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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
Theory / Essay
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Fiction / Poetry
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
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'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
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Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
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Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
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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
1978, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$45.00 - Out of stock
Metal Hurlant No. 30, August 1978 issue featuring comic stories/art by Philippe Caza, Moebius, Frank Margerin, Jacques Lob, Joe Staline, Michel Crespin, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Philippe Caza. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 84 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$40.00 - Out of stock
Metal Hurlant No. 17, May 1977 issue featuring comic stories/art by Jean-Michel Nicollet, Philippe Caza, Moebius, Serge Clerc, Enki Bilal, Chantal Montellier, Paul Gillon, Jacques Lob, Jacques Tardi, Michel Jakubowicz, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Jean-Michel Nicollet. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 82 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 19 July 1977 issue featuring comic stories/art by Moebius, Enki Bilal, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Jacques Lob, Serge Clerc, Michel Jakubowski, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Aslan. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
Good copy.
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 84 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 14, February 1977 issue featuring comic stories/art by Jean-Michel Nicollet, Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Chantal Montellier, Jean-Claude Forest, Angus McKie, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Jean-Michel Nicollet. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1976, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 82 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 6 1976 issue featuring comic stories/art by Moebius, Enki Bilal, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Jacques Lob, Serge Clerc, Richard Corben, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Moebius. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
Good copy.
1978, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 82 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$40.00 - Out of stock
Metal Hurlant No. 32 August 1978 issue featuring comic stories/art by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Alain Voss, Serge Clerc, Chantal Montellier, Paul Gillon, Franck Margerin, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Philippe Druillet. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1980, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 98 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$40.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 48, February 1980 issue featuring comic stories/art by Moebius, Jano (Jean Leguay), Jacques Lob, Georges Pichard, Baron Staff, Richard Corban, Chantal Montellier, Philippe Druillet, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Philippe Druillet. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
Good copy but cover disconnected from staples.
1979, France
Softcover (staple-bound), 100 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$40.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 40, April 1979 issue featuring comic stories/art by Georges Pichard, Moebius, Alain Voss, Jacques Lob, Frank Margerin, Chantal Montellier, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Georges Pichard. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 98 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Les Humanoïdes Associés / Paris
$45.00 - In stock -
Metal Hurlant No. 24, December 1977 issue featuring comic stories/art by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, Chantal Montellier, Alain Voss, Jacques Lob, Joe Staline, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Moebius. Original French editions, very scarce outside Europe.
Métal Hurlant (literal translation: "Howling Metal") was a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud (better known as Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas. The four were collectively known as "Les Humanoïdes Associés" (United Humanoids), which became the name of the publishing house releasing Métal Hurlant. English, German and Italian editions were also licensed, including Heavy Metal, published in the US by National Lampoon. Métal hurlant was originally released quarterly with contributors including Moebius and Druillet, depicting such iconic characters as Arzach and Lone Sloane for the first time, as well as work by Richard Corben, Guido Crepax, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Enki Bilal, Caza, Serge Clerc, Alain Voss, Berni Wrightson, Nicole Claveloux, Milo Manara, Frank Margerin, Masse, Chantal Montellier, and many others.
1981, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shochiku / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, very rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for Faces of Death 2, the controversial straight-to-video 1981 American mondo horror documentary film directed by John Alan Schwartz, the follow-up to 1978's Faces of Death, credited under the pseudonyms "Conan Le Cilaire" & "Alan Black" respectively. Mortuaries, accidents and police work are filmed by TV crews and home video cameras. Faces of Death II contained real footage of a dead body being pulled from under a pier, Guerrilla death squads in El Salvador, napalm bombings in Vietnam, Buddhist self-immolations, the drugging of a monkey, a dolphin slaughter, a train disaster in India, Cambodian patients with leprosy, a death museum featuring Joaquin Murrieta's preserved head, a driver high on PCP and a boxer going down for his “final” count. Much like the PSA Aircraft crash, the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan occurred recently before the film's completion, and was included as well. Heavily illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast and production information.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1973, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Toho / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, very rare Japanese souvenir photo booklet for Autopsia (Autopsy), a 1973 Spanish Mondo-style docudrama by director Juan Logar about a war correspondent who comes back home and has a spiritual crisis about his own mortality. Surreal fantasy sequences are mixed with graphic real autopsy footage. Heavily illustrated throughout with b/w stills from the film, alongside texts in Japanese about the film, cast and production information.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1979, English
Softcover, 366 pages, 30 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Frauenliteratur Verlag Hermine Fees / Germany
$500.00 - In stock -
Very rare first 1979 English edition of one the finest artist's books and photographic projects of the 1970's, Let's Take Back Our Space (“Female” and “Male” Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures / with 2037 photographs / In the second part of the book: Man's stuggle against womanpower and the effects upon body language throughout the course of history.)
