Marcel Broodthaers

In 1963, the writer Marcel Broodthaers decided to embark on a career in the visual arts. Yet he never severed his ties to poetry and language, whose systems of meaning make up an integral aspect of his work. Retaining a certain distance to the art world, he posed fundamental questions about art?its mediums, its conceptions of what constitutes an artwork, its representation in museums. To this day, his oeuvre takes a critical stand on art’s commercialization strategies. 
Exhibition-making itself was a key element of Broodthaers’s artistic approach. Documenting all of the artist’s solo exhibitions that took place during his lifetime, the catalogue is the first ever to highlight that praxis. 
The extensive chronology and the accompanying detailed pictorial documentation of the most important works of every year together offer a systematic overview of his oeuvre. In addition to scholarly essays and many texts by Marcel Broodthaers himself, the publication also features an extensive series of photographic views of the major retrospective at the Fridericianum.

How Marcel Broodthaers reimagined the exhibition as art

In 1963, Marcel Broodthaers (1924–76), then a poet, decided to embark on a career in art. Far from making a complete divorce from poetry, however, Broodthaers’ art continued his focus on linguistic play, and thereby permitted a certain critical distance from the art world, most explicitly expressed in his exhibitions. These highly conceptual exhibitions posed questions to viewers about the fundamental nature of art, its mediums, its conceptions of what constitutes an artwork and its representation in museums.

This volume presents all of the solo exhibitions that took place during Broodthaers’ lifetime and highlights exhibition-making as an essential element of the artist’s legacy. In addition to scholarly essays and many texts by Broodthaers himself, the publication also features an extensive series of photographic documentation of the major retrospective at the Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany.