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 JAN 16
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
ORDERS SHIP FROM JAN 6
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
$.00 - Out of stock
The eternal clean out! New items weekly.
https://worldfoodbooks.com/category/sale
Published by World Food Books / Melbourne
$20.00 - In stock -
A World Food Books gift voucher is redeemable in our Melbourne bookshop or via our webshop (here). An e-voucher (printable pdf) will be sent to your purchase email address (please notify us if you wish to have the voucher sent to an alternate address and wish us to fill in the receiver's details on the card).
Gift vouchers can be purchased in increments of $20 (Australian Dollars) and the total amount can simply be added to by increasing the quantity in your shopping cart. eg. A quantity of 5 gift vouchers will result in an item total of $100 - a $100 gift voucher. Simply click "ADD TO CART" 5 times, or update your quantity in the shopping cart.
If you wish to purchase multiple, separate gift vouchers in one go, please just email us and we can personally prepare and email you a payment request.
Please note: Please select Pick-Up on gift voucher purchse to avoid any postage charges. Accidental postage charges will be refunded right away!
Thank you.
For any questions, please don't hesitate to email: [email protected]
1973, Japanese
Softcover, 108 pages, 28 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mainichi Shimbun / Tokyo
$300.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1973 edition of acclaimed Japanese photographer Hajime Sawatari's cult photo book "Nadia" (aka Doll Forest Museum/Nadia in the Woods). Sawatari began working as a freelancer in 1966, photographing for many leading fashion magazines in Japan. Sawatari fell in love with the Italian fashion model Nadia Galli while working with her on an advertisement back in 1971. Driven by the photographer’s desire to capture on film everything about the person he loved, Sawatari took Nadia with him on an extensive journey. Traveling around Karuizawa in the summer, Venice, Sicily and other locations in Nadia’s home country, Karuizawa in the Winter, and Tokyo, his focus on Nadia switched between viewing her as a photographic subject and a lover, resulting in Sawatari establishing his own unique semi-fictional style of “capturing a woman in a back-and-forth between reality and fiction,” which marked a clear departure from his previous female portraits, and opened a new frontier in the realm of photography. This dreamlike and intimate series of monochrome portraits of Nadia weaves a fairytale-like, visual travelogue akin to Sawatari's other cult classic of the same year, Alice. Playful, intimate and at times hallucinatory, the book closes with a lovely hand-written letter by Nadia in Japanese and a photographic portrait of Sawatari, also by Nadia. A gorgeous book.
Number 3 in Camera Mainichi's Private series.
Very Good copy, tightly bound and clean with some wear to covers, corners. Very nice copy for a book that is usually heavily damaged.
1974, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket),180 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Nippon Camera / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
First, only 1974 edition of this early photo book masterpiece by Japanese photographer Shoji Otake (1920—2015), entirely devoted to his muse, the young actress Janet Hatta. Beautiful saturated colour photography and deep b/w photogravure presenting Janet in many scenarios out in the wild west, from city to desert, and many amazing studio shoots. Lots of nudes and lots of experimentation in the manner of early 1970's books by Shinoyama, Sawatari, Tatsuki, etc. A fantastic collection.
Good copy with wear/tannign to edges of dust jacket and pages.
2024, English
Flexibound hardcover housed in an embossed black sleeve, 448 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Judd Foundation / New York
MACK / London
$150.00 - In stock -
"The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness, and scale as a chair."
Donald Judd Furniture includes more than one hundred pieces of his furniture, spanning 1970 to 1991, designed for his living and working spaces at 101 Spring Street and in Presidio County, Texas. The publication introduces readers to Donald Judd’s furniture designs, initiated during the renovation of his home and studio at 101 Spring Street in New York, and as the result of the difficulty Judd later had in furnishing his home in Marfa, Texas. These furniture designs exemplify the directness of form and presence for which his artworks are celebrated, as well as offering a distinct and unadorned functionality. In this book they are presented through detailed drawings and breakdowns of materials, and color photography exploring their placement and function within these spaces. As well as surveying a central aspect of his work, Donald Judd Furniture details Judd’s understanding of functionality, form, and his deep interest in the possibilities of design in a world of mass-production.
2024, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
National Portrait Gallery / London
$75.00 - In stock -
Enticing, ethereal photographs from two visionaries who used portraiture as an exploration of the “dream space”. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works.
