World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$62.00 - In stock -
Often considered as unique artworks, Man Ray’s original sculptures possibly never existed. They are often only known through the artist’s accounts in writing, conversations, or conspicuously dated photographs. In place of these absent signifiers, however, Man Ray created alternative variations on multiples occasions throughout his career, under morphed titles, materials, and in various quantities. These he called ‘replicas’, ‘editions’, or ‘new originals’, depending on their appearance and production method. This book explores how originality was manifested in Man Ray’s process of artistic reproduction and multiplication. Featuring essays from Peter Fischli, David Campany, Alyce Mahon, Jennifer Mund and Margrethe Troensegaard.
Published alongside an exhibition of the same name at Luxembourg + co, New York, 6 September – 2 December 2023.
1990, Japanese / French / English
2 volumes in cardboard slipcase (w. exhibition flyer); volume 1 68 pages (colour ill.) volume 2 196 pages (b/w ill.), 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, visually exhaustive two-volume boxset catalogue for the traveling exhibition in Japan in 1990—1991, held on the centenary of Man Ray's birth.
Each volume of this Japanese publication on the American artist Man Ray serves as a wonderful index of his incredible lifetime of work. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. A major contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media including drawings, objects and films, but considered himself a painter above all. Volume One compiles many examples of his diverse non-photographic works, reproducing his many paintings, drawings, objects, prints and book editions in full colour. Volume Two (the heavier of the two volumes) focuses on his prolific photographic work, copiously illustrated with a huge catalogue of beautifully reproduced monochromatic works throughout his entire career — Paris, America, Dada, Surrealism and beyond — showcasing his significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of modern art.
Accompanying texts by Merry Foresta, Lucien Treillard, Toshiharu Ito in Japanese, French and English. Primarily in Japanese language. Includes full biography, bibliography and catalogue of all works.
Good—VG copy. Light wear/age/foxing to slipcase and covers otherwise Very Good in general.
1991 exhibition flyer at Seibu laid in.
1973, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Réalités - Hachette / Paris
$690.00 - In stock -
First and only printing of one of the heaviest hitters of interior design books ever, the enormous, lavishly illustrated "Decoration : Tradition et Renouveau" (Collection Connaissance des Arts) published in 1973. Without a doubt one of the most sought after interior design books and now extremely rare.
This heavy, prestigious, cloth-bound volume travels through some of the world's most incredible domestic interiors by the 20th century's top interior designers and decorators, including Francois Catroux, Serge Royaux, Gae Aulenti, Alberto Pinto, Maria Pergay, Charles Sevigny, Martine Dufour, Isabelle Hebey, Michel Boyer, David Mlinaric, Karl Lagerfeld, Quasar Khanh, Marc du Plantier, Yves Vidal, Jacques Grange, Valentino, Aldo Jacober, David Hicks, Piero Pinto, Henri Samuel, Nanda Vigo, John Stefanidis, Paolo Tommasi, and more, including the homes of major architects, fashion designers, art and antiquities collectors, celebrities, and interior designers themselves, showcasing objets d'art, historical artifacts, furniture and decor (from Mies van der Rohe, Lucio Fontana, Nicola L, Cesar, Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, Arman, Gae Aulenti, Marcel Breuer, Cy Twombly, Le Corbusier, François-Xavier Lalanne and Claude Lalanne, Quasar Khanh, Roger Tallon, Pierre Jeanneret, Enzo Mari, Pierre Paulin, Carla Venosta, Nanda Vigo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marcel Breuer, Ruth Francken, Afra + Tobia Scarpa, Charles Eames, Joe Columbo, Verner Panton, Bruno Munari, Mario Bellini, Henri Michaux, Jean Fautrier, Tom Wesselman, Sonia Delaunay, Marimekko, Superstudio, Man Ray... just to name a few) adorning decorated interiors ranging from "Tradition" ("a formula that allows one to integrate older items, furniture and artwork in a contemporary context"); "le Renouveau" (contemporary interiors of the 1970's and "a section dedicated to design of the time offering a selection of the finest furniture, objects and accessories created by top designers"); and "l'Avant-garde" (displaying some of the most experimental, idiosyncratic, and forward-thinking interiors that bring together modern materiality, pop art and space design to create inspired interior living architectural spaces).
