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
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heart Deluxe / Tokyo
Outo Shobo / Tokyo
$400.00 - In stock -
Very rare photo book by Japanese photographer Ikko Kagari, published in 1994 in Tokyo. Kagari made a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, featuring secret "close-up photography" documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places — groping and upskirt photographs taken on packed Tokyo Metro commuter trains, in nightclubs, on escalators, couples making it in public toilets, parked cars and in parks with infrared strobe techniques reminiscent of Kohei Yoshiyuki's incredible Document Park *the two often featured side-by-side in books and journals). Chikan Rush (Molester Rush) is entirely made up of the infamous rush hour train carriage photography, and has become one of the most sought after. Cover-to-cover b/w reproductions of Kagari's grainy, blown-out infrared images that blur all lines between voyeur/participant and simulated/real, make for disorientating, sometimes claustrophobic, uneasy viewing. But they are also absolutely stunning, effective photo books that feel as conceptual as they do devious. Including many selections from Kagari's "Document Commuter Train" (1982), as featured in The Photobook: Vol. III, by Parr & Badger, Kagari's fleeting in flagrante scenes capture erotic desire and criminal impulse engulfed by the soft folds of entangled garment fabrics with stunning technique. He went so far as to publish a how-to book for amateurs! Thankfully the 2000s saw the introduction of women-only carriages on the Tokyo Metro, relegating such expertise to history.
NF copy with VG dust jacket and obi. Only a small pressure mark to the back cover, otherwise Near Fine, beautifully preserved copy.
2005, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
Rare, controversial photo book of Ikko Kagari, publisher of a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, including the controversial coveted classic "Molester Rush" and "Document Commuter Train". This 2005 collection was published by Futami Shobo, collecting his colour and b/w photography from the streets of Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho areas of Tokyo. Candid and voyeuristic, this is the side of Tokyo usually hidden from view — violence, despair, gluttony and perversion — street photography behind the veil. While many are sexual in nature, in the same vein as his earlier photo books documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places, others show various human dramas unfolding on the street, like unauthorised photo journalism capturing the violent and desperate side of Tokyo. Homicide, suicide, gang violence, overdoses and intoxication, homelessness... Human behaviour seldom published. File alongside the works of Kohei Yoshiyuki, Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, and ¡Alarma!.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, light tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$36.00 - In stock -
What it means to be sexually promiscuous in contemporary American culture, edited by cult-favorite author Michelle Tea.
SLUTS, the first publication from vulgarian queer publisher DOPAMINE BOOKS, is an exploration of what it means to be sexually promiscuous in contemporary American culture. Featuring personal essays, spilled secrets, fiction, memoir, and experimental works, SLUTS asks writers and readers to investigate the many ways the notion of the slut impacts our inner and outer lives, as a threat or an identity, a punishment or an aspiration, a lifestyle, an aesthetic, a philosophy and rallying cry. From hideous and terrifying first encounters to postapocalyptic polyamory, from unionizing sex workers to backstage tableaux of sex and drugs and rock and roll, SLUTS's stories probe the liberating highs and abject lows of physical abandon. Featuring work from performer Miguel Gutierrez, hailed by the New York Times as “an artist of ordered excess”; former Nylon magazine editor in chief Gabrielle Korn; award-winning author Brontez Purnell; Whore of New York author Liara Roux; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jeremy Atherton Lin; and a host of additional artists and writers, SLUTS reveals the knowledges provoked by a dalliance with desire.
Contributors:
DL Alvarez, Vera Blossom, Chloe Caldwell, Cristy Road Carrera, Sam Cohen, Tom Cole, Lydia Conklin, jimmy cooper, Lyn Corelle, Jenny Fran Davis, Cyrus Dunham, Hedi El Kholti, Robert Gluck, Miguel Gutierrez, Gary Indiana, Taleen Kali, Cheryl Klein, Gabrielle Korn, Jeremy Atherton Lin, Nate Lippens, Meredith Maran, Carta Monir, Amanda Montell, Carely Moore, Bradford Nordeen, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Kamala Puligandla, Brontez Purnell, Liara Roux, Andrea Sands, Daviel Shy, Jen Silverman, Anna Joy Springer, Laurie Stone, McKenzie Wark, Zoe Whittall
1990, French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre National Des Arts Plastiques / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of the comprehensive Pierre Klossowski catalogue raisonné published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition of his work held in Paris in 1990-1991 at CNAP. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with Klossowski's wonderful works, texts throughout by Catherine Grenier, Bernard Blistene, Claude Ritschard, Pascal Bonitzer, Marie-Dominique Wicker, Franco Cagnetta, André Masson, and Pierre Zucca (in French), a densely illustrated catalogue raisonné spanning his work dated 1952/53 through to 1990 (many not seen elsewhere), biography, exhibition history, and much more. Still the most in-depth book on Klossowski's oeuvre to date.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.
