World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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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.
2023, English
Hardcover, 312 pages, 23 x 26.5 cm
Published by
RM / Barcelona
$135.00 - In stock -
The first overview in a decade of the dazzling Surrealist universe of Leonora Carrington—artist, author, occultist, feminist.
In recent years, the art and fiction of Surrealist painter and author Leonora Carrington have received much mainstream recognition, but—until now—there has been no authoritative overview of her work. Divided into 10 sections, Revelation introduces Carrington’s singular artistic universe, displaying an extensive array of her wide-ranging creations (including paintings, drawings and tapestries) and fusing a chronological narrative of her life with a study of the most prominent themes in her work—from her training and early influences in England and Florence to her contact with the Surrealists in Paris, through her time in Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, her traumatic experiences in Spain, her immigration to New York and her new homeland in Mexico. Punctuating the reproductions are archival materials, book excerpts and documentary photographs.
Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) was a British-born artist, Surrealist painter and novelist, famed for her narrative scenes inhabited by mystical figures participating in curious rituals. After fleeing Europe during World War II, she lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, where she was a founding member of the women's liberation movement.
2023, English
Hardcover, 184 pages, 30.5 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Art Institute of Chicago / Chicago
Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City
$85.00 - In stock -
This major new hardcover publication offers a definitive look at the artistic practice of Remedios Varo (1908–1963) following her emigration from Spain to Mexico City in 1941. Her work from 1955 to 1963 made a lasting contribution to modern art and the legacy of Surrealism. In Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, fresh historical and material findings establish the integral relationship between Varo’s layered interests—in alchemy, architecture, magic, mysticism, philosophy, and science—and her beguiling technical approach to art making. Essays detail specific works’ complex stories and spectacular surfaces. An illustrated taxonomy of Varo’s artistic techniques, including automatic mark making as well as careful manipulation of materials and media, offers new insights into the artist’s craft. An illustrated inventory of a major portion of Varo’s library—published here for the first time—reveals the artist’s engagement with a wide range of subjects. Stunning new photography of many of her artworks are presented within a dynamic geometric design inspired by the artist’s work. Situating Varo as a woman working in midcentury Mexico City and living among a tight-knit community of local and emigre artists, poets, and thinkers, the catalogue illuminates the complex worldview that shaped her search for individual and collective transcendence.
2018, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 20.3 x 13.2 cm
Published by
Strange Attractor / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
A literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape and esoteric belief.
Trees rigged up to the wireless radio heavens. A fax machine used to decode the language of hurricanes. A broadcast ghost that hijacked a television station to terrorize a city. A failed computer factory in the desert with a slap-back echo resounding into ruin.
In High Static, Dead Lines, media historian and artist Kristen Gallerneaux weaves a literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape, and esoteric belief. Essays and fictocritical interludes are arranged to evoke a network of ley lines for the “sonic spectre” to travel through—a hypothetical presence that manifests itself as an invisible layer of noise alongside the conventional histories of technological artifacts.
The objects and stories within span from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, touching upon military, communications, and cultural history. A connective thread is the recurring presence of sound—audible, self-generative, and remembered—charting the contentious sonic histories of paranormal culture.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo
$360.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 3, 1970, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With gorgeous graphic design and (Aleister Crowley) cover by graphic designer Heikichi Harata, this issue's special feature is ‘Eros and Theater’, edited by Shūji Terayama and Masahiko Akuta with contributions by Terayama, photographer Hajime Sawatari, writer Taruho Inagaki, director Takahiko Iimura, anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, playwright Yasunari Takahashi, director and cinematographer Sakumi Hagiwara, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Rio Kishida, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.
Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Lemon Inc. / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Inaugural 1971 issue of legendary Japanese underground arts periodical, Black Magazine (or Black Notebook), a pioneering platform of the 1970s subculture in Tokyo. A magazine like no-other, each issue "a paradise of 1970's heretical culture", introduces a new wave of illustrators and photographers, radical criticism, avant-garde comics, sadistic literature, poetry, underground film and theatre, and all manner of transgressive, esoteric and erotic material, alongside well-known authors... This scarce first issue with incredible cover by Japanese illustrator Ken Katayama, features work/contributions by author Izumi Suzuki, film director Michio Okabe, artist Genpei Akasegawa, critic Junzo Ishiko, author Boris Vian, film director Eiichi Uchida, film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori, author Mieko Kanai, music critic Masaaki Hiraoka, artist Koichi Tanigawa, manga artist Shigeru Sugiura, graphic designer Mad Amano, doll artist Shimon Yotsuya, illustrator G. Akechi, art critic Junzo Ishiko, art critic Yoshida Yoshie, film director Toshio Matsumoto, graphic artist Keiichi Tanaami, author Koji Suzuki, artist Toshio Saeki, manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, manga artist Mori Masaki, manga artist Mitsuhiko Yoshida, artist Tsunehisa Kimura, playwright Jūrō Kara, and many more. A lot of great things started in the pages of this unique magazine. A highly recommended publication!