"How to reconcile antique furniture and contemporary structures? Can we adapt modern furniture within a traditionally inspired framework? This book, illustrated with beautiful photographs, mostly in color, reproducing the finest achievements of the great contemporary designers, responds to these questions."
Preface by Francis Spar. All texts in French. Hundreds of beautiful photographs in vivid colour and b/w. A must-have for the interior design lover.
Very good, beautifully preserved copy, strong binding, and seldom now seen with original dust jacket (also VG).
1970, German / French
Softcover, 118 pages, 21 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich / Zürich
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare, important exhibition catalogue designed by Walter Diethelm, published on the occasion of the exceptional exhibition Text Buchstabe Bild (Text, Letter, Image), held at the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich, July 11—August 23, 1970. Preface by Felix Andreas Baumann. "The point is to present this literature, which is located between writing and images, text and graphics and around the tertium comparationis of typography, to an audience that is probably not too familiar with the techniques and variants of “concrete literature”—from the preface. An incredible and varied anthology of the experimental, poetic, graphic interplay of text and image, profusely illustrated in b/w, accompanied by texts in German and French by Stéphane Mallarmé, F.T. Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Oyvind Fahlström, El Lissitzky, André Breton, Eugen Gomringer, Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Jan Hamilton Finlay, Pierre Garnier, Max Bense, Reinhard Döhl, Carlfriedrich Claus, Seiichi Niikuni, Henri Chopin, Franz Mon, Jiri Kolár, and Bob Cobbing.
Artists included: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arno Holz, Christian Morgenstern, F.T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Lacerba, Ardengo Soffici, Hugo Ball, Georges Braque, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amédée Ozenfant, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Raoul Hausmann, Fernand Léger, Richard Hülsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Francis Picabia, Jean Pougny, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Klee, Bruno Adler, Jean Epstein, Theo Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Jozef Peeters, Sonja Delaunay-Terk, Iliazd, Friedrich Kiesler, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Käthe Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Henryk Berlewi, Farkas Molnár, Zenit, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkmann, Walter Gropius, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Le Corbusier, and Georges Hugnet.
Very Good ex-NGV library copy, well preserved with only light wear and "National Gallery of Victoria" light stamp to block edge and lower back-cover. No internal stamping/marking.
1987, Japanese
Softcover, 168 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Issue No.30 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.30, the "Special Issue" features Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Richard Cerf, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Paul Wunderlich, Robert Maplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Man Ray, Lewis Carroll, John Willie, Bernard Montorgueil, Guido Crepax, Van Rod, Carlo, Betty Page, Tealdo, clippings from periodicals such as Amateur Bondage, Bondage Life, Bondage Fantasies, Bizarre Comix, Bizarre Classix, Bizarre Fotos, and much more...
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy with tanning to pages.
1989, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Issue No.37 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.37, the Masochism issue features erotic writings and artwork throughout by Loic Dubigeon, Guido Crepax, David Bailey, Man Ray, Lucas Samaras, Annie Sprinkle's Bosom Ballet, Hans Bellmer, Paul Outerbridge, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Shinichi Kusamori on the paintings of Seiu Ito "the father of modern kinbaku", Yamaguchi Tsubaki, E. J. Bellocq, René Girard, Noriyuki Eda on Saint Sebastian, Edogawa Ranpo, Serge Nazarieff, Rieko Matsuura, Tetsuo Amano, Freud, Nietzsche, de Sade, interspersed with lots of mysterious vintage erotic imagery, bondage illustration, and catalogue/advertisments/clippings of Richard Cerf, Araki, Eric Stanton, Irving Klaw, Jim, John Willie, Bizarre Comix, and much more...
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy, tanning with age.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
A cultural history of the face in Western art, ranging from portraiture in painting and photography to film, theater, and mass media
This fascinating book presents the first cultural history and anthropology of the face across centuries, continents, and media. Ranging from funerary masks and masks in drama to the figural work of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman and Nam June Paik, renowned art historian Hans Belting emphasizes that while the face plays a critical role in human communication, it defies attempts at visual representation.