1978, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, unpaginated, 22 x 16 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gentosha / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
1978 edition of Japanese illustrator Ken Katayama's masterpiece artbook, Beautiful Days, originally issued in this same hardcover, slipcased form in 1969 in a limited edition. Beautiful Days is the most crystallised embodiment of one of the most unique artistic visions of fantasy illustration one could ever find, and the first collection ever published by the artist, when, after discovering the erotic works on the fringe of Surrealism he gave up becoming a painter and gave himself over to the obscene impulses of drawing. "There, so to speak, masturbation became a picture. Until then, I never thought that masturbation could become a painting"—excerpt from Ken Katayama's postscript. Katayama's magnificently, obsessive graphite-rendered world-making is, like those of Lewis Carroll before him, made up almost entirely of children; children in states of blank-faced entrancement, possession and naked abandon; groping, lost and frozen in a psychosexual schoolhood theatre. Unlike anything else, aspects of Katayama's bewildering, often sadomasochistic, fairytale visions recall the tales of de Sade, Bataille, Klossowski, Carroll's Alice; the unconscious pictures of Balthus, Hans Bellmer, or Leonor Fini; the architectural dreamscapes of Delvaux or the Metaphysical painters; even the dark psychological renderings of fellow Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi — a haunted landscape of eroticised adolescent memories with recurring motifs of free flowing urination and defecation, violently strewn newspapers, urinals, and apparitions of cat-people. Nothing like it! The work even inspired an experimental film of boyhood memories directed by the provocative film-maker Nakamura Masanobu in 1970.
"If you
keep your hands in your pockets
in your pocket
what are you hiding
that's how I got it
darkness in my pocket, days of dust
I opened the old album and showed
beautiful days other days"
Virtually unknown outside his native Japan, Katayama (b. 1940, Tokyo) studied at the Musahino Art University and in the 1960s and 1970s begin contributing illustrations to underground art and literary magazines such as Black Notebook, Featured Story and fetish magazines such as SM Select, amongst many others. He published art books such as Angel Hour, Lost Child's Top, Match Taker, The Cat in Boots, and many more, and went on to become a successful children's story book illustrator, publishing many works throughout the 1980s—90s.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved in Very Good slipcase.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 154 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
First 1997 edition collection of "The Early Works" by the Japanese master of Ero guro Toshio Saeki, published by Treville in 1997 and long out-of-print. An extensive collection of incredible works gathered from his first major book in 1970, his acclaimed 1971 Red Book, the panel-by-panel replication of an early Saeki manga story, and much more. Texts by Akira Uno, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Timothy Leary.
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket and obi, light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover in die-cut, foiled slipcase, 162 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of the rare, long out-of-print first major monograph on Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi, published only in Japan in this slipcased edition in 1994. Profusely illustrated throughout, chronologically surveying self-taught Hayashi's work from his mid-1970s De Chirico-inspired sci-fi-scapes quickly evolving into his life's-work of grotesque, disembodied eroticism rendered masterfully in graphite. All the artist’s deepest and darkest paranoias, fetishes, and obsessions are laid bare here, tracing the development of various themes and subjects throughout in a delirium of convulsing legs, breasts, vulvas, intestines, brains and modernist architectural interiors. This book is a must for anyone interested in Hayashi's work. Accompanying texts by Roger Borderie, Gilbert Bellquet, Issei Sagana, Hiroshi Fujita. Also includes a rare portrait of the reclusive Hayashi.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
Very Good copy with Good slipcase with some general wear.
2014, Japanese / English
Hardcover, 96 pages, 15 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Third / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of 'Le Principe de la Constitution' by Yoshifumi Hayashi, published in 2014 and now out-of-print. ‘Eroticism is to establish order, or in other words the principle of constitution, and not to destroy’ Yoshifumi Hayashi says. This latest collection of self-taught Hayashi's masterfully rendered obsessive visions of grotesque, disembodied eroticism continue his unique and highly original exploration of graphic art. Profusely illustrated throughout, this book follows-on from the comprehensive "La Jeune Marieè d'un Materialiste Enceinte de Cerveaux" monograph (mid 1970s-mid 1990s) illustrating Hayashi's pencil work throughout the 2000s. Includes a very rare essay by Hayashi, who first studied philosophy, discussing his theories about science and eros, tracing his childhood interest in astronomy through to his understanding of eroticism through dynamics.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
As New copy including Hayashi promotional postcard.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 18 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Mole / Tokyo
$320.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of one of the greatest kinbaku photo books ever published, Bind by Akio Fuji. Published in 1992 by Mole Gallery, Tokyo, to accompany Fuji's exhibition of the same name, Bind is now a classic photo book of masterful aesthetic bondage photography, featuring the rope work of Chimo Nureki, gloriously reproduced in lush black and white plates bound in silver-foiled cloth hardcovers. Exquisite compositions capturing the two artists at the height of their powers, and an important book and exhibition for bringing the world of kinbaku to the recognition of the fine art world in Japan the 1990's.
Akio Fuji (b. 1959) is a pioneer of bondage photography in Japan, founding the legendary bondage enthusiast circle "Kinbiken" in Tokyo in 1985 with rope master Chimuo Nureki (who also produced the magazines Kitan Club and Uramado), developing into the cult kinbaku bulletin Kinbiken Communications, with core contributions by both Fuji and Nureki, Katsuya Kasui, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Yuri Sunohara, Asoji Muroi, Akira Minomura, and other members of the circle. The object of the group was to study the beauty of bondage, observing the techniques of master Nureki through a membership with one of the most distinctive facets of the club being that the bondage women participate as members themselves. Says Nureki, “One of the main reasons I started this circle was to provide a facility for masochistic women, who are often misunderstood and therefore despised.” Kinbiken Communications remain one of the most desirable kinbaku publications of this period, the photography from which is showcased here in Akio Fuji's debut collection, featured heavily in Masami Akita's compilation of the “History of Bondage Photography in Japan”.
Fine copy.
1972, Japanese
Softcover, 34 pages, 20 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hanashi-no-Tokushu / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of Japanese photographer Yoshihiro Tachiki's photo book "Erotica Larotica", published in 1972. This book is one of the early masterpieces of Tatsuki — a unique collaboration between the Austrian painter Dina Larot (b. Maria Elisabeth Lebzelten in 1942), a student of Kokoschka best-known for her paintings and drawings of "women" in Austria, and photographer Yoshihiro Tatsuki, best known for his photography of "women" in Japan. It consists of playful portraits and nudes of Lalo herself and her friends lavishly dressed and undressed photographed by Tachiki in Vienna, paired with SM-lesbian erotic drawings and paintings by Larot throughout, plus a few photographs from a Crazy Horse show in Paris in the mix.
Tatsuki was born into a family that operated an photographic portrait studio. While at Tokyo junior College of Photography, he exhibited photographs of his family at the Fuji Photo Salon. After graduation, he began working as a photographer at Ad Center under the art direction of graphic designer Seiichi Horiuchi. Tatsuki’s name entered the limelight when he was just 26 years old with the publication of "A Fallen Angel", an astonishing 56 pages feature of his photographs shots for Camera Mainichi. Since starting as a freelance photographer in 1969, he has worked on the front lines of the advertising, magazine, publishing, and motion picture industries. He has published a number of celebrated photo books on female subjects and is best-known for works such as GIRL, EVES, Private (Mariko Kaga), Aoi Toki, My America, and Portrait of Family.
Very Good copy in dust jacket. Light cover wear and pinch to spine, one page with crease to top corner.