‘I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.’ – Francesca Woodman, 1980
Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) experienced vastly different ways of making and understanding images. Yet the two share more similarities than expected. Both artists had brief careers lasting less than 15 years; while neither enjoyed popularity and success during their lives, they have posthumously received widespread acclaim. Their portraits feature ethereal, experimental qualities that connect them soundly across time.
The beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, includes Woodman’s and Cameron’s best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The book begins with three feature essays that consider Cameron and Woodman simultaneously and moves on to 10 thematic sections interspersing works by the two artists. Portraits to Dream In makes new connections between the work of two innovative photographers who pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired images.
Edited by Magdalene Keaney. Contributions by Helen Ennis, Katarina Jerinic.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) took up photography in the 1860s and was soon elected to both the Photographic Society of London and the Photographic Society of Scotland. She photographed her friends and family as well as notable figures of Victorian England, including Charles Darwin, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) worked in both the United States and Italy and made her first mature photograph at the age of 13. Her lifetime exhibitions include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1976); Galleria Ugo Ferrante, Rome (1978); and the Alternative Museum, New York (1980). Her artist’s book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published by Synapse Press in 1981.
2023, English
Embossed hardcover (Japanese paper w. tipped-in image), 416 pages, 24.5 x 30 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$169.00 - In stock -
Francesca Woodman made her first mature photographs at the age of thirteen and went on to create a body of work that has been critically acclaimed for its singularity of style and innovative approach to photography. Despite her lifetime accomplishments – which included solo and group exhibitions and the publication of one of her books – and her work being celebrated widely in the years since her untimely death in 1981, very little has been published about her remarkable series of artist’s books until now.
Francesca Woodman: The Artist’s Books collects for the first time every page of all eight of Francesca Woodman’s unique artist’s books in one comprehensive volume, including two newly discovered books which have never been seen before, alongside better-known titles such as Some Disordered Interior Geometries. The basis of these works is in tattered nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century journals and notebooks that Woodman collected from bookshops and flea markets in Rome in the late 1970s. She later transformed these found volumes, attaching her prints, transparencies, and written annotations to their evocative pages. These books demonstrate a sophisticated relationship to narrative and sequence and offer a new understanding of the scope of Woodman’s engagement with the book form.
2024, English
Softcover, 194 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Infinity Land Press / London
$55.00 - In stock -
(PRE—ORDER —limited quantities— due to arrive in Melbourne in early January)
"I love Wolfe Margolies’s writing. The vehemence, roughshod poetry, and its sense of having needed to exist recalls French literary scourges like Guyotat, Celine and Genet. At the same time his writing has an impassioned “anyone could do this” clarity and a beseeching tenderness that’s distinctly American and totally his. SHAME is a novel that could inspire readers to be writers and writers to be great writers."—Dennis Cooper
"SHAME is truly fantastic. A philosophical purging of a young pervert’s darkest obsessions."—Lydia Lunch
SHAME is not your enemy. SHAME aids survival, incentivizing you to blend in, thereby concealing yourself from predators and avoiding conflict with peers, while pride aids reproduction, motivating you to stand out, thereby attracting mates. Evolution did not design you to be happy, only to behave in ways which benefit your genes, in this case by disguising socially undesirable traits. SHAME is like a mother who restricts her child’s freedom in order to keep him safe. Ideally, her admonitions foster social integration, but sometimes they backfire. Sometimes her children rebel.
SHAME prevents social injury. Socialized people suppress their impermissible desires and cover the occasional aberration with hypocrisy and self-deception. The characters in this book, however, try to eradicate SHAME, by finding masochistic enjoyment in it or by transgressing so often, or getting so high, that they become numb to it. When SHAME no longer serves as a deterrent, when man seeks harmony with himself by battling his group, he trades his sense of belonging, with its accompanying inhibitions, for freedom with accompanying alienation. He makes himself an outcast, a criminal, a kamikaze for inner peace.
Following in the tradition of prison writers like Jean Genet, Jack Henry Abbott and de Sade, Wolfe Margolies’s SHAME is one of the decade's most urgent and disturbing debut novels.