Belting divides his book into three parts: faces as masks of the self, portraiture as a constantly evolving mask in Western culture, and the fate of the face in the age of mass media. Referencing a vast array of sources, Belting's insights draw on art history, philosophy, theories of visual culture, and cognitive science. He demonstrates that Western efforts to portray the face have repeatedly failed, even with the developments of new media such as photography and film, which promise ever-greater degrees of verisimilitude. In spite of sitting at the heart of human expression, the face resists possession, and creative endeavors to capture it inevitably result in masks—hollow signifiers of the humanity they're meant to embody.
From creations by Van Eyck and August Sander to works by Francis Bacon, Ingmar Bergman, and Chuck Close, Face and Mask takes a remarkable look at how, through the centuries, the physical visage has inspired and evaded artistic interpretation.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1985, English
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 224 pages, 30 x 22.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rizzoli / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition, published by Rizzoli in 1985, of this classic interior design book, "Styles of Living: The Best of Casa Vogue"
Making appearances in these rooms: Gae Aulenti, Man Ray, Enzo Mari, Carlo Scarpa, Pablo Picasso, Josef Hoffman, Cinzia Ruggeri, Max Ernst, Wols, Matteo Thun, Ettore Sottsass, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Lucio Fontana, Eileen Grey, Daniel Buren, Gaetano Pesce, Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Massimo Vignelli, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright, Antoni Tàpies, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alver Aalto.....
"Ever since the end of the Second World War, Italian style, design and decoration have maintained an unprecedented predominance in the Western World. It was in the early 1950s that a great surge of decorative talent welled up in Italy, and this resulted in the 'Italian look' in clothes and in homes - a new standard of chic inventiveness.
The Italian view of interior design has been most enterprisingly expressed in the magazine Casa Vogue, which was founded in 1968 and has consistently been one of the most admired publications of Condé Nast International.
This book, garnered from the many issues of Casa Vogue, has been written and produced under the guidance of Isa Vercellonim who has been its editor ever since its inception. The choice of picture-stories is intended to reflect the unusual and distinctive diversity of the magazine - ranging from traditional decoration to the more advance examples of minimal design, most the most significant of contemporary buildings to the spectacular reconstructions and reconversions of old palazzi and coachhouses, from the 'post modern' to the 'anti-modern' and any other 'moderns' that may have been advocated recently. Italian trends naturally provide the main focus, but Casa Vogue also includes developments in the United States, France, Switzerland - indeed, wherever unusual and meaningful designs are being created."
Very good copy in Good dust-jacket, protected under mylar wrap.
1999, English / French / Japanese
Two-volume softcover bookset in curregated cardboard slip-case, 120 pages & 220 pages (colour and b&w ill. throughout), 18 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
APT International / Tokyo
Isetan Museum of Art / Tokyo
$250.00 - In stock -
First Edition of this comprehensive, beautifully produced Japanese two-volume publication on the life and work of the great French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist, Francis Picabia.
Published by APT International in 1999 for a major Japanese travelling exhibition on Francis Picabia, starting at the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1999, then to Fukushima and Osaka throughout 1999-2000.
Two Volumes bound in french-fold wraps, beautifully kept fine volumes, both housed in protective corrugated cardboard slip-case with scarlet label wrapped around spine. Slipcase itself is now protected under plastic sleeve.
First volume (226 page) forms a comprehensive retrospective of Picabia's life and prolific and defying work across painting, drawing, printing, poetry and film. Extensive colour and b&w reproductions of a vast collection of his painting, illustration and publishing projects are presented alongside a folio of his poems and drawings, plus photo documentation of his studio and private/social life. Also includes a biography and bibliography, as well as an insightful conversation between Olga Picabia (Francis Picabia's widow), Pierre Calté (director of Comité Picabia), Hans Ulrich Obrist (independent curator) and Stefan Banz (independent curator), about Picabia's life (text in English and Japanese). Introductory essays in Japanese and French by Beverley Calte and Arnauld Pierre.