1972, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. french folds and fold-out spreads), 160 pages, 22.8 x 29.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ad Angen / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1972 edition of this erotic anthology from three important and provocative Japanese photographers from the time they were creating their most inspired work. Tatsuki is famous for his books Eves, Private (Mariko Kaga) and Girl (from the famous Chuo Koronsha series). Kanoh is famous for his books Shunga and the banned Fuck. Ichimura is famous for Salome and Come Up. All of these seminal works in Japanese photography were published in 1970 or 1971, as was this book, a collection that includes moments from some of the aforementioned works. The title indicates the uniting theme of the book - couples (and groups) in erotic scenes. Experts of the nude, the invited photographers here express Ukiyo-e's spring paintings through their own photographic visions of sexuality. Saturated and hypnotic, these psychedelic and dreamlike collections are joyous and occasionally confronting, surrealistic and occasionally grotesque, all vividly reproduced throughout with many gate-fold spreads. A great book.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 10.5 x 8 cm
Published by
Hanuman Editions / US
$25.00 - In stock -
Garden of Ashes, Cookie Mueller's second entry into the Hanuman Books canon (following 1988's Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls) brings together ten stories, autobiographical accounts of her ascent to cult-cinema superstardom, with tales dedicated to several of her fellow Dreamlanders, including "Edith Massey: A Star" and "Divine".
Cookie Mueller (1949–1989) was an American writer, actress, and advice columnist, best remembered as a regular cast member of some of the director John Waters's groundbreaking films, including Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living. She died from AIDS-related complications in 1989.
From the first series redux of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993. Founded by American curator Raymond Foye and artist Francesco Celemente, Hanuman Books was dedicated mainly to the extreme deconstructive edge of the countercultural poetic, musical, and artistic currents of the 1960s and 1970s, spanning the era of the Cold War, the AIDS crisis, the Harlem Ballroom scene, the Beats, Warhol's Factory etc. Hanuman Books sought to marry the folk-minimal-artisanal with the cutting edge, playfully marketing their books as ‘secret’ documents of an avant-garde subculture, meant to be passed on covertly at street corners just as millenarian chapbooks of medieval times were supposed to have been. Printed in India, the small format is meant to mimic the chapbook form of the Hanuman Chalisa (a folk compendium of chants to the Hindu god Hanuman, sold very cheaply in the bazaars of India) that made them perfect for slipping illicitly into any pocket. Redux editions edited by Shruti Belliappa and Joshua Rothes.
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.
1976, English
Softcover (staple-bound), unpaginated, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tao Productions / Hollywood
$140.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Arrogant Amazon vs. Bondage Burgler, one of legendary American bondage artist Robert Bishop's early illustrated story books of sadomasochism and bondage, published in 1976 by Tao Productions, Inc. in Hollywood. Quite possibly also written by Bishop, Arrogant Amazon vs. Bondage Burgler likely pre-dates his famous Fanni Hall stories, and features wonderful, nicely reproduced full-page examples of his iconic bondage artwork with soft airbrush gradients and exquisite details throughout, exclusive to this story. Includes illustrated advertisements for mail-order bondage films and other publications.
Robert K. Bishop (1945–1991) was a bondage artist and photographer from Michigan whose inventive artworks, rendered in pencil, ink and airbrush, featured heavily in the publications of House of Milan and Centurian Publications during the 1970's—1980s. He produced many cover illustrations for bondage novels by F. E. Campbell, as well as illustrating his own series of stories describing the misadventures of the character "Fanni Hall". His work was very influential to a generation of fetish illustrators and has become collectible within the sub-culture. Bishop died by suicide in 1991, at the age of 46.
Very Good copy. only light wear/age to staples. Former adult bookshop markings to cover (restriction sticker and price).
1975, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 28 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rosslyn News / Studio City
$45.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of "Patricia in Bondage", a 1975 illustrated story by Jack Owen, featuring 21 b/w female bondage ink illustrations, published by Rosslyn News Studio City. Includes illustrated backcover and (photo) advertisement for Rosslyn feature films (femdom). "This volume is to be regarded as a psychological workbook. A study for the serious student of unusual aspects of psychology".
Good copy with some wear, buckling, some moisture staining to spine, rusted staples.
1998, English
Softcover, 278 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Polity / US
$30.00 - In stock -
First 1998 edition of Sexology Uncensored. This landmark collection brings together, for the first time, many of the key documents of the modern science of sexuality that emerged in the late nineteenth century. The early pioneers of the new field of sexology examined and classified sexual behaviors, identities, and relations. For years much of the material here has been “censored” in the sense that it is difficult to obtain, subject to restrictive circulation, or available only in medical archives. The extracts (which date from the 1880s to the 1940s) cover a variety of topics including gender and sexual difference; homosexuality; transsexuality and bisexuality; heterosexuality; marriage and sex manuals; reproductive control; eugenics; race; and various sexual proclivities.
