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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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.
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.
2014, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Gallery Naruyama / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare Japanese softcover catalogue on Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa's (1945—1999) amazing homo-erotic artwork — a blend of fantasy, Asian folklore, sado-masochism, and the homoeroticism of Yukio Mishima. Published by Gallery Naruyama in 2014 on the occasion of a survey of Hasegawa's technicolour works spanning 1978—1983, profusely illustrated on gloss stock with only text a short biography. features 48 artworks, many unpublished elsewhere.
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)
Good—Very Good with light cover wear and pinching to spine.
1990 / 1996, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 31 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Gay Men's Press / London
Éditions Aubrey Walter / London
$440.00 - In stock -
First softcover edition of this incredible and exceptionally rare, collectible book on Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa's (1945—1999) amazing homo-erotic artwork — a blend of fantasy, Asian folklore, sado-masochism, and the homoeroticism of Yukio Mishima. Published in 1990 by Éditions Aubrey Walter, the art book arm of The Gay Men's Press, London, this was the first and only book of Sadao Hasegawa's artwork to be published outside Japan in his lifetime, and it is still the ultimate collection of works, featuring Hasegawa's most graphic artworks. Self-taught and refusing to exhibit overseas, this book became a rare, uncensored look into this artist's world from the West. Profusely, lavishly colour illustrated from cover to cover on heavy stock paper, this long out-of-print, over-sized art book features 77 illustrations, introduced in English by Frits Staal (Professor of Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley). It has become a treasure to collector's the world over. Hasegawa commited suicide in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999.
"Sadao Hasegawa is a leading gay artist from Japan. His work, as represented here in this astounding collection, is a direct route into contemporary Japanese consciousness. An awareness absorbing world-wide cultural influences and expressing a new hybrid visuality. He has been called Japan's "Tom of Finland" because of his celebratory stance towards male homosex, much symbolic emphasis on male-male eroticism and Japan-style sado-masochism. But the similarity ends there. His work is a riot of bright optimistic colour and his symbolisms go deep into the myth and legend of the non-Western world. Sadao Hasegawa's imagination is overwhelmingly diverse but his technique is modern and masterful - focussed and fused with form, colour and content."—book cover
"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)
Good—Very Good 1st ed 1996 paperback copy. Interior VG, French-fold stiff cover with some traces of wear.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 84 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kochi Studio / Japan
$480.00 - In stock -
First edition of the incredible and exceptionally rare and collectible book on Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa's (1945—1999) amazing male nude erotic artwork — a blend of fantasy, Asian folklore, and the homoeroticism of Yukio Mishima. Beautifully designed and printed, fully illustrated from cover to cover on heavy stock paper with metallic detailing, this long out-of-print monographic volume was the only book collection to be published only years before Hasegawa’s suicide in 1999, and has become a treasure to collector's ever since. Inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima, beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in Hasegawa’s work, his unique vision incorporating Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of hyper-masculine men, in acts of BDSM, juxtaposed with lush tropical flowers, strings of pearls, birds and animals that float through the margins of dreamy, ecstatic scenes. Hasegawa cited Tom of Finland, photographer Tamotsu Yato and his travels to Bali and Thailand as influences on his work.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved with only light cover edge wear.
1982, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daini Shobo / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
Rare early September 1982 issue of the trailblazing Barazoku, “The Rose Tribe”, Japan's first commercially circulated gay men's magazine, founded in 1971 by Bungaku Itō. Features cover artwork by Ben Kimura, colour gallery by Go Mishima, and many illustrations by Sadao Hasegawa, just to get started! A leader in Japanese gay culture, Barazoku was the longest running magazine of its kind, surviving 33 years, and despite mainstream disapproval and legal injunctions it became such a cultural phenomenon that its title, the term "bara", has entered the mainstream language as a synonym for "gay" and gay manga. Barazoku published an interview with Japan's first known AIDS sufferer at a time when the mainstream media refused to address the issue. The magazine was also instrumental in introducing seminal Japanese gay erotic artists such as Ben Kimura, Go Mishima, Rune Naito, and Sadao Hasegawa, amongst others. Each issue was packed with gay erotica art galleries, manga, colour and b/w glossy erotic photography, classifieds/letters/personal ads, articles, ads for Japanese gay bars, clubs, saunas, dungeons, gyms, mail-order toys, publications, media, news and reports on international scenes, and much more.
VG—Good copy. Wear.