Foreword by Lydia Lunch
Illustrated by Karolina Urbaniak & Wolfe Margolies
With an interview conducted by Martin Bladh
2024, English
Hardcover, 180 pages, 19 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Infinity Land Press / London
$84.00 - In stock -
(PRE—ORDER —limited quantities— due to arrive in Melbourne in early January)
In the summer of 1845, a young, wayward, and disaffected Charles Baudelaire made a suicide attempt, writing letters that were to constitute his last will and testament. It was to be one of several suicidal crises which would punctuate Baudelaire’s life over the next twenty years, acutely documented in his correspondence, where the themes of depression, debt, and death come together to delineate a life that was lived, in almost every way, against life.
Horror of Life: The Suicide Letters of Charles Baudelaire brings together a selection of Baudelaire’s letters that spans his life as a writer, from the scandal and notoriety of The Flowers of Evil, to the images of urban decay depicted in Paris Spleen, to his dossier on the ‘artificial paradises’ of hallucinogens, to the essays on the mal du siècle of 19th century modernity, to his late fragments of misanthropic autofiction, and his final days as a convalescent, disease slowly eroding both body and mind.
A delirious mixture of confession, indictment, and abdication, these letters document Baudelaire’s own dark night of the soul, a spiritual itinerary saturated with the hues of catatonic depression, a pervasive existential dysphoria, and the always-looming allure of death.
Edited, translated and with an introduction by Eugene Thacker
Artworks by Martin Bladh
Photographs by Karolina Urbaniak
1973, French
Softcover, c.40 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Belgisches Haus Köln / Köln
$120.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published to accompany an exhibition of self-taught Belgian surrealist Armand Simon (1906–1981) in 1973 at the Belgisches Haus Köln. Profusely illustrated throughout with b/w reproductions of his wonderful artworks, many inspired by Lautréamont's Maldoror and the poems by Rimbaud, accompanied by texts from Belgian poet and member of the Oulipo group, André Blavier (1922—2001) and Belgian poet and member of the Hainaut Surrealist group, Achille Chavée (1906—1969), along with excerpts of correspondences and texts by Simon. The beautiful catalogue on this elusive artist, little known outside Belgium.
Armand Simon (1906–1981) was a self-taught Belgian Surrealist artist, cartoonist and poet known for his dreamlike and thought-provoking works. Born in Mons, Belgium, in 1923 Simon discovered the 'Chants de Maldoror' by Comte de Lautréamont, a text that fascinated him and to which he devoted thousands of drawings. An extremely prolific draftsman, he developed a noir universe nourished by literary sources, of which he proposed "graphic equivalents". Dense and precise, his drawings are based on an automatism to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His ink drawings often featured enigmatic and fantastical elements, exploring themes of the subconscious, dreams, and the absurd. In the mid 1930s Simon joined the Belgian Surrealist group Rupture, established in Hainaut, and alongside Chavée, Dumont and Lefrancq, took part in L'Invention Collective, founded and published by Raoul Ubac (1910-1985) and Rene Magritte (1898-1967) in 1940. He illustrated texts by Monique Watteau and Marcel Brion, as well as Achille Chavée's 'Seven Poems of High Negligence'. Throughout his life, he remained a relatively obscure figure outside of surrealist circles, but his work continues to be appreciated for its unique and devoted contribution to the movement. Simon's legacy is preserved through his art, which remains on display in various collections and museums dedicated to Surrealist art. Simon died in Frameries in 1981.
Xavier Canonne holds a doctorate in art history from the Sorbonne (Paris) and directs the Musée de la Photographie de la Communauté française in Charleroi. Since the 1970s, he has known and frequented the Belgian surrealists, some of whom were his close friends. He has devoted various books or articles to Armand Simon, Marcel Marién, Louis Scutenaire, Max Servais, Tom Gutt, Irène Hamoir and Robert Willems.
Very Good copy, light age/tanning.
1987, French
Hardcover, 120 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Les Editeurs d'Art associés / Brussels
$90.00 - Out of stock
First 1987 hardcover edition of this monographic survey of self-taught Belgian surrealist Armand Simon (1906–1981). Profusely illustrated throughout with colour and b/w reproductions of his wonderful artworks, many inspired by Lautréamont's Maldoror and the poems by Rimbaud., accompanied by text from Belgian art historian and curator, Xavier Canonne. Also includes selections of Simon's poetic works and an illustrated biography with rare photographs. The most comprehensive book on this elusive artist, little known outside Belgium.
