Although it was a French poet who brought “spleen” to modern aesthetics, the artists of Belgium have made it their personal property. The Baudelairean rancor against life and its emptiness has manifested itself equally, though differently, in the work of Magritte, Michaux, and Broodthaers, and it may be found in its purest form in the work of Thierry De Cordier. In a text written in the third person and signed, enigmatically, with the initials E.B., one reads that this exhibition—De Cordier’s first at the gallery since 1995—refers to an event that took place in 1988. Invited to participate in