1989, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 22 x 28 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Gay Men's Press (GMP) / London
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$190.00 - Out of stock
1989 printing of one of the finest collections of the great Tom of Finland, published by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, and The Gay Men's Press (GMP), London.
Preface by Tom of Finland with appreciation by Dennis Forbes and Fred Bisonnes. This book covers Tom of Finland's work from 1946 to 1987, depicting page by page throughout his iconic and impeccable erotic graphite drawings of macho leathermen, bikers, cowboys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers and sailors, all in all their glory.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
Very Good copy with light cover/edge wear.
1991, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$150.00 - Out of stock
First printing of Retrospective II, another of the finest collections of work from the great Tom of Finland, published in 1991 by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles.
Preface by Tom of Finland. This book covers Tom of Finland's work dating back to 1944, depicting page by page throughout his iconic and impeccable erotic graphite drawings of macho leathermen, bikers, cowboys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers and sailors, all in all their glory.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
Very Good copy with light cover/edge wear.
1995, English / German
Softcover (staple-bound), 62 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Tom of Finland Exhibition 1994-95, published in 1995 by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition held in 1994 and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany. Profusely illustrated with many unseen works, as well as photographs and documents tracing the life and work of Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920—1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images"(—Joseph W. Slade). Every period accounted for, from Tom's early commercial work to his most hardcore gay erotica, his sketch-books, his prints to his very last work. An incredible insight into this prolific artist of enduring influence. Texts throughout in English and German by president of Tom of Finland Foundation Durk Dehner and German art critic Wolfgang Max Faust, amongst others, plus chronology,
“Sometimes the attraction of the uniform is so powerful in me that I get the feeling that I am making love to the clothes and the man inside is just there to hold them up and give them shape, sort of like an animated department store dummy.”
Very Good, well preserved copy with light bump top of spine, crease to bottom front cover.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 276 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Camera Mainichi and The Mainichi Graphic / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
First printing of NEW NUDE 2, published in Japan in 1985 as part of a unique and short-lived book series published by the mighty Camera Mainchi house, showcasing leading photographers and artists on the subject of the nude. Opening with illustrated essays by photo critic Kōtarō Iizawa and others, this lovely volume, printed in Japan, presents works generously and sympathetically presented in colour and black-and-white across various paper-stocks. Includes the work of Masahisa Fukase, Hans Bellmer, Yoshiichi Hara, Masaaki Nakagawa, Nobuyoshi Araki, Lee Friedlander, Alice Odilon, E. J. Bellocq, Heinrich Zille, Donald Woodman, Florence Chevallier, Laurence Sackman, Joel Peter Witkin, Marie Bume, James Wedge, Franco Fontana, Lucas Samaras, Miron Zownir, Herlinde Koelbl, and others.
Good-Very Good copy. General wear.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 276 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Camera Mainichi and The Mainichi Graphic / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
First printing of NEW NUDE 3, published in Japan in 1985 as part of a unique and short-lived book series published by the mighty Camera Mainchi house, showcasing leading photographers and artists on the subject of the nude. Opening with illustrated essays by photo critic Kōtarō Iizawa and others, this lovely volume, printed in Japan, presents works generously and sympathetically presented in colour and black-and-white across various paper-stocks. Includes the work of Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Masahisa Fukase, Keiichi Tahara, Noriaki Yokosuka, Irina Ionesco, Hennri Maccheroni, Keizo Kitajima, Takashi Ishii, Richard Cerf, Ayako Parks, Taku Aramasa Seiji Kurata, Jean-Jacques Dicker, Flip and Debra Schulke, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marie-Claire Montanari, Lee Friedlander, Jaques Schumacher, Joyce Tenneson, Herlinde Koelbl, and many others.
Very Good copy. Light wear, crease to one front cover bottom corner.
1968, Japanese
Hardcover in hard slipcase, unpaginated, 19 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
Scarce hardcover, slipcased volume on the "Art of Eroticism", published only in Japan in 1968. An amazing history of humanity that collects erotic masterpieces from around the world. With illustrated slipcase by Japanese artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko, this book functions as a separate visual volume to Ove Brussendorf and Poul Henningsen's celebrated History of Eroticism, depicting sexual customs from ancient times to the present day with 700 illustrations reproduced on glossy stock.
Very Good copy with general age and some wear to slipcase. Book well-preserved!
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20 x 14 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$34.00 - In stock -
Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur.