Good—Very Good copy, general wear/age.
1971, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Lemon Inc. / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
Third 1971 issue of legendary Japanese underground arts periodical, Black Magazine (or Black Notebook), a pioneering platform of the 1970s subculture in Tokyo. A magazine like no-other, each issue "a paradise of 1970's heretical culture", introduces a new wave of illustrators and photographers, radical criticism, avant-garde comics, sadistic literature, poetry, underground film and theatre, and all manner of transgressive, esoteric and erotic material, alongside well-known authors... This third issue, themed "Heaven and Hell", features incredible cover by renowned Japanese doll artist (and female doll actor) Simon Yotsuya, and contributions by ero guro master Toshio Saeki, artist Genpei Akasegawa, art critic Junzo Ishiko, "Funeral Parade of Roses" director Toshio Matsumoto, Butoh dancer Natsu Nakajima, poet and critic Akiko Baba, photographer Masatoshi Naitō, manga artist Ryuzan Aki, literary critic Katsutarō Isogai, illustrator Akechi Goro, writer Masaki Umehara, author Utagawa Taiga, literary critic Nobuo Kasahara, essayist Shinichi Kusamori, critic Hidetomo Kanaoka, illustrator (Flower Travellin' Band) Shinobu Ishimaru, manga artist Shigeru Sugiura, scholar Aoi Suenaga, artist Takahashi Shōtei, illustrator Yosuke Inoue, and many more. A lot of great things started in the pages of this unique magazine. A highly recommended publication!
Good copy, general light wear/age/some creasing to corners, tanning.
1994, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 212 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of "Modern Sexuality Bizarre", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1994, an in-depth study of Japanese "abnormality" and the sexual bizarre in modern society, from its origins through to the culture of 'Ero-Guro Nonsense' — a period ranging from the end of the Taisho era (1912—1926) to the beginning of the Showa era (1926—1989). Akita discuss' the history of sexual media and the modern era of the bizarre with emphasis on its influence on psychology and sexual customs. From "The Dawn of Metamorphosis Research" and "Grotesque Trends" of modern pioneers of eroticism in Japan, including the legendary ero-guro magazines "Hentai Documents" and "Grotesque", their editors and authors Kitaaki Umehara and Kiyoshi Sakai, to othe rearly examples of modern obscene publishing, books of Showa modern bizarre, the modern female body and the beauty era, publishing of criminal sciences and the study of sexual criminals, the torture arts and Seiu Ito "the father of modern kinbaku", hentai psychology and the female viewpoint in criminal psychoogy, postwar marital theory, and more, all subjects illustrated in b/w. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity from the fringes to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) mainstream Japanese audience. "Modern Sexuality Bizarre" is one of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine "textured" and illustrated dust jacket.
1989, English
3 Vols. softcovers, 500 + 560 + 584 pages, 23.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$190.00 - Out of stock
Complete set (3 volumes) of ZONE : Fragments for a History of the Human Body, published in 1989 by Zone Books, and all long out-of-print. The forty-eight essays and photographic dossiers in these three volumes examine the history of the human body as a field where life and thought intersect. They show how different cultures at different times have entwined physical capacities and mental mechanisms in order to construct a body adapted to moral ideas or social circumstances — the body of a charismatic citizen or a visionary monk, a mirror image of the world or a reflection of the spirit.
Each volume emphasizes a particular perspective. Part 1 explores the human body’s relationship to the divine, to the bestial, and to the machines that imitate or simulate it. Part 2 covers the junctures between the body’s “outside” and “inside” by studying the manifestations — or production — of the soul and the expression of the emotions and, on another level, by examining the speculations inspired by cenesthesia, pain, and death. Part 3 brings into play the classical opposition between organ and function by showing how organs or bodily substances can be used to justify or challenge the way human societies function and, conversely, how political and social functions tend to make the bodies of the persons filling them the organs of a larger body — the social body or the universe as a whole.