Offering readers access to the primary materials on which contemporary sexology is founded, Sexology Uncensored is an invaluable record for all those interested in how we have come to think about sex and sexuality over the last hundred years.
Sexology in Culture and its companion Sexology Uncensored will interest all those concerned with understanding modern sexual discourse in its historical context.
Very Good copy.
1990, English
Hardcover, 258 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1990 hardcover edition of Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Since the late 1980s, queer studies and theory have become vital to the intellectual and political life of the United States. This has been due, in no small degree, to the influence of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's critically acclaimed Epistemology of the Closet. Working from classic texts of European and American writers-including Melville, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Wilde-Sedgwick analyzes a turn-of-the-century historical moment in which sexual orientation became as important a demarcation of personhood as gender had been for centuries.
"Brilliant as a work of literary criticism, a cultural study, a political analysis, and as a landmark in the development of lesbian and gay studies."—Women's Review of Books
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was a poet, artist, literary critic and teacher. She is perhaps best known as one of the originators of Queer Theory. Her work and her example continue to have a significant effect in shaping the lives and thought of many people.
Very Good copy, lacking dust jacket.
1990, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip), 269 pages, 13 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ota Shuppan / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
Rare first Japanese edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's most controversial book, and cited by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (in The Photobook Vol.1) as Araki's best and most famous work. Includes original publisher's obi-strip issued with the first 1990 printing. Tokyo Lucky Hole is Araki's intimate document of Japan's sex industry in full flower. Before Shinjuku's infamous red-light district was closed in 1985, the Japanese photographer made this obsessive documentation of its every aspect: the pleasure-seekers and providers, street scenes, performances, peep-shows, parlours, parks, dungeons. Tokyo Lucky Hole reveals the core of Araki's art: the desire to create a portrait of Tokyo without the niceties (and prudishness) of convention. Through mirrored walls, bed sheets, bondage and orgies, this is the last word on an age of bacchanalia, infused with moments of humor, precise poetry, and questioning interjections. Text by Nobuyoshi Araki. Design by Katsumi Komagata.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good copy with VG obi-strip.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$260.00 - In stock -
The wonderful 1993 first over-sized edition of Araki's incredible Erotos photo book, one of his finest. In this work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes. A collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the body as well as various objects—pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Highly recommended.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.
1993—2000, Japanese
Softcover, 300—400 pages ea., 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$300.00 - In stock -
Huge lot of 11 issues of Sabu, "Magazine For Men Who Love Men", the trailblazing gay erotic magazine from Japan, founded in 1974. All issues from the 1990s, with one issue from 2000 thrown in, 1993—2000, all featuring the gorgeous wrap-around (front and back) cover artwork by legendary gay erotic illustrator Ben Kimura (1947—2003). Packed with illustrations by Gengoroh Tagame, Gekko Hayashi, Go Mishima, Ben Kimura, and many other artists, at roughly 350—400 pages in each issue, Sabu is more of a book (a "mook" as it were). Filled to the brim with gay erotic art galleries, glossy hardcore erotic photography, loads of fetish and bondage materials, wild "bara" manga, classifieds/letters/sexmate messageboards, articles, ads for Japanese gay bars, clubs, saunas, dungeons, gyms, mail-order toys, publications, media, news and reports on international scenes, and much more.
Each issue Very Good—Good, with light wear and tear. Specific shipping costs may apply.
1987, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
Autonomedia / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of one of the remarkable special book issues of the original Semiotext(e) journal — the notorious Semiotext(e) U.S.A., published in 1987, edited by Jim Fleming and Peter Lamborn Wilson (Hakim Bey), and designed by Sue Ann Harkley. Complete with the unprintable 4-pages, in still-sealed plastic pocket. ("Calling it "subversive" and "obscene," five book printers in the spring of 1987 refused to print Semiotext(e) USA. A sixth printer agreed to do all but four pages, which we have printed separately and included here.") Semiotext(e) U.S.A. is an absolute treasure and time-capsule of subcultural publishing in the 1980s—1990s, centering around Autonomedia and Semiotext(e). The original publisher's blurb says it all:
"THE JOURNAL DENOUNCED IN THE U.S. SENATE FOR ITS ADVOCACY OF "ANIMAL SEX" PRESENTS..."
"A huge compendium of works in AMERICAN PSYCHOTOPOGRAPHY Areas not found on the official map of consensus perception — Maps of energies, secret maps of the USA in the form of words and images.