Second volume (120 pages) "391" is a very special book made up of collated facsimiles of the 19 issues of Picabia's famous Dada periodical, "391", dating 1917-1924.
391 first appeared in January 1917 in Barcelona, published and edited by Picabia, assisted in assembling by Olga Sacharoff, a Georgian emigre residing in Barcelona. The title of the magazine derives from Alfred Stieglitz's New York periodical 291 (to which Picabia had contributed), and bore no relation to its contents. Despite Picabia's renown as an artist, it was mostly literary in content, with a wide-ranging aggressive tone, possibly influenced by Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire. There were contributions by two men new to Dada: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. However 391 remained essentially the expression of the inventive, energetic and wealthy Picabia, who stated of it: "Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilating nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed. Art must be unaesthetic in the extreme, useless and impossible to justify."
Francis Picabia (22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France. His was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.
Very Good copy.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1977 hardcover edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Very Good in VG dust jacket designed by Krauss with interior architect Alan Buchsbaum!
1995, English
Softcover, 314 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
October Books / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 edition of this long out-of-print study by Hal Foster, published The MIT Press and October Books. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death.
Surrealism has long been seen as its founder, André Breton, wanted it to be seen: as a movement of love and liberation. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death. To this end Foster first restages the difficult encounter of surrealism with Freudian psychoanalysis, then redefines the crucial categories of surrealism—the marvelous, convulsive beauty, objective chance—in terms of the Freudian uncanny, or the return of familar things made strange by repression. Next, with the art of Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti in mind, Foster develops a theory of the surrealist image as a working over of a primal fantasy. This leads him finally to propose as a summa of surrealism a body of work often shunted to its margins: the dolls of Hans Bellmer, so many traumatic tableaux that point to difficult connections not only between sadism and masochism but also between surrealism and fascism. At this point Compulsive Beauty turns to the social dimension of the surrealist uncanny. First Foster reads the surrealist repertoire of automatons and mannequins as a reflection on the uncanny processes of mechanization and commodification. Then he considers the surrealist use of outmoded images as an attempt to work through the historical repression effected by these same processes. In a brief conclusion he discusses the fate of surrealism today in a world become surrealistic. Compulsive Beauty not only offers a deconstructive reading of surrealism, long neglected by Anglo-American art history, but also participates in a postmodern reconsideration of modernism, the dominant accounts of which have obscured its involvements in desire and trauma, capitalist shock and technological development.
Very Good copy.
1990, Japanese / French / English
2 volumes in cardboard slipcase (w. adhered Man Ray "stamp"); volume 1 68 pages (colour ill.) volume 2 196 pages (b/w ill.), 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, visually exhaustive two-volume boxset catalogue for the traveling exhibition held on the centenary of Man Ray's birth in Japan in 1990-1991.
Each volume of this Japanese publication on the American artist Man Ray serves as a wonderful index of his incredible lifetime of work. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. A major contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media including drawings, objects and films, but considered himself a painter above all. Volume One compiles many examples of his diverse non-photographic works, reproducing his many paintings, drawings, objects, prints and book editions in full colour. Volume Two (the heavier of the two volumes) focuses on his prolific photographic work, copiously illustrated with a huge catalogue of beautifully reproduced monochromatic works throughout his entire career -- Paris, America, Dada, Surrealism and beyond -- showcasing his significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of modern art.
Accompanying texts by Merry Foresta, Lucien Treillard, Toshiharu Ito in Japanese, French and English. Primarily in Japanese language. Includes full biography, bibliography and catalogue of all works.
Good-Very Good copy. Tanning to slipcase, light wear to cover otherwise Very Good in general.
1970—1980,
Offset poster (82 x 48 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Alexandre Iolas / Paris
$220.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous vintage Man Ray (1890—1976) exhibition poster from the 1970s of the artist at the legendary Galerie Alexandre Iolas, Paris, where the American artist spent much of his life as a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. Issued by the gallery in a beautiful offset print on lovely wove paper featuring Man Ray's "Pêchage"Peaches"), 1969, painted wooden box, artificial peaches and cotton.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 82 x 48 cm
Very Good condition, well preserved.