Armand Simon (1906–1981) was a self-taught Belgian Surrealist artist, cartoonist and poet known for his dreamlike and thought-provoking works. Born in Mons, Belgium, in 1923 Simon discovered the 'Chants de Maldoror' by Comte de Lautréamont, a text that fascinated him and to which he devoted thousands of drawings. An extremely prolific draftsman, he developed a noir universe nourished by literary sources, of which he proposed "graphic equivalents". Dense and precise, his drawings are based on an automatism to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His ink drawings often featured enigmatic and fantastical elements, exploring themes of the subconscious, dreams, and the absurd. In the mid 1930s Simon joined the Belgian Surrealist group Rupture, established in Hainaut, and alongside Chavée, Dumont and Lefrancq, took part in L'Invention Collective, founded and published by Raoul Ubac (1910-1985) and Rene Magritte (1898-1967) in 1940. He illustrated texts by Monique Watteau and Marcel Brion, as well as Achille Chavée's 'Seven Poems of High Negligence'. Throughout his life, he remained a relatively obscure figure outside of surrealist circles, but his work continues to be appreciated for its unique and devoted contribution to the movement. Simon's legacy is preserved through his art, which remains on display in various collections and museums dedicated to Surrealist art. Simon died in Frameries in 1981.
Xavier Canonne holds a doctorate in art history from the Sorbonne (Paris) and directs the Musée de la Photographie de la Communauté française in Charleroi. Since the 1970s, he has known and frequented the Belgian surrealists, some of whom were his close friends. He has devoted various books or articles to Armand Simon, Marcel Marién, Louis Scutenaire, Max Servais, Tom Gutt, Irène Hamoir and Robert Willems.
Very Good copy, light age/tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 20.2 x 13.7 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$38.00 - In stock -
A feminist paean to perversity: on remaking intimacy outside the Republic of Gender.
Seasonal begins writing sentences and thinking thoughts they never thought possible. They want to give László the pleasure of being nothing. The more they come to like him, to value his sensitivity, his sharp mind, his aesthetics, his ethics, and the more they want his respect, the easier it seems to become to think about destroying him. A new set of capacities which they had only dimly sensed are now coursing in their muscles, their cunt, their blood, their mind.
Abandoned by their Dutch partner after giving up their home and their job to follow him to the Netherlands, humanities scholar Seasonal finds themself single in a strange place for the first time in a decade.
Dipping into the rabbit hole of digital eroticism, Seasonal soon meets László, a male sub who volleys back their cerebral sexts and is seeking a dominant guide. His dating-app profile—a photo of Foucault and the ingenuous greeting “Hello, World?”—thinly veils his desire to be annihilated. It's a desire that Seasonal senses they can fulfill. But to do this means crossing the frightening gap between their desires and capacities.
Seasonal and László embark on an experiment in remaking intimacy outside the Republic of Gender. But as it continues, the two realize they are staging separate confrontations with domination: Seasonal finds they must confront their own relation to the violence and anger that marked their upbringing in working-class, small-town Australia, while László stages his own confrontation with his decision to leave Viktor Orbán's Hungary. As they attempt to improvise a theater of domination that opens up possibilities of reciprocity, the energies of their sexuality stalk this collaboration, threatening to give them exactly what they bargained or begged for.
A feminist paean to perversity in the tradition of Pauline Réage's Story of O and Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus, Anna Poletti's hello, world? dares to fully inhabit female power, and to fully face the violence, beauty, and uncharted territories of human sexuality.
