Marcel Broodthaers: Industrial Poems

Book excerpt: The first complete catalog of Broodthaers' rebus-like poetical plaques Industrially fabricated as vacuum-formed plastic plaques, the Industrial Poemsof 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 Poemspartake 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 Poemsin relation to each other and the artist's oeuvre generally.