Marcel Broodthaers

Industrially fabricated as vacuum-formed plastic plaques, the Industrial Poems of Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76) express the enduring fruitfulness of poetry as a paradigm in the poet-turned-artist’s witty, language-oriented brand of conceptualism. These works draw on the popular visual language of commercial signage, incorporating symbols, images, letters, words and punctuation that often refer to earlier poems and artworks. As mass-manufactured signs produced in a popular material such as plastic, the Industrial Poems partake of a visual and material clarity that belies the strongly enigmatic character of their associative semantic functioning.

This 400-page volume compiles for the first time a comprehensive inventory of all the Industrial Poems. These are supplemented by a selection of Broodthaers’ own writings and his “open letters,” along with essays that situate the Industrial Poems in relation to each other and the artist’s oeuvre generally.

Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76) worked as a poet and critic until the age of 40, when he declared himself a visual artist. Over the next 12 years, he moved between Brussels, his birth city, and Düsseldorf and London. From 1968 to 1972 Broodthaers operated the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, an itinerant museum devoted to the exploration of the role of the institution itself and the function of art in society.

Marcel Broodthaers’ extraordinary artistic output placed him at the center of international activity during the transformative decades of the 1960s and 1970s. Throughout his career, from early objects variously made of mussel shells, eggshells and books of his own poetry, to his most ambitious project, the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles), and the Décors made at the end of his life, Broodthaers occupied a unique position, often operating as both innovator and commentator. Setting a precedent for what we call installation art today, his work has had a profound influence on a broad range of contemporary artists, and he remains vitally relevant to cultural discourse at large. Published to accompany Broodthaers’ first retrospective in New York, this volume examines the artist’s work across all mediums. Essays by the exhibition organizers Christophe Cherix and Manuel Borja-Villel, along with a host of major scholars, including Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Jean François Chevrier, Thierry de Duve and Doris Krystof, provide historical and theoretical context for the artist’s work. The book also features new translations of many of Broodthaers’ texts.

Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76) worked as a poet and critic until the age of 40, when he declared himself a visual artist. Over the next 12 years, he moved between Brussels, his birth city, and Düsseldorf and London. From 1968 to 1972 Broodthaers operated the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, an itinerant museum devoted to the exploration of the role of the institution itself and the function of art in society.

Christophe Cherix is Robert Lehman Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.Manuel Borja-Villel is Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University.

Jean-François Chevrier is Professor in the History of Contemporary Art, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Thierry de Duve is Theorist in Residence, MA Aesthetics and Politics Program at CalArts, Valencia, CA.

Doris Krystof is Curator at Stiftung Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

Cathleen Chaffee is Senior Curator at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Kim Conaty is Sue and Eugene Mercy, Jr. Assistant Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Rafael García Horrillo is Coordinator of Temporary Exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Christian Rattemeyer is Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Sam Sackeroff is Mellon MRC Fellow of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Francesca Wilmott is Curatorial Assistant of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Teresa Velázquez is Head of Exhibitions at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid.

Marcel Broodthaers filled his brief, 12-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 laboring in some obscurity as a poet in the Belgian Surrealist circle of René Magritte (a crucial mentor for Broodthaers) and Paul Nougé. He also wrote articles on art during these years, including early critiques of Pop art. Broodthaers' first exhibition, held that year in Brussels, was accompanied by a now-famous announcement: "I, too, 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." 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, featuring new scholarship by Wilfried Dickhoff and Bernard Marcadé, and with a range of both classic and never-before-seen works, this handsome book is the largest and most authoritative Broodthaers monograph ever published. As such, it is the first substantial overview in nearly 25 years. It includes a biography, exhibition chronology and a selected bibliography of publications.

Marcel Broodthaers was born in Belgium in 1924. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s he worked primarily as a poet, and was a member of the Belgian Groupe Surréaliste-revolutionnaire. After almost two decades of poverty, Broodthaers performed a symbolic burial of his career as a poet by embedding 50 copies of his poetry collection Pense-Bête in plaster. Broodthaers died in 1976, on his fifty-second birthday, and is buried in Brussels beneath a tomb of his own design that features images from his allegorical repertoire, including a pipe, a wine bottle and a parrot. An important collection of his work can be seen at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.