Marcel Broodthaers

Artist's book: offset lithograph, thirty-eight pages with slipcase and uncut press sheet in cloth-covered presentation box (facsimile reprint of 1975 edition)

Measuring just 1 x 1.5 inches with a simple black slipcase, The Conquest of Space. Atlas for the Use of Artists and the Military is an artist’s book by Marcel Broodthaers originally published in 1975 in an edition of 50 numbered copies. As Broodthaers’ last book, created shortly before his death in 1976, it embodies the artist’s show more sardonic sense of humor with its plays on language and function–the title references the historic use of atlases by militaries for territorial conquests, but printed at such a miniature scale, it is unusable for its intended function. Furthering the level of intrigue with the book, Broodthaers did not follow established geographical organization, choosing rather to present only a small selection of countries organized in alphabetical order and graphically represented in identical size. This facsimile edition, published by The Museum of Modern Art, makes the artist’s book available again for the first time since the original printing in 1975 in a limited edition of 500 copies. show less

Flipbook published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Fridericianum, Kassel, july- october 2015.

In 1970, Belgian artist and poet Marcel Broodthaers (1924-76) created several films--including Une Seconde d'Eternite d'apres une idee de Charles Baudelaire, or "A Second of Eternity According to an Idea of Charles Baudelaire"--in which he updated the 19th-century poet's ideas of creativity and narcissism for the age of cinema. Broodthaers created the film using animation, tracing the show more strokes of his signature on 24 frames of film (one per second), opening the camera shutter every time that he changed or manipulated the image. The artist toys with the idea of a signature: typically the artist's guarantee of a work's completion and authenticity, here the signature is notable for the absence of work it accompanies. This volume, formatted as a paperback flipbook, is the perfect companion to and interpretation of the acclaimed film. show less

The first complete catalog of Broodthaers’ rebus-like poetical plaques

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 show more 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. show less

Images by Maria Gilissen, taken during the shooting of the movie Un voyage à Waterloo, 1969. Concept and comments: Hans Theys. July 1969. 'Départment des Aigles of the Musée d'Art Moderne has followed a route into the city of Waterloo on the occasion of Napoleon's 200th birthday. The result is a movie that we hope to show on a future occasion'. (Marcel Broodthaers).