Among the contributors to Fragments for a History of the Human Body are Mark Elvin, Catherine Gallagher, Françoise Héritier-Augé, Julia Kristeva, William R. LaFleur, Thomas W. Laqueur, Jacques Le Goff, Nicole Loraux, Mario Perniola, Hillel Schwartz, Jean Starobinski, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Caroline Walker Bynum.
“ZONE is unequivocally the most innovative, informative, and intellectually stimulating journal I have ever encountered…It belongs in all but the smallest personal, public, and academic collections.” —Library Journal
Very Good copies all, only light wear, light page tanning. All first editions, second printings.
1968 / 1969, Japanese / French
4 Vols., softcover, approx. 1000 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$340.00 - Out of stock
Complete 4 issue run of Le Sang Et La Rose — a masterpiece of the Japanese underground! Opening with Kishin Shinoyama's photographic portraits of Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian and onward through one thousand pages exploring the outer limits of subversive human potential!
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!) The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
All Good—VG copies with general wear and age.
1996, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 84 pages, 27.5 x 21.5 cm
Signed by Wes Benscoter,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fresh Blood Studios / Texas
$200.00 - In stock -
Insanely rare copy of "The Deadliest Art Magazine Ever Unearthed", Drawing Blood, issue no. 3, Spring / Summer 1996, with cover art and hand-signed colour centrefold by Wes Benscoter (illustrator for Slayer, Mortician, Kreator, Deceased, Cattle Decapitation, etc). This short-lived underground dark fantasy art / death metal magazine was self-published and printed in Texas in the mid 1990s in very limited numbers, dedicating its pages to the demonic dark arts — a new generation of gothic horror fantasy artists, professional and unknown, lavishly reproducing their artworks in glossy colour and b/w galleries, alongside interviews with the artists. It also features a tremendous line-up of exclusive band interviews by the editors and fellow contributors — this issue has Cannibal Corpse, Celtic Frost, Napalm Death, Samael, At The Gates, Hypocrisy, Moonspell, Hellwitch, Horror of Horrors, Judecca, As The Sea Parts, Descend. Visual artists featured this issue include Wes Benscoter (cover and signed pin-up), Lars Fruth, Lorianne Crolla Mychajluk, Brian Viveros, Nina Kempf, Vincent Meyer, Alain Vourna, Nizin, Skott Kautman, Troy Dunmire, Ty Remy, Alan Clayton, Will Lee, Andy Knerr, Mark Riddick. Edited by S.C. Carr. Nothing else like it, and the best context for this work, before the great flattening of CG art and the internet.
Very Good copy, well preserved.
1996, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Don't judge a book by it's cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the second volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This second volume, "Deathtpia in Suburbia", has the feature theme of Horror! Bizarre! Bizarre! Cruelty! and is packed to the absolute brim with "corpses, freaks, spectacles, murders, suicides, autopsies, rapes, sickness, pain, accident, war, religious rituals, violence, forensics, foetuses. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Suehiro Maruo (ero guro manga artist), Teruo Ishii (ero guro film director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, hara-kiri, murder, rape, slaughterhouse, forensic books, international underground magazines, Photobook of World Diseases, City of Sodom, corpses on the internet, Underground Baby Contest, Atlas of Dermatology, complete guide to Freaks movies, the Garbage Pail Kids, religious ceremonies, animal deformities, Interview with "The King of Cult" ero guro film director Teruo Ishii, bizarro sex, acrotomophila, artist Joel Peter Witkin's world, interview with Masaaki Aoyama, interview with corpse photographer Kotaro Kobayashi (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Billy, etc.), photography of George Dureau, interview with fetish film director and producer Kaoru Adachi, interview with experimental film director Shozin Fukui (Metal Days, Gerorisuto, Caterpillar, 964 Pinocchio, Rubber's Lover...), article on "Serial Killers & Record Junkies" by Toshihiko Hironaka (of Boris, Balzac, Hellbent fame), and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm.