"hello, World? starts with that all too familiar scenario of uprooting one's life for a partner only to be let down by them. What Seasonal does then might also be familiar to many—they go on the apps, fuck around, find out. What they find are ways of engaging intimately with others that become experiments in the relation between the body and the body-politic under what we commonly call late capitalism and might wish to call late patriarchy. The violence of both call for forms of enactment, of selves in relation, that can provide some kind of figure for them, some way of figuring them out. The delight in this book is not just in how closely observed and felt these things are, but how closely thought as well."—McKenzie Wark, author of Reverse Cowgirl
2024, English
Softcover, 213 pages, 19.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by
Twisted Spoon Press / Prague
$44.00 - In stock -
By spring 1938, Prague is a city increasingly on tenterhooks in expectation of an attack by Nazi Germany. Earlier that year the pressure of the situation produced a schism in the Surrealist Group in Czechoslovakia between Vítězslav Nezval, who wanted to continue to support the Soviet Union, and those who condemned Stalin’s show trials, purges, and executions. Nezval chronicles this tumultuous period by embedding it in a paean to Prague, wondering if the city, and everything about the city he loves, will survive the horrors that are about to be visited upon her. With Apollinaire serving as his guide, he introduces us to the cafés and pubs he would frequent, many of which no longer exist, the various neighborhoods he lived in as a destitute student, the parks where he sought solace, and the people he would meet on the street, musing on some of the figures central to his poetics, such as André Breton and Lautréamont. While at times lamenting the changing face of Prague and that Hitler might reduce it to rubble, Nezval takes us into the places that spontaneously spur him to reflect on the issues facing artists of the day and the precarious sociopolitical situation.
This translation is of the rare unabridged first edition and includes Nezval’s photographs and illustrations as well as an appendix that maps out the significant revisions made later, providing additional translations of the longer passages that were inserted as replacement for what was expunged from the original edition.
translated from the Czech by Jed Slast
photographs by the author
"The long-awaited English translation of Czech Surrealist poet Vítězslav Nezval’s seminal work of poetic prose, A Prague Flaneur is fascinating and revealing: of Nezval, Prague, interwar politics, poetry, urbane bohemianism and romance. The writing (and translation) here is often beautiful and constantly inspiring, as Nezval’s meandering sentences encapsulate his life and life in his adopted city."—Stephan Delbos, BODY
"So A Prague Flâneuris a book which provides many riches; a glimpse of Prague at a point just before catastrophe; a look at the complex personal politics which existed at the time; and an exploration of the self-censorship which took place when invasion seemed imminent. It makes for an engrossing book [...]"—Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings
"A Prague Flâneur is a lovely document of its times and, especially, place, and an appealing personal account, Nezval a very good guide also to the feel of the place -- and parts of the artistic scene there (and beyond) as well."—The Complete Review
1989, English
Softcover, 213 pages, 20.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1989 City Lights English translation, long out-of-print.
Tears of Eros is the culmination of Georges Bataille's inquiries into the relationship between violence and the sacred. Taking up such figures as Giles de Rais, Erzebet Bathory, the Marquis de Sade, El Greco, Gustave Moreau, Andre Breton, Voodoo practitioners, and Chinese torture victims, Bataille reveals their common death. This essay, illustrated with artwork from every era, was developed out of ideas explored in Death and Sexuality and Prehistoric Lascaux or the Birth of Art . In it Bataille examines death—the "little death" that follows sexual climax, the proximate death in sadomasochistic practices, and death as part of religious ritual and sacrifice. "Bataille is one of the most important writers of the century."— Michel Foucault Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. In 1959, Bataille began Tears of Eros , and it was completed in 1961, his final work. City Lights published two of his other Story of the Eye and The Impossible . Bataille died in 1962.
French essayist, philosophical theorist, and novelist, often called the "metaphysician of evil." Bataille was interested in sex, death, degradation, and the power and potential of the obscene. He rejected traditional literature and considered that the ultimate aim of all intellectual, artistic, or religious activity should be the annihilation of the rational individual in a violent, transcendental act of communion. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers have all written enthusiastically about his work.
Very Good copy, light wear to extremities/corners.
2024, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.32 x 13.34 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$37.00 - In stock -
When Jean Maleux, a young, naïve sailor, is appointed assistant keeper of the Ar-Men lighthouse off the coast of Brittany, he is drawn into a lonely, dark world of physical peril, sexual obsession, and necrophilia. The lighthouse is a chamber of locked doors and terrible secrets—and home to the eccentric, embittered keeper he is to assist, Mathurin Barnabas: an illiterate, irascible, and grizzled old man who appears to be more animal than human.
Time passes in alternating stages of mind-numbing monotony and bouts of horror as our hero struggles against the endless assaults of wind and loneliness, with only his duties, his mind fraying with guilt, and his mute companion for distraction. The sea evolves into a wild force and the lighthouse itself into a monster that Jean must tame if he is to survive.