1978, German
Softcover, 96 pages (with many fold-outs), 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rogner & Bernhard / Münich
$90.00 - Out of stock
First German edition of Christopher Makos' "Schicker Schund" (or "White Trash") from 1978. Born in Massachusetts in 1948, Makos spent his boyhood in California and before moving to Paris to study architecture and, eventually, to apprentice with artist, Man Ray. Since 1966 he has worked at developing a unique style of boldly graphic photo—journalism. In "Schicker Schund", Makos displays his seeming dis-regard for human and social values, describing a strange (and often sordid) terrain, inhabited by the prophets of an ambisexual generation tolling a future of catatonia. Makos himself has said, regarding the nature of his art, that “the camera is a knife. And photography is an act of violence.” Amongst his victims are William Burroughs, Richard Hell, Devine, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Zandra Rhodes, Mick Jagger, Man Ray, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams and many others.
Very Good copy.
1979, German
Softcover, 419 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthaus Zürich / Zürich
Bentelli Verlag / Bern
$80.00 - In stock -
Wonderful over-sized catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Malerei und Photographie im Dialog / Painting and Photography in Dialogue, Kunsthaus Zürich, May 13 to July 24, 1977. Profusely illustrated, this heavy volume documents this historical survey of the relationship between photography and painting from 1840 to the present (late 1970s); with a full catalogue of works, artists' biographies, bibliography. Edited by Erika Billeter with texts throughout by art historian Josef A. Schmoll. Includes the work of Edvard Munch, Urs Lüthi, Wols, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Eadweard Muybridge, Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Oskar Schlemmer, Francis Bacon, Hilla and Bernd Becher, Les Levine, Constant Puyo, Clarence Hudson White, Jan Groover, Jochen Gerz, Duane Michels, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Ruth Francken, Theo Von Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Ferdinand Hodler, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Alighiero Boetti, Klaus Rinke, Giuseppe Penone, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Gerhard Richter, Monika Baumgartl, Yves Klein, Wolf Vostell, Heinrich Kühn, Georges Mathieu, Peter Roehr, Sarkis, Jiro Takamatsu, Michael Heizer, Umberto Boccioni, Hans Bellmer, William Wegman, Raoul Ubac, Margrit Jäggli, André Kertész, Jiri Kolar, Kasimir Malevich, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dennis Oppenheim, Christian Boltanski, Dan Graham, Jan Dibbets, Jürgen Klauke, Bruce Nauman, Jean Tinguely, Vettor Pisani, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Allen Kaprow, Arnulf Rainer, Mieczyslaw Berman, Jim Dine, George Brecht, Man Ray, Paul Wunderlich, Karin Székessy, Tom Wesselmann, Chuck Close, Eugène Delacroix, Duane Hanson, Heinrich Zille, Félix Vallotton, Carl Durheim, Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Eakins, Robert Rauschenberg, Édouard Vuillard, Carlo Carrà, Alphonse Mucha, Les Krims, Albert Steiner, Giorgio de Chirico, Keiji Uematsu, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Heinrich Zille, Franco Fontana, Richard Long, Ben Shahn, Edmund Kesting, László Moholy-Nagy, Anton Stankowski, Paul Nash, Rene Magritte, Paul T. Frankl, John Heartfield, El Lissitzky, Georges Hugnet, Gordon Matta-Clark....
Very Good copy, crease to top cover corner.
1978, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 24.5 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Octopus / London
$65.00 - In stock -
English edition of the great "Surrealist Drawings", edited by František Šmejkal, designed and printed in Czechoslovakia. A beautiful clothbound hardcover folio of drawings by artists affiliated with Surrealism. What makes this lovely collection special is the inclusion of many of the Czech Surrealists, and a generally broad European scope of artists. Czech art historian František Šmejkal has collated a wonderful selection of works on paper by Toyen, Jindřich Štyrský, Wolfgang Paalen, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Bellmer, Alfred Kubin, Francis Picabia, Jacques Hérold, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Josef Istler, Max Ernst, André Breton, František Muzika, Paul Delvaux, Wilfredo Lam, Richard Oelze, Mikuláš Medek, Joan Miró, Josef Sima, Kurt Seligmann, Odilon Redon, Andre Masson, Max Walter Svanberg, Salvador Dali, Arshile Gorky, Victor Brauner, Rene Magritte, and many more.