Includes "gorgeous" 24-page high-quality corpse photo booklet feature and cover art by Trevor Brown.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Don't judge a book by it's Trevor Brown cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the third volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This third volume, "The World You Don't Know", has the feature theme of exposing "a reality erased from everyday life", which sums it up... packed to the absolute brim with "freaks, corpses, bestiality, autopsies, fetal executions, lynchings, traffic accidents, plane crashes, amputee, heteromorphic animals, freak shows, corpse museums, shemales, etc. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Hideshi Hino (horror manga artist / Guinea Pig director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, human intersection, murder art show, lobster boy, 3D stereo photography hall of horrors, donkey fucker (please no!), strange diseases of the world, amputee lovers, siamese twins, deformed children, amazing Photo Press historical stories, animal deformities, huge Hideshi Hino art gallery, book guide and interview, ALARMA! photo gallery, Trevor Brown art gallery, corpse photography, columns and features on and by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Ultra Negative, Billy, etc.), Father Yod (YaHoWha 13) record guide, Medical Atlas by Naruhiko Tanaka, lots of noise record reviews by Masami Akita (Merzbow) inc. Smell & Quim, M.B., Lustmord, Ramleh, Genocide Organ, Richard Ramirez, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Whitehouse, Extreme Hair Stench, Genital Masticator, Traci Lords Loves Noise, Morder, etc., interview with artist Wes Benscoter (heavy metal illustrator for Slayer, Mortician, Kreator, Deceased, Cattle Decapitation, etc) on the occasion of his NG Gallery body painting show, complete Freak book library, and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm. Lots of full colour gore.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
1965, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 22.5 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Eric Losfeld / Paris
$120.00 - In stock -
The definitive Eric Losfield, Editions du Terrain Vague, 1965 hardcover illustrated edition of L'Ecran Démoniaque by renowned German-French film critic Lotte H. Eisner (1896—1983). Emigrating from Nazi Germany in 1933, the journalist and film critic met Henri Langlois and together co-founded the Cinémathèque Française, in 1934. In 1952, Lotte H. Eisner published her critically acclaimed book on German expressionist film, L'Ecran Démoniaque (The Demon Screen). A beautiful edition, complete with full filmography, index and plates.
The Golden Age of German cinema began at the end of the First World War and ended shortly after the coming of sound. From The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari onwards the principal films of this period were characterized by two influences: literary Expressionism, and the innovations of the theatre directors of this period, in particular Max Reinhardt. This book demonstrates the connection between German Romanticism and the cinema through Expressionist writings. It discusses the influence of the theatre: the handling of crowds; the use of different levels, and of selective lighting on a predominately dark stage; the reliance on formalized gesture; the innovation of the intimate theatre. Against this background the principal films of the period are examined in detail. The author explains the key critical concepts of the time, and surveys not only the work of the great directors, such as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau, but also the contribution of their writers, cameramen, and designers.
As The Times Literary Supplement wrote, "Mme. Eisner is first and foremost a film critic, and one of the best in the world. She has all the necessary gifts." And it described the original French edition of this book as "one of the very few classics of writing on the film and arguably the best book on the cinema yet written."
Original French language.
Lotte H. Eisner (1896—1983) was a German-French writer, film critic, archivist and curator. Eisner worked initially as a film critic in Berlin, then in Paris where in 1936 she met Henri Langlois with whom she founded the Cinémathèque Française.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket preserved under original plastic jacket, minor edge wear.
1996, English
Softcover (stiff french-folds), 280 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Academy Editions / London
$140.00 - Out of stock
"It was Joseph Beuys who made us think of thinking as sculpture. It was Robert Filliou who said that invention replaced composition and that this broke down the barriers between the arts. I found working with metal unique, I loved the materials and the tools. But vast sculpture that worked with the mental ability of living people seemed much more of a timely thing to me. That was 1977. I changed from metal sculpture to mental sculpture."—Louwrien Wijers
Rare first 1996 edition of this unique publication by Dutch Fluxus artist and writer Louwrien Wijers, published in London by Academy Editions.
Inspired by artists Joseph Beuys and Robert Filliou, this collection of interviews grew from the author's passionate belief that a meeting and cross-fertilisation of some of the world's greatest minds could help break down barriers between the different disciplines - art, science, spirituality and economics - leading to an increased global tolerance and understanding. This book contains ground-breaking interviews with some of the most significant thinkers of the late twentieth century including Dalai Lama, Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Robert Filliou, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, Sogyal Rinpoche, Rupert Sheldrake, Francisco Varela and Harish Johari. These previously unpublished documents date from the period 1978-1987. With the addition of a large number of rare archive photographs, this book constitutes a unique part of the history of the avant-garde as well as proposing a new holistic way of looking at the world.
