Over the recent years the work of two important European artists - Marcel Broodthaers and Dimitrije Basicevic Mangelos - has been widely exhibited internationally. The contemporary audience especially professional one is entering a complex situation when encountering those two oeuvres. Language based and hermetic by nature, this art tells a lot about the developments in art after the World War II in Europe but needs to be 'decoded' in order to be understood. This analysis is one attempt to decipher the riddle those two artists have made while creating their art on the border line between word and image. As such this study might be interesting to art critics and curators working with contemporary and especially conceptual art, collectors as well as artists.
