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 Rene Magritte and Paul Nouge. He also wrote articles on art during these years, including early critiques of Pop art. 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, 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.