Marcel Broodthaers: Collected Writings

This book presents a set of writings by the poet Marcel Broodthaers, some of them never previously published. Writing was certainly a decisive part of Broodthaers' multidisciplinary work and there were no absolute frontiers between disciplines. In his space, his writings existed in relation to an image, a photograph, a drawing, a painting, a poster, an object, a sound, a sign, a line, or even a polarity, in a style free of any effective connection to a single, fixed current, and thus escaping any one-dimensional interpretation. Broodthaers' Museum of Modern Art, Eagles Department (1968–1972) inaugurated the practice now known as institutional critique, and the linguistic foundations of his art — as well as his emphasis on printed multiples — also proved prescient for subsequent strains of Conceptual art. Edited by Gloria Moure in collaboration with the artist's estate, this momentous publication eclipses in its scope all previous Broodthaers writings collections. It gathers his early poetry, statements, critical essays both published and unpublished, open letters, interviews, preparatory notes and scripts, plus a wealth of illustrations.