Writing As Sculpture contains the longest interview ever given by Andy Warhol.
"This publication 'Writing as Sculpture' shows how Joseph Beuys sent me to Andy Warhol with the same questions I had put to him, and how Andy Warhol sent me on to the Dalai Lama of Tibet, again with the same questions. When the answers of the Dalai Lama were so very similar to the answers Joseph Beuys had given, I wrote him a postcard from Dharamsala, India, as soon as I let the Dalai Lama's abode. On the card - it was an Indian colourprint of the Tibetan flag - I said: 'Dear Joseph, you have a brother here in the Himalayas, who thinks exactly the same way about the problems of today as you do.' Back in Europe, talking to Joseph Beuys on the phone, he told me: 'Louwrien, I want to meet the Dalai Lama and I want to make a permanent co-operation with him. This way we will make Eurasia happen.'[...]"—Louwrien Wijers
1977, English
Softcover, 545 pages, 27.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scribners / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Music of the Whole Earth from 1977.
"I look upon the musician/composer," David Reck has said, "as a carpenter of sound (also a poet/philosopher/and highwire artist). I am delighted by the processes of making and building (the bricks can be invisible) and doing and thinking. I like to be surprised (by myself and others). But I study music, and play it, primarily for that magical touch, an emotional contact with music itself that mystically makes me (and others) more human, more attuned to the ecology of ourselves and the world."
In this extraordinary 545-page book, ethnomusicologist David Reck "invites you to discover the musical universe. MUSIC OF THE WHOLE EARTH explores the richness and variety of sound, instruments, and music from many different cultures and a great variety of musical traditions. Tribal, folk, and classical music of India, Tibet, China, Japan, the American Indians, Southeast Asia, Java and Bali, Oceania/Polynesia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas — including pop, rock, jazz, soul, and country. The mythical origins of music, endangered musics, ensembles, the ecology of sound, and music in relation to art, magic, ritual, theater, dance, and life-styles. The anatomy and mechanics of instruments, with special sections on how to make them yourself. Profusely illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps, and diagrams, MUSIC OF THE WHOLE EARTH narrows the gap between the audience and the performer and between our own musical culture and that of other peoples."
Very Good copy.
1970, Japanese
Hardcover (w. illustrated slipcase), 266 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Sonorama / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1970 slipcased hardcover edition of manga master Shigeru Mizuki's absolute classic illustrated encyclopedia of his beloved Yōkai (Japanese supernatural beings and phenomena), published in this gorgeous hardcover edition in illustrated slipcase by Ashahi Sonorama, here for the first time in 1970 and long out-of-print. A must for any lover of the illustrated weird by a master of the genre.
Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015) was one of Japan’s most respected artists. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan’s latest craze—manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.
VG in VG dj. Beautiful copy.
1985, Japanese
Hardcover, 264 pages, 23 x 16 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Sonorama / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
1985 revised edition of manga master Shigeru Mizuki's absolute classic 1970 illustrated encyclopedia of his beloved Yōkai (Japanese supernatural beings and phenomena), published in this gorgeous hardcover clothbound edition by Ashahi Sonorama, long out-of-print. A must for any lover of the illustrated weird by a master of the genre.
Shigeru Mizuki (1922–2015) was one of Japan’s most respected artists. A creative prodigy, he lost an arm in World War II. After the war, Mizuki became one of the founders of Japan’s latest craze—manga. He invented the yokai genre with GeGeGe no Kitaro, his most famous character, who has been adapted for the screen several times, as anime, live action, and video games. In fact, a new anime series has been made every decade since 1968, capturing the imaginations of generations of Japanese children. A researcher of yokai and a real-life ghost hunter, Mizuki traveled to over sixty countries to engage in fieldwork based on spirit folklore. In his hometown of Sakaiminato, one can find Shigeru Mizuki Road, a street decorated with bronze statues of his Kitaro characters.
VG in VG dj.
1918 / ?, English
Softcover, 597 pages, 26.5 x 19 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kessinger / Montana
$70.00 - Out of stock
Complete academic facsimile reprint of the original historical 1918 edition. Includes the introduction by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.