This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, how to dream, how to decode a crowded consciousness, how to find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, and how to sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He'd jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he'd incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Therefore each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events and peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, and other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger and Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don't rhyme; and though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas' lobes. Koestenbaum's poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, and open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Imagine: the training wheels have been removed from poetry's bicycle, and the wheeling flâneur is finally allowed a word pie equal to fantasy's appetite. Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you're stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.
1985, Japanese
Softcover, 260 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Published by
Data House / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Possibly the most fun you can cram into 260-odd pages! A now very collectible volume edited by none other than Japanese master of erotic superrealism, Hajime Sorayama, Pink Department Store is a wild book digest of visual sex — straight out of 1985! A compendium of remarkable erotic imagery packed into this one-stop look-book of kink compiled by Sorayama, all reproduced in full-colour on beautiful warm raw paper stock, designed by Hisao Iguchi. From the Tokyo sex clubs, phone-booths and toilet stalls, Shibari photography to pink film posters, x-rated manga to wildlife fornication, leather daddys to dominatrixes, Pink Department Store is a safari through graphic perversion and joyous visual innuendo. Alongside archival material and international works the book generously features an abundance of works by over 100 contemporary Japanese illustrators and photographers, including Aimei Ozaki, Harumi Yamaguchi, Takashi Nemoto, Yosuke Onishi, Suehiro Maruo, Hajime Sorayama, Mizumaru Anzai, Yokoyama Akira, Keiichi Ota, Akira Ishigaki, Kaoru Ueda, Teruhiko Yumura, Yoshiharu Ebisu, Arata Taga, to name but a few. There is also a directory list to contact them all!
Very Good—NF copy in VG original dust jacket and rarely preserved publisher's obi-strip.
2023, English
Hardcover, 106 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$44.00 - In stock -
The long-awaited new novel from a major literary talent. With cover design by Michael Salerno (KIDDIEPUNK).
“I’m so close to falling apart. Fuck it. Who isn’t?”
Thomas Moore’s latest novel Your Dreams, the follow-up to 2021’s devastating Forever, is a visceral yet contained inquiry into the endless need to be understood. Eavesdropping on a debate about cancelled bands, listening to a close friend’s explanation of his disturbing desires, facilitating a conversation about kinks at a party until it goes wrong, Moore’s narrator is less of a character than a witness of desperate disconnection. Your Dreams, despite its impulse to hide, faces the reader head-on in an intimate unmasking, still grasping for closeness in a world of limits.
“Simple words. Deep emotions … beyond prose to another plane. Openness that pours through you.”
Jack Skelley, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Thomas Moore is one of the best writers the world has in stock.”
Dennis Cooper
2023, English
Softcover, 180 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Salitter Workings / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Number 8 of Salitter Workings' benign criminal enterprise in Lulu/Exoteric archiving.
"Like so many novels, this book is the story of a love affair. What is less usual is that Jonathan, an artist, is almost thirty when the story starts, while Serge is a boy of eight. Jonathan had got to know Serge and his mother Barbara in Paris the previous year. Tired of the city and confused by the stress of this relationship, Jonathan shut himself away in a remote village. But his retreat is disturbed when Barbara needs someone to look after Serge for the summer while she travels abroad. Like all lovers, Jonathan and Serge create their own microcosm of domestic and erotic ritual, but theirs is a world that shatters on contact with the surrounding society.
Published by Editions de Minuit, a leading literary press, Tony Duvert is respected in France for both fiction and essays, but the uncompromising motif that pervades his work has up till now barred him from reaching English readers. GMP are especially pleased to welcome Duvert to our translation series; his cool and matter-of-fact portrayal of a sensitive theme is a welcome alternative to the hysteria surrounding the age taboo in the English-speaking countries.
"One of the most intelligent, bold and subversive books of the year" - Le Monde""
2023, English
Softcover, 268 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Published by
Salitter Workings / New York
$35.00 - Out of stock
Number 10 of Salitter Workings' benign criminal enterprise in Lulu/Exoteric archiving.
"This extraordinary novel introduces to the English-speaking world a notable new literary talent from France whose vision has been compared to that of William S. Burroughs and Jean Genet, and whose highly original style and theme have created a considerable stir in French literary circles.
