Marcel Broodthaers: Livre d'Images Explores Word and Image

Marcel Broodthaers: Livre d'Images, published by Flammarion, is a richly illustrated monograph edited by Marie-Puck Broodthaers, the artist's daughter, who selected works and documents from the archives of her mother Maria Gilissen-Broodthaers. The book's subtitle, "livre d'images" (picture book), references Broodthaers's 1969 work echoing Mallarmé's Un Coup de Dés, where black bands replaced text lines. It also alludes to his 1964 Pense-Bête, where fifty copies of his poetry collection were sealed in plaster, transforming the book into a sculptural object. The volume features Objet écrit (la bouteille de lait) from 1967 as a frontispiece, showing a bottle in object, painted, and photographic states, questioning writing, painting, reading, and seeing. Essays by Wilfried Dickhoff and Bernard Marcadé analyze Broodthaers's interplay of text and image, with Dickhoff describing an "art of distraction in hope of another alphabet" and Marcadé citing Broodthaers's statement that "reading is thwarted by the image aspect of the text and vice versa." The book traces Broodthaers's trajectory from poetry covers in the late 1950s to works incorporating letters, alphabets, texts, fables, and advertising signs.