"Alchemy is philosophy; it is the philosophy, the seeking out of the Sophia in the mind."—Walter Leslie Wilmshurst
Mary Anne wrote A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery... at her father’s request, and in parallel with his own composition of a lengthy poem on the same subject. Thomas South (her father) paid for the book to be published anonymously in 1850, but without having read it, trusting his daughter’s judgement. Reading it after publication, he believed Mary Anne had revealed many hermetic secrets that were better left unpublished, and therefore bought up the remaining stock and, with his daughter, burnt them, along with the unfinished manuscript of his poem. Only a few copies of the book survived. Ms. Atwood published nothing after A Suggestive Inquiry...
Chapters: Theory of Transmutation; The Golden Treatise; The True Subject; The Mysteries; Experimental Method; Manifestation of the Matter; Mental Requisites and Impediments; The Gross Work; The Six Keys; Rewards and Potencies.
Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, in his 1918 introduction to the reissue, laments that the thoughts of her later years did not find fruition in another work. He claims, however, that there is much to be found in her papers, of which he was then in possession.
Good copy with some general wear, fold to back cover, very light erase-able pencil marginalia from previous (almost entirely as an index to inside front cover, very little through contents).
1971, English
Softcover, 452 pages, 21.4 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Dover / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
First English 1971 edition of Herbert Silberer's examinations of alchemy and the occult, and his attempts to correlate the two crafts to the pursuit of psychoanalysis. First published in 1917, this text represents the extensive investigations Herbert Silberer undertook in order to map occurrences in the occult with the ascendant psychoanalytic disciplines present in the Vienna School of which he was part. This text is marked by its depth of research, with sources such as Hermes Trismegistus, Flamel, Lacinius, Michael Meier, Paracelsus, and Boehme quoted and drawn upon in service of Silberer's thesis. The support of alchemy as a spiritual movement, on the same level as the yoga traditions of the Indian subcontinent, is also notable.
Very Good copy.
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 24 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Allen Lane / UK
$55.00 - Out of stock
First 1971 English hardcover edition of Magic, Supernaturalism and Religion, the classic illustrated study by Swiss-American Surrealist painter, engraver, and occultist Kurt Seligmann (1900—1962).
In this fascinating study the late Kurt Seligmann, the surrealist painter, gives a history of magical ideas and manifestations in the Western world to reveal the aesthetic value of magic and its influence on creative imagination. He brings forth a vivid picture of the religio-magical beliefs of ancient, medieval and modern times. He shows the growth and development of the magical world-view in its successive stages, beginning with Mesopotamian and Persian magic, assimilating Hebrew thought, Greek philosophy and Christian theology, through the mystical concept of a unified universe with its manifold correspondences and interrelations, which finds expression in pictorial motifs and symbols, in the magical arts of astrology, divination, physiognomy, chiromancy, fortune cards and other branches of 'occult science'. Along the way he presents some colourful personalities: Nostradamus, Dr Faustus, Pico della Mirandola, Agrippa, Trimethius, Gebelin, Mesmer, Cagliostro, Saint- Germain and others.
Fine copy in Near Fine—Very Good dust jacket.
1990, English
Softcover, 277 pages, 15.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Syracuse University Press / Syracuse
$60.00 - In stock -
Edited by Donald A. Beecher and Massimo Ciavolella
Originally published in Paris in French in 1610, Ferrand's treatise is an example of erotomania in the late Renaissance.
"An exemplary critical edition of Ferrand's treatise of 1610 on erotic melancholy, preceded by an introductory essay (of nine chapters) in which they examine the place of erotic ideas in Renaissance culture.... A compendium of 2,000 years of ideas about love."—The Times Literary Supplement
"Ferrand was one of the last great encyclopedists, and we owe a huge debt to the two distinguished scholars who have undertaken the immense task of translating and editing his engaging treatise.... A unique summa on erotomania and a work destined to become a classic."—English Studies in Canada
"An impressive tome that marks indeed a milestone in our knowledge of sexology."—Renaissancee Quarterly
Very Good of the first 1990 English translation edition.