Highly recommended.
Very Good copy with light edge wear. Very Good dust jacket.
1984/5, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
Rare early 1984/5(?) issue of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 later developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art. These early issues however, although featuring erotic and fetish themes, were also an incredible showcase of a new wave of Japanese illustrators, graphic artists and photographers. They also covered punk and avant-garde music, with many interviews, articles and illustrations collaged together in the fanzine tradition with Orui's wonderful touch. A wonderful example of the finest in underground arts publishing in Tokyo in the 1980s.
SALE2 No. 4 Vol. 16 is a special 1984/5 new year calendar issue that features articles on Nobuyoshi Araki, Man Ray, Ryuchi Sakamoto, an interview with John Lydon, an illustrated article on eroticism (with Helmut Newton, Pierre Molinier, Allen Jones, and others pictured), artwork by Terry Johnson, Sachiko Nakamura, Dan Takasuge, Yu Fujimoto, Hiromasa Katoh, Tadamasa Yokoyama, and much more...
All texts in Japanese.
Good copy with cover wear and spine pinches of stiff board covers.
1986, English
Softcover, 319 pages, 175 x 229 mm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$69.00 - Out of stock
Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major formulation of the theory of postmodernism. In this challenging collection of fifteen essays, most of which originally appeared in October, she explores the ways in which the break in style that produced postmodernism has forced a change in our various understandings of twentieth-century art, beginning with the almost mythic idea of the avant-garde. Krauss uses the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism, and poststructuralism to reveal new meanings in the visual arts and to critique the way other prominent practitioners of art and literary history write about art. In two sections, "Modernist Myths" and "Toward Postmodernism," her essays range from the problem of the grid in painting and the unity of Giacometti's sculpture to the works of Jackson Pollock, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra, and observations about major trends in contemporary literary criticism.
Rosalind E. Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University and an editor and cofounder of October magazine, is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), The Optical Unconscious (1993), The Picasso Papers (1999), and Bachelors (1999), all published by the MIT Press, and coauthor (with Yve-Alain Bois) of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997).
"All of her observations are unfailingly original and provocative."—Art Documentation
Very Good copy of original 1986 edition, 1993 printing.
1970, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the Dada volume of Studio Vista / Dutton's great paperback series. Published in 1970 and written by Kenneth Coutts-Smith, this heavily illustrated overview spans Dada's activities via central locations and protagonists such as Picabia, Janco, Duchamp, Schwitters, Ernst, Grosz, Man Ray, Arp, etc.
Chapters : "Zürich - the beginning", "Anti-art and the irrational", "The roots of Dada", "New York - Duchamp and philosophical irony", "Berlin - political commitment", "Cologne - Ernst and the hallucinatory vision", "Hanover - Schwitters, freedom through lyricism", "Paris - last fling and obsequies", "Dada is dead-long live Dada", "Book list", "Index".