First published in French in 1899 and never before translated, this gripping novel retains its shock value even now, and will be of keen interest to readers of Decadence, Symbolism, and Romantic horror fiction.
Rachilde was the pen name of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860–1953). By her mid-twenties she was a prominent figure in Parisian literary circles and was the only female writer for the literary journal Le decadent (1886–1889). Her life and work were unconventional: she was a cross-dresser (in direct violation of French law) who constantly questioned gender identity and social norms, and her 1884 novel Monsieur Vénus was judged to be pornographic and was subsequently banned in Belgium, incurring for the author a sentence of two years in prison and a fine of two thousand francs. In 1889 she married Alfred Vallette, with whom she cofounded the Mercure de France, the most important journal and publishing house of the French Symbolists.
Translated by Jennifer Higgins, with an introduction by Melanie C. Hawthorne
“A captivating exercise in intriguing symbolism.”—John Taylor, Times Literary Supplement
“Gothic, gorgeous, thrilling, unnerving, and deliriously ahead of its time.”—Warren Maxwell, Independent Book Review
2024, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 17.78 x 11.43 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$32.00 - In stock -
A raucous, macabre tale of failure from the filmmaker-turned-writer whose work has garnered cultish attention in recent years.
Georges Maman is a down-and-out actor sinking into despair and no longer able to scrape by, failing to make his mark even in the porno industry; Dagonard is a loudmouth camera assistant who executes his refusal to read a room with almost surgical skill. Their paths cross one evening in a bar and the two proceed to share a night in Paris: drink, dinner, and psychological torture.
Drawing from his own aborted career as an assistant director in the film industry, Jean-Pierre Martinet’s last novel (before he abandoned his second career as an author) describes a sordid, cynical, and disturbingly humorous descent into the hell of failure and the company we keep there, whether we like it or not.
With Their Hearts in Their Boots is joined by “At the Back of the Courtyard on the Right,” an equally dark and lengthy prose poem of sorts on the work of Henri Calet, a kindred literary spirit whose dimmed star Martinet helped to resuscitate through his brief career as a literary critic.
Jean-Pierre Martinet (1944–1993) wrote only a handful of novels, including what is largely regarded as his masterpiece, the psychosexual study of horror and madness, Jérôme. Reading like an unsettling love child of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Jim Thompson, Martinet’s work explores the grimly humorous possibilities of limitless pessimism.
Translated, with an introduction, by Alex Andriesse
"In Andriesse’s translation, Martinet’s account of one man’s progression down the margins of society turns into the stuff of existential horror. This is a far cry from comfort reading, but like a sub-zero breeze—or a shot of high-proof booze—it’s bracing throughout."—Tobias Carroll, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
2024, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 20.32 x 13.34 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$37.00 - In stock -
Our whole culture is the product of gastric activity. The stomach is an egg from which all the arts and sciences are hatched.
The original 1824 German publication of Stapelia Mixta gathered together a bevy of eccentric proposals, meditations, and displays of consciously excessive learning that strove for what can only be regarded as an unusual clarity of absurdity, which was the hallmark of the pseudonymous author, Dr. Mises. Aiming for a broader reading audience, he presented these essays under the title of a flower, but a flower of such a stench as to guarantee originality.
Such was the originality of these semi-serious flights of excess that came under the cover of Dr. Mises, himself a cover for Gustav Theodor Fechner, founder of psychophysics, who wrote on everything from landscaping to the spiritual lives of plants and heavenly bodies while also conducting pioneering research in optics and experimental psychology. He eventually succumbed to a nervous breakdown from the strain of constant work, half-insane from stress and half-blind from his experiments.
The sixteen essays of this collection include discussions of dancing, food, drugs, ancient Greece, the soul and immortality, perception and psychology, the differences and similarities between art, science, and religion, and more. These inventive essays start with a relatively digestible “Encomium of the Belly” and “The World Upside-Down” before developing into increasingly convoluted musings that conclude with a pre-pataphysical exploration of Spatial Symbolism.
