodthaers monograph ever published.