1990, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 512 pages, 29.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Biennale of Sydney / Sydney
$120.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the incredible (huge) catalogue published to accompany the 8th Biennale of Sydney 1990 "The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art", held 11 April-3 June 1990 in Sydney across various venues. The eighth Biennale began from ‘a trio of Dada originators’: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia. A large number of artists across generations joined these key figures in Artistic Director René Block’s exploration of the ‘readymade’ in twentieth-century art, which aimed to highlight ‘its invention and pure use by Duchamp, to its resurgence in Nouveau Realism, Pop Art, and Fluxus of the 60s, all the way to new versions by young contemporary artists’. Pop, fluxus and conceptual artists such as Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Marcel Broodthaers, Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Alison Knowles, César, George Brecht, Nam Jun Paik and Piero Manzoni were shown alongside Rosemarie Trockel, John Nixon, Ian Burn, Mel Ramsden, Janet Burchill, Peter Tyndall, Robert Rooney, Rosalie Gascoigne, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Nauman, Hans Haacke, Rebecca Horn, Sophie Calle, Jeff Koons, Allan Kaprow, Jenny Holzer, Robert Gober, Jill Scott, Bill Culbert, Stanley Brouwn, Peter Cripps, Terry Fox, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Fischli & Weiss, KP Brehmer, Sigmar Polke, Dieter Rot, Hanne Darboven, Robert MacPherson, Jackie Redgate, Ed Ruscha, Barbara Bloom, Oyvind Fahlstrom, amongst so many others. The industrial Bond Store at Millers Point featured site-specific works by artists such as Olaf Metzel and Simone Mangos, and several works were created on-site in Sydney, amplifying Block’s notion of the Biennale as a ‘workshop’. A comprehensive satellite program of music, performance, lectures, symposia, workshops and exhibitions at various Sydney venues complemented the exhibition, with Carles Santos’ piano recital on a barge in Sydney Harbour a highlight. Five satellite exhibitions included On Kawara, Joseph Beuys, Alain Fleischer, Fluxus and Broken Record, which featured artist’s experimentations with audio recordings, vinyl and album artwork – from John Cage’s 33 1/3 composition for 12 record players to Milan Knížák’s record-collages.
An incredible Sydney biennale, captured here across over 500 pages conceived and realised by René Block and Jennifer Cook - profusely illustrated with examples of all artists works and accompanying texts throughout by Lynne Cooke, Bernice Murphy, Anne Marie Freybourg, Dick Higgins, René Block and Jennifer Cook. Very Good copy with only general wear/ageing. Bright and clean, includes tanned original dust jacket now preserved under plastic wrap.
Having represented Beuys, Richter and Polke, German gallery owner, art publisher, art collector and curator René Block (born 1942) ranks among the central figures of the 1960s avant-garde.
Very Good copy with original dust jacket. Common tanning to dust jacket spine, now preserved under mylar wrap.
1993, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sonsbeek / Arnhem
$580.00 - Out of stock
First 1993 edition of one of the great art books, by one of the great artists. This provocative, copiously illustrated catalogue by renowned American artist Mike Kelley is a meditation on Sigmund Freud's "Uncanny", and its relation to the grotesque in art and everyday life. Published to accompany the exhibition curated by Kelley as part of the "Sonsbeek 93" exhibition in Arnhem, The Netherlands, June 5 - September 26, 1993, Kelley presents (like a photo scrapbook) an arresting mix of modern and contemporary artists alongside bizarre figurative, prosthesis, animatronic, and mannequin-related imagery throughout history. Artists included : Hans Bellmer, Robert Gober, Tetsumi Kudo, Zoe Leonard, Paul McCarthy, Nayland Blake, John Miller, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Duane Hanson, Man Ray, Guillaume Bijl, Dennis Oppenheim, Edgar Degas, Piero Manzoni, Marcel Broodthaers, Goya, Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, Dorothea Lange, Thom Puckey, Charles Ray, Edward Kienholz, Martin Kippenberger, Laurie Simmons, Jeff Koons, Yayoi Kusama, Paul Thek, Mike Kelley himself, and many more. Includes Kelley's accompanying essay, "Playing with Dead Things". The exhibition took on mythical status and was re-staged in Liverpool in 2004. The Uncanny has become one of the most desired of Kelley's books.
Very Good copy with only light cover wear.
2015, English
Softcover (french-folds), 608 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Ridinghouse / London
$65.00 - In stock -
Art historian and curator Dawn Ades is a leading voice on Dada, Surrealism, abstraction and art from Latin America. Ades addresses themes fundamental to the history of modern art and the avant-garde, across time periods and art movements, from Europe to the Americas. She offers alternative readings and investigates the particular dynamics that affect the ways images and objects are produced, presented and received.