Translated, with an introduction, by Erik Butler
Dr. Mises was the pen name of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), an alter ego he adopted for his more speculative and satiric writing and an outlet for the more troubled element of his thought where he found himself at odds with both himself and the world. While Fechner is remembered as an experimental psychologist, pioneer in experimental psychology, founder of psychophysics, and inspiration for Sigmund Freud and William James, Dr. Mises was more the precursor of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh and Dr. Faustroll: a creature of learning run rampant, ready to entertain any counterargument.
2020, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 14.5 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$39.00 - In stock -
A sardonic and artful reconstruction of the brief life of the party boy who became a media sensation for shooting Gianni Versace.
It was suddenly chic to be "targeted" by Andrew.... It also became chic to claim a deep personal friendship with Versace, to infer that one might, but for a trick of fate, have been with Versace at the very moment of his "assassination," as it had once been chic to reveal one's invitation to Cielo Drive in the evening of the Tate slayings, an invitation only declined because of car trouble or a previous engagement...
--from Three Month Fever
First published in 1999, Gary Indiana's Three Month Fever is the second volume of his famed crime trilogy, now being republished by Semiotext(e). (The first, Resentment, reissued in 2015, was set in a Menendez trial-era L.A.) In this brilliant and gripping hybrid of narrative and reflection, Indiana considers the way the media's hypercoverage transformed Andrew Cunanan's life "from the somewhat poignant and depressing but fairly ordinary thing it was into a narrative overripe with tabloid evil."
"America loves a successful sociopath," Indiana explains. This sardonic and artful reconstruction of the brief life of the party boy who became a media sensation for shooting Gianni Versace is a spellbinding fusion of journalism, social commentary, and novelistic projection. By following Cunanan's notorious "trail of death," Indiana creates a compelling portrait of a brilliant, charismatic young man whose pathological lies made him feel more like other people--and more interesting than he actually was. Born in a working-class exurb of San Diego and educated at an elite private school, Cunanan strove to "blend in" with the upscale gay male scene in La Jolla. He ended up crazed and alone, eventually embarking on a three-month killing spree that took the lives of five men, including that of Versace, before killing himself in a Miami boathouse, leaving behind a range of unanswerable questions and unsolvable mysteries.
"Gary Indiana belongs to a special breed of American urban writers who take cool pleasure in dissecting the lives of the rich and ugly and is possibly the most jaded chronicler of them all. On a good day, he makes Bret Easton Ellis look like Enid Blyton, yet many, myself included, think he might have already written the Great America Novel(s)." - Christopher Fowler, The Independent
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1989 Japanese edition of H. R. Giger's Biomechanics. In his classic series of oversized and visually overwhelming early art volumes, this book comprises a retrospective showcase, from 1964—88, of Giger's work, designed by and with running commentary by Giger himself, with over 200 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and including concept art for the film Poltergeist II, and design paintings for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums. With a foreword by legendary Science Fiction author and longtime Giger fan Harlan Ellison, who dubs him "out latter-day Hieronymus Bosch."
Note: the Japanese editions of these books often had better reproductions from the original plates than the German and English language editions.
Very Good copy some light wear.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. slipcase), 136 pages, 26.3 x 26.3 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$175.00 - In stock -
Consistently proclaimed as one of the most important photobooks in the history of the medium, Ravens by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase was first published in 1986 and the two subsequent editions were both short print runs that sold out immediately. This bilingual facsimile of the first edition contains a new text by founder of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tomo Kosuga. His essay locates Ravens in Fukase’s wider work and life, and is illustrated with numerous recently discovered photographs and drawings. Fukase’s haunting series of work was made between 1975 and 1986 in the aftermath of a divorce and was apparently triggered by a mournful train journey to his hometown. The coastal landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the backdrop for his profoundly dark and impressionistic photographs of ominous flocks of crows, which are said to serve as an allegory for postwar Japan.
Blind embossed clothbound hardback in a silkscreen printed carton slipcase.
Original afterword by Akira Hasegawa [1986] and a new text by Tomo Kosuga [both bilingual].