The setting of this novel is an ancient chateau located in a fog-bound region, possibly Brittany, complete with a forbidden cellar in which hang seven bodies, all victims of horrible sexual assaults. The chatelaine is a sinister doctor and her elderly husband, aided by a depraved young henchman, Marco. The inmates in this strange castle are a gang of boys ranging in age from eight to fourteen, rounded up from various city slums and peasant hovels, and purchased from their families for the price of a fishing boat or the side of a pig. The boys are well fed and clothed and allowed every freedom, but on certain afternoons and evenings they must entertain the highly respected gentlemen who have paid well for the privilege of their company.
Strange Landscape is a luminous and haunting work which critics have called a fable of primeval innocence, in which "evil" plays as important a role as "good." The children are creatures living in an Eden before the Fall. Thus they are as innocently free to fall in love with each other as they are to sail their rafts down the river. Duvert's originality of style has been the subject of heated controversy in Paris literary circles. André Delmas, writing in Le Monde, said: "What is so utterly startling in Duvert is the way he transforms our notion of novelistic time." In France, Duvert is rapidly becoming known as one of the most important new voices on the literary horizon.
Tony Duvert was born in 1945. He completed his first novel, Récidive by the age of twenty-one, and it was published in France in 1967. Since then he has also written Le Voyageur, Interdit de séjour, and Portrait d'homme couteau. Strange Landscape, the first of his works to be published in the United States, was described by Le Nouvel Observateur as "the finest of all Duvert's books." Duvert was awarded the 1973 Prix Médicis."
2002, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$49.00 - In stock -
Richard Bruce Nugent (1906—1987) was a writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality who lived at the centre of the Harlem Renaissance. Protege of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for many years as the only African-American writer willing to clearly pronounce his homosexuality in print. Selections from his writings, paintings, and erotic art-deco drawings-mostly unpublished or scattered in rare and obscure publications-are collected here for the first time. A contributor to the landmark publication FIRE!! and resident of the notorious Niggeratti Manor, Nugent drew heavily upon his own experiences in his art. Nugent also appeared on Broadway in Porgy (the 1927 play) and Run, Little Chillun (1933).
Thomas H. Wirth, a close friend of Nugent's during the last years of the artist's life, has assembled a selection of Nugent's writings, including his best-known piece, "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade," and some of his poems and short non-fiction. The visual art selections include many of Nugent's sketches, as well as a number of his paintings. Wirth has written an introduction providing biographical information about Nugent's life and situating his art in relation to the visual and literary currents that influenced him. A foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. emphasises the importance of Nugent for African American history and culture. Outliving virtually all other Harlem Renaissance figures, Nugent became a valuable resource to historians during his later years and is quoted in many works about the Harlem Renaissance era. This book offers a trove of hitherto unavailable primary source material and original art.
"The list of gay and lesbian African Americans is impressive and long, but it is surely headed by Bruce Nugent...[Wirth] does us an immeasurable favor by bringing together this collection of Nugent's poems, stories, essays, and visual art, along with a biographical sketch and a thoughtful interpretation. One of the key figures in both the creative world of the Harlem Renaissance and the complex underground world of gay culture, Bruce Nugent at last speaks here for himself."-from the Foreword, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. "Nugent is one of the best-known unknowns of the Harlem Renaissance - widely quoted by its chroniclers and revered by people interested in black gay history. By restoring his place in history and making his work widely available for scrutiny, this book performs an invaluable service. Wirth's introduction also provides an extraordinary tour of the gay side of the Renaissance and vivid glimpses of bohemian life in Harlem and the arts circles Nugent moved in." - George Chauncey, author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World
2023, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 21.5 x 13.9 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$33.00 - In stock -
A textual and historigraphical odyssey imbued with queer intergenerational yearning and loss.
Don’t Leave Me This Way blends archival research with sexual fantasy to produce a series of sonnets inspired by Gaétan Dugas, named by Randy Shilts as “Patient Zero” of the AIDS epidemic in North America. Committed to the utopian possibilities of elegy and pornography, Don’t Leave Me This Way exploits the absurdist beauty of the cut-up technique to voice a chorus of lost spirits: poignant, vengeful, and ready to ball.
"Ever a lover eager for experience, Eric Sneathen queers the sonnet by placing a different kind of impossible love at its center: the dead of the AIDS era, whose archives so infuse these lines that our shared history comes alive. With the poet's 'promise to tell of thee like flesh forever,' this book of sticky blisses slips its readers the key to a room in literature's bathhouse, where the voices of gay lives past and present commingle."—Brian Teare
2015, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 22.23 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Rizzoli / New York
$44.00 - In stock -
The long-awaited memoir from one of the most acclaimed radical writers in American literature.