With topics ranging from close-up photography to the female subject in Mexico, and from automatism to photomontage, as well as monographic essays on artists such as Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Hannah Hoch, this collection explores major figures of the twentieth century as well as art beyond the canon. The selected writings are divided into sections that correspond to the overarching concerns of gender, identity, the impact of new mediums and the enduring significance of the materials of art.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket in hard cloth-covered slipcase w. softcover supplement), 252 pages, 34 x 25 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$190.00 - In stock -
Duchamp’s historic 1959 catalogue raisonné-cum-artist's book now back in print in a facsimile English edition. ‘Marcel Duchamp’ became the go-to book on the artist for many decades following its publication in late 1959, when exclusive grand-deluxe and deluxe editions in French, along with trade editions in French and English, were simultaneously released. While Trianon Press’s French trade edition was reprinted numerous times, the Grove Press English edition languished out of print for the better part of two generations—until now, with Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ fully authorized facsimile re-edition.
By Robert Lebel. Edited by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Association Marcel Duchamp. Foreword by Harald Falckenberg. Introduction by Michaela Unterdörfer. Text by Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Henri-Pierre Roché, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Man Ray, Michael Taylor.
Marcel Duchamp, the artist’s first legendary monograph and draft catalogue raisonné, was written by art historian and novelist Robert Lebel and published in French in 1959; later that same year, it was translated into English by George Heard Hamilton for Grove Press. The book was a cooperation between Lebel and Duchamp, and beyond Lebel’s extensive writing and bibliography, additional chapters were authored by Duchamp, H.P. Roché and André Breton. The coupling of these texts with diverse archival photographs and an illustrated compendium of Duchamp’s artworks delivered a complex and personal rendering of the artist’s life and inner circle. For the first time since its release more than 60 years ago, this landmark publication is back in circulation with Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ meticulous facsimile of the English edition, reflecting everything from its hand-tipped images to its recto-verso dust jacket appearing as close to the original as possible.
Fully authorized by artist Jean-Jacques Lebel—Robert Lebel’s son—and the Association Marcel Duchamp, the facsimile is accompanied by a supplement volume of essays and archival material that tells the story of Duchamp and Lebel’s close collaboration, and, as contributor Michael Taylor writes, how the original publication signified a "sea change in the artist’s receptivity to critical interpretation." The supplement includes texts by both Robert and Jean-Jacques Lebel and a newly discovered note by Man Ray, among a bevy of photographs from the Lebel and Duchamp archives, extending the story presented in the 1959 edition.
Robert Lebel’s analysis of Duchamp’s oeuvre remains fresh to this day, as does the book’s design, which was personally supervised by the artist. Hauser & Wirth Publishers reanimated Marcel Duchamp with the curatorial-design firm fluid, who recast the original typefaces as digital fonts, positioning each letter and image exactly as it was in the original. To achieve a near-exact facsimile, fluid consulted with paper conservators and printers to recreate the book with modern materials that match those available in 1959. This precise production quality assures that today’s readers will experience this historic book as Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel intended.
1974, Japanese
Hardcover (cloth-bound w. original illustrated card box and dust jacket) 160 pages, 21 x 21.6
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$160.00 - In stock -
Stunning boxed first printing of the Japanese edition of "Surrealist Drawings" by František Šmejkal, printed and bound in cloth-covers in Japan in 1973. A beautiful clothbound hardcover folio of drawings by artists affiliated with Surrealism. What makes this lovely collection special is the inclusion of many of the Czech Surrealists, and a generally broad European scope of artists. Czech art historian František Šmejkal has collated a wonderful selection of works on paper by Toyen, Jindřich Štyrský, Wolfgang Paalen, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Bellmer, Alfred Kubin, Francis Picabia, Jacques Hérold, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Josef Istler, Max Ernst, André Breton, František Muzika, Paul Delvaux, Wilfredo Lam, Richard Oelze, Mikuláš Medek, Joan Miró, Josef Sima, Kurt Seligmann, Odilon Redon, Andre Masson, Max Walter Svanberg, Salvador Dali, Arshile Gorky, Victor Brauner, Rene Magritte, and many more.
Very Good copy in original slipcase and plastic jacket over cloth. Almost Fine, but with corner bumping to top.