We are amazed. We are NOT BORED. We have discarded the outworn charm of post-modern incommunicadismo. Passion and involvement, self-abandoned craziness, funny, sexy, dangerous, unabashedly precious, punk, loud and direct. SF, speculative fiction, weird fantasy — Pornography — Other mutated genres — Sermons, rants, broadsheets, crackpot pamphlets, manifestoes — Xerox and mimeo zines — Punkzines — Mail art — Kids' poetry — Subverted advertisements — American samizdat — Astounding rhetoric, elegant propaganda — Underground comix — Geographical documentation (maps, monuments, guides to weird places, photographs) — Stolen top secret documents — And a special feature: scores of personal and classified ads. each one with a box-number or address, to connect YOU with the edges of the USA — Anarchists, unidentified flying leftists, neo-pagans, secessionists, the lunatic fringe of survivalism, cults, foreign agents, mad bombers, ban-the-bombers, nudists, monarchists, children's liberation, tax resisters, zero-workers, mimeo poets, vampires, feuilletonistes, xerox pirates, prisoners, pataphysicians, unrepentant faggots, witches, hardcore youth, poetic terrorists...
For the realization of almost-unheard of desires"
Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at the Columbia University philosophy department. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he had organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the "high/low" aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project.
Good—VG copy with some wear and creasing to the covers and a couple of loose pages at the end. Complete with still-sealed additional censored pages.
2023, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. slipcase and postcard), 176 pages, 31 x 21.5 cm
Edition of 1000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Gallery Naruyama / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Remarkable, comprehensive new book published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of Sadao Hasegawa (1945—1999) at Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, in 2023, divided into two periods for a span of six months. This lavishly produced and limited edition hardcover book (housed in gallery slipcase with removable cover sticker — a temporary censor for distribution purposes), reproduces all of his amazing homo-erotic artwork works in this extensive exhibition, making it the most comprehensive book on the artist yet. From his early romantic works drawn under the influence of psychedelic drugs, to works that interweave Hasegawa’s longing for foreign and exotic lands, erotic images of men created for magazines and manga, this book covers his vast array of styles, revealing many never before published sketches, preparatory drawings and graphic works. All works completely uncensored in their full glory — Hasegawa's unique blend of fantasy, Asian folklore, sado-masochism, and the homoeroticism of Yukio Mishima. Beautifully presented across many different paper stocks, with accompanying essay in English/Japanese. A must for any fan. This copy with illustrated exhibition invite laid in.
Inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima, beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in the self-taught Hasegawa’s work. His unique vision incorporates Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of men in acts of sado-masochism, juxtaposed with lush tropical flowers, strings of pearls, birds and animals that float through the margins of dreamy, ecstatic scenes. After Hasegawa’s suicide in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999, his family was going to dispose of the artists archive but discovered a portrait of Mishima painted on a stone, accompanied by a note requesting that the works be bequeathed to Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, where the artist’s estate is today.
"When I was a child, I was alone with kūsō (daydreams and wild imagination). Always I went to the fields and the woods. I liked talking to animals and plants. In my imagination, I changed into birds and insects and flowers... These childhood experiences are the basis for my pictures." Sadao Hasegawa (In Touch for Men)
As New copy.
2022, English
Hardcover, 76 pages, 25 x 20 cm
Published by
Baron / UK
$70.00 - In stock -
Back in print! Baron is pleased to present the first posthumous book by Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa (Jan 1945- Nov 1999), dedicated to Hasegawa’s rarely-published archive.
Hasegawa work is notable for incorporating Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of hyper-masculine men, in acts of BDSM.
Beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in Hasegawa’s work; he was inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima. After Hasegawa’s suicide in 1999, his family was going to dispose of the artists archive but discovered a portrait of Mishima painted on a stone, accompanied by a note requesting that the works be bequeathed to Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, where the artist’s estate is today.
Whilst gaining acclaim in queer publications in the USA and Europe, with critics historicising Hasegawa’s work as an influence on contemporary Japanese queer culture, and the gay manga genre, Hasegawa's works have not been widely recognized: his only book is the highly collectable Paradise Visions (Kochi Studio, 1996).
The book also includes an essay by Dr Thomas Baudinette, author of Regimes of Desire: Young Men, Media and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and is designed by Sam Boxer, Art Director of Gut Magazine.