Described by the London Review of Books as one of "the most brilliant critics writing in America today," Gary Indiana is a true radical whose caustic voice has by turns haunted and influenced the literary and artistic establishments.
With I Can Give You Anything but Love, Gary Indiana has composed a literary, unabashedly wicked, and revealing montage of excursions into his life and work-from his early days growing up gay in rural New Hampshire to his escape to Haight-Ashbury in the post-summer-of-love era, the sweltering 1970s in Los Angeles, and ultimately his existence in New York in the 1980s as a bona fide downtown personality. Interspersed throughout his vivid recollections are present-day chapters set against the louche culture and raw sexuality of Cuba, where he has lived and worked occasionally for the past fifteen years. Connoisseurs will recognize in this—his most personal book yet—the same mixture of humor and realism, philosophy and immediacy, that have long confused the definitions of genre applied to his writing.
Vivid, atmospheric, revealing, and entertaining, this is an engrossing read and a serious contribution to the genres of gay and literary memoir.
Gary Indiana is a writer, playwright, filmmaker, and artist. He is the author of seven novels, including Do Everything in the Dark and The Shanghai Gesture, as well as several plays, collections of poetry and nonfiction, and essays in publications from Art in America to Vice. His visual art appeared in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
1977, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$200.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of this remarkable issue of the original Semiotext(e) journal, published and edited by Sylvère Lotringer between 1974—1985, with later book-length issues appearing in the 1990s. This key issue, Anti-Oedipus: From Psychoanalysis to Schizopolitics, was published hot on the heels of the publication of Deleuze and Guattari's seminal "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia", published by Viking in 1977. This issue of the journal explores the issues raised by Deleuze and Guattari, whilst searching for their practical applications. Features major contributions by Sylvère Lotringer, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Jean-François Lyotard, Guy Hocquenghem, Antonin Artaud, Jacques Donzelot, John Rajchman, et al.
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.
Very Good copy with some wear and usual tanning to the spine, raw paper stock edges. Spine and binding undamaged.
2024, English
Softcover, 68 pages, 22 x 14 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$44.00 - In stock -
Self-published in 1968, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves collects dozens of poems written by Martin Wong between 1966 and 1968. Hand-written in a signature calligraphic style that he was just beginning to develop, the poems ebb and flow visually across the page, much like the fluctuating characters, scenes, and moods that inhabit them. This was Wong’s first book of poetry and it contains a double cover showcasing intricate drawings of skeletal angels and other tableaux, as well as a folded, looseleaf broadsheet containing two poems and a drawing of a boney leaf.
The poems were written during a relatively free period for the artist, shortly after he dropped out of Berkeley and began exploring San Francisco at the height of the hippy movement. The poems range from surrealist and pastoral descriptions of the urban subculture that surrounded him to downtrodden, travel-weary biographical entries that are both lonely and tender. Footprints, Poems, and Leaves functions like a journal capturing Wong’s tumultuous life in this period, which included being arrested at a queer, drug-fueled house party (along with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn) and a stay in a mental institution in late 1967 and early 1968. Around the time of the book’s publication, Wong enrolled in Humboldt State University to finish his degree, beginning a new chapter for the artist.
Despite the dark backdrops of many of the works, the writing displays a playfulness with form and language and a sense of humor that can be seen throughout Wong’s later work as well. Altogether, Footprints, Poems, and Leaves creates a rich tapestry of visual poetry that is both a product of its time and the budding artistic mind of a young Martin Wong.
Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. Wong was active in the performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light before moving to New York in 1978. He exhibited for two decades at notable downtown galleries including EXIT ART, Semaphore, and P·P·O·W, among others, before his passing in San Francisco from an AIDS related illness. His work is represented in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, among others. Human Instamatic, a comprehensive retrospective, opened at the Bronx Museum of The Arts in November 2015, before traveling to the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2016 and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2017. In 2022, the first extensive, touring exhibition of Wong’s work in Europe, Martin Wong: Malicious Mischief, opened at Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in Madrid before traveling to KW Institute of Contemporary Art (Berlin), Camden Art Centre (London), and Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam).
Managing Editor (2024): James Hoff
Managing Designer (2024): Rick Myers