2007, English
Hardcover (w. audio cd), 48 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Thrill Jockey Record / Chicago
$10.00 $5.00 - In stock -
First, out-of-print edition. Baltimore's Higgs is best known for his work as the lyricist and frontman of Lungfish, whose work on Dischord spans three decades. This release is a limited edition CD + full colour 48-page hardcover book of Daniels's paintings and writings and the second release in the Thrill Jockey book series (the first being "Hokane" by Aki Tsuyuko). The CD of guitar and piano drones, jew's harp, and banjo recorded by Daniel is inserted in the front cover of the book.
As New.
1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
Scarce original 1987 hardcover edition of Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, published by Thames & Hudson, London. Joscelyn Godwin explores music's effects on matter, living things, and human behavior. Turning to metaphysical accounts of the higher worlds and theories of celestial harmony, the author follows the path of musical inspiration on its descent to Earth, illuminating the archetypal currents that lie beneath Western musical history.
The power of music is spiritual. It is, for many people, the principal point of access to a consciousness beyond that of ordinary life. Musicians and listeners alike can read analyses of the physics or the psychology, the technique or the history of music; but there is a contemporary need, as Joscelyn Godwin reveals in this challenging book, for informed discussion of the almost too obvious fact that there is something supernatural in musical experience. This is that universal dimension of which Plato, Kepler, Rameau and Novalis wrote, and of which Wagner said: 'I feel that I am one with this vibrating Force, that it is omniscient, and that I can draw upon it to an extent that is limited only by my own capacity." The spiritual power of music surfaces in folklore, myth and mystical experience, refusing as music always does- to be bound by narrow rationalism. It embraces Heaven as well as Earth, the music of the spheres as well as the music that is played and sung.
Joscelyn Godwin begins his closely argued study with music's perceived effects on matter, on plants, on animals and on human behaviour. He then turns inward, to the absorbing accounts that have been given of the higher worlds that are the birthplace of Harmony, and of the realm of pure Intelligence which lies both within and beyond. To hear music, however, we need composers and performers, and the argument then follows Harmony on its descent from Heaven to Earth. This descent takes place in the musician's inspiration, in the listener's experience, and in the world at large; for archetypal currents run beneath the surface of musical history, in the centuries that encompass the polyphony of Perotin or J.S. Bach and the psychic impact of Webern, Stockhausen and rock'n'roll. A self-contained final section embodies the fullest account ever given of ancient and modern theoretical systems of celestial harmony, from Pythagoras to Marius Schneider, Rudolf Steiner and Gurdjieff.
Joscelyn Godwin was born in Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England on January 16, 1945. He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College (Music Scholar), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (Music Scholar; B.A., 1965, Mus. B., 1966, M.A. 1969). Coming to the USA in 1966, he did graduate work in Musicology at Cornell University (Ph. D., 1969; dissertation: "The Music of Henry Cowell") and taught at Cleveland State University for two years before joining the Colgate University Music Department in 1971. He has taught at Colgate ever since.
Near Fine in VG—NF dust jacket. Beautifully preserved, unread.
1964, Spanish
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Mexico City
$300.00 - In stock -
Very rare 1964 catalogue of surrealist Remedios Varo (1908—1963), recorded as the first book devoted solely to the work of Varo, published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition presented by the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, August 3—31, 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with the paintings of Varo reproduced in colour and b/w, plus portrait of the artist. Introduction by Horacio Flores-Sanchez, essays by Raul Flores Guerrero and Carlos Pellicer. Texts in Spanish. A wonderful historical document of a visionary artist.
Remedios Varo (1908—1963)
During her childhood in Spain, Varo was influenced by her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled. Following her graduation from art school, she pursued Surrealism and political change. She moved to Paris in 1937, later finding that she could not return to Spain following the Spanish Civil War. Varo associated and exhibited with the Surrealists, exploring magic, alchemy, and analytical psychology. As World War II threatened Paris, Spanish refugees came under threat. Varo was arrested and held in early 1940. After her release, she fled Paris in the face of the Nazi invasion, and by late 1941 had secured passage to Mexico. In Mexico, Varo remained friends with fellow refugees from her European Surrealist circle, including artist Leonora Carrington, who became her closest friend and collaborator. In the late 1940s, as she supported herself through commercial illustration, Varo began to develop her mature personal style. During succeeding decades, she devoted increased time and energy to her art, and she delved further into the fantastical sources that captured her imagination. Her death of a heart attack in 1963 occurred as she was reaching new renown.
Very Good copy with light wear to boards. Previous owner inscription to inside front cover.