2019, English / Japanese
Hardcover, 80 pages, 31 x 23 cm
Published by
MACK / London
$115.00 - In stock -
‘My entire family, whose image I see inverted in the frosted glass, will die one day. This camera, which reflects and freezes their images, is actually a device for archiving death’. – Masahisa Fukase
For three generations the Fukase family ran a photography studio in Bifuka, a small provincial town in the northern Japanese province of Hokkaido. In August 1971, at the age of 35, Masahisa Fukase returned home from Tokyo, where he had moved in the 1950s. He realised that the Fukase Photographic Studio, which his younger brother managed, combined with the growing family members, constituted the perfect subject for a series of portraits. Between 1971 and 1989, he returned regularly and used the family studio, the large-format Anthony view camera and the changing family line-up as the basis for the series. True to his style, Fukase often introduced third-party models and humorous elements to juxtapose the ineluctable reality of time passing and the dwindling family group. He continued the series through his father’s death in 1987, up until the closure of the Fukase studio due to bankruptcy in 1989, and the consequential dispersion of the family.
Family (Kazoku) was released in 1991, and was Fukase’s last book. It begins with a photograph of the family studio and the following 31 images are family portraits made in the studio in chronological order. The book includes an extensive text written by Fukase himself and a modern essay by Tomo Kosuga.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Middlesex Polytechnic / UK
$75.00 - In stock -
Block magazine was founded in 1979 by a small group of lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic and ran for eleven years. Block was a hugely influential journal in the developing fields of Visual and Cultural Studies. Edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, Block “attempted to address the problem of the social, economic and ideological dimensions of the arts in society, and offered a challenge to a conventional understanding of art history.” Block featured important conceptual artists and contemporary cultural theorists including Terry Atkinson, Lucy Lippard, Mary Kelly, Art & Language, Allen Jones, John Berger, Susan Hiller, Martha Rosler, Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Conrad Atkinson, Terry Smith, amongst others. Despite the small scale of its operation, the magazine had a wide distribution in art colleges and was avidly read by lecturers looking for ways to incorporate new theoretical, often Marxist, anarchist, feminist, situationist, poststructuralist, perspectives into their teaching.
This issue features Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Stuart Hall, Guy Debord, Meaghan Morris, George Robertson, Phil Hayward, John Tagg, and many more.
Very Good copy, light wear/age.
1989, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 68 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Middlesex Polytechnic / UK
$65.00 - In stock -
Block magazine was founded in 1979 by a small group of lecturers at Middlesex Polytechnic and ran for eleven years. Block was a hugely influential journal in the developing fields of Visual and Cultural Studies. Edited by Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, Melinda Mash, Tim Putnam, George Robertson and Lisa Tickner, Block “attempted to address the problem of the social, economic and ideological dimensions of the arts in society, and offered a challenge to a conventional understanding of art history.” Block featured important conceptual artists and contemporary cultural theorists including Terry Atkinson, Lucy Lippard, Mary Kelly, Art & Language, Allen Jones, John Berger, Susan Hiller, Martha Rosler, Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard, Conrad Atkinson, Terry Smith, amongst others. Despite the small scale of its operation, the magazine had a wide distribution in art colleges and was avidly read by lecturers looking for ways to incorporate new theoretical, often Marxist, anarchist, feminist, situationist, poststructuralist, perspectives into their teaching.
This "Retrospective and Prospective" 10th anniversary issue features Patrick Wright, Dick Hebdige, Griselda Pollock, Judith Williamson, Jean Baudrillard, Adrian Rifkin, Jonathan Harris, Olivier Richon, Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin, and many more.
Very Good copy, light wear/age.
2005, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 20.6 x 18.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$150.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this incredible out of print Japanese hardcover book collection of record cover artwork from every corner of the imagination. Not just another collection of the historical or award winning, this book, subtitled "A New Design Guide For Graphic Designers", comprises roughly 240 colour reproductions of record sleeves selected by 17 contemporary artists/musicians/designers, mostly from Japan, as their favourite. Those selecting include Åbäke, EYE (Yamantaka Eye), Nagi Noda, Keiji Itō, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Skate Thing, and many more. Spanning everything from private press psych to hip house, this dizzying collection includes sleeves for Frankie Knuckles, Carcass, Renegade Soundwave, The Haters, Roedelius, DJ Screw, Tululah Moon, Family Fodder, The Tubes, György Ligeti, Psychic TV, Pan-Sonic, Liliput, Deskee, Rich Kids on LSD, Snakefinger... A collection you'd never find anywhere else. Includes full index, data, and captions in Japanese under each selection. A must for the lover of one of the purest forms of artistic expression, the record cover.
Fine copy w. dust jacket.