The German artist Marianne Wex started out as a painter before producing her encyclopaedic photographic project "Let’s Take Back Our Space", one of the great unsung works of 1970s feminist history and cultural analysis. Marianne Wex bases her work on the assumption that body language is a result of sex-based, patriarchal socialization, affecting all of our other "feminine" and "masculine" role behavior. Born in Hamburg in 1937, Wex studied at the city’s University of Fine Arts, where she later taught for seventeen years. In 1979, she published Let’s Take Back Our Space as a book in both a German and English edition, to accompany an exhibition in the Neue Gesellschaft fair Bildende Kiinste in Berlin, in connection with the show Women Artists International, 1877 to 1977. It is an in-depth visual survey comprised of 5,000 to 6,000 photographs of body postures, taken between 1974 and 1977, assembled into dozens of thematic grids: Seated persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; standing persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; people sitting and laying on the ground; arm and leg positions; and so on. The images were culled from a huge range of sources—re-photographed advertisements, reportage, fashion magazines, pornography, studio portraits, the history of art—and many were taken on the streets of Hamburg by Wex, who proposes that our smallest, most unconscious gestures speak volumes about the power relations of gender in daily life. The work was expanded to include an extensive historical section for the book, where Marianne Wex investigates the body language shown in sculptures of the last 3,000 to 4,000 years, and comes to the conclusion that the ideals of body language and body forms have never been so different between the sexes as they are today.
Very Good copy. General light wear/ageing, tanning to cover, but a most lovely copy of the rare first edition from 1979. A more common reprint edition was published in 1984.
2002, German
Softcover, 112 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
BD Erogène / Belgium
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare early German-language collection of the cult classic eromanga Bondage Fairies, "the first hit translated adult manga" — Manga: The Complete Guide. This is the first edition of Book Two, The Original Bondage Fairies, published by BD Erogène in 2002, collecting the first of the original series from the early 1990s. Printed in Belgium.
Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Also translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.
Very Good copy.
1995, English
Softcover, 29.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purr Books / London
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of Richard Kern's classic "New York Girls" released in 1995, defining a time, a place, and the raw aesthetic of the artist Richard Kern (b. 1954). Kern was a leading figure in the 1980s Cinema of Transgression, director of the iconic films You Killed Me First, Fingered and Submit to Me Now; producer of Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley ’69” and Marilyn Manson’s Lunchbox music videos; and a pioneering zine publisher responsible for The Heroin Addict and The Valium Addict. After kicking his own heroin habit, Kern turned to still photography, shooting girls in his downtown, punk-inflected New York social circle. Regarded as one of the best female nude photo-books of the 1990's, Kern's New York girls were naked, bold, tattooed, pierced, and casually posed in minimal sets, mostly just Richard’s ratty slum apartment. They were young, but not innocent, fully complicit in the bondage, gunplay, and infamous candle insertions. "Dedicated to the models." With an introduction by Lydia Lunch, interview with Richard Kern by Kim Gordon, text by Kern, and filmography.
John Waters said of one of Kern's notorious scum-bag Super-8 movies: "Finger is the ultimate date movie for psychos. It's the best hillbilly-punk-art-porno movie in the world and I always show it to people very late at night to make them happy."
Very Good copy, light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 90 pages, 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yumeya Shuppan / Japan
$750.00 - In stock -
Wow! Insanely rare, very special, very collectible early Namio Harukawa artist book / graphic novel, published in Japan in 1994 in a limited run and long out-of-print. One of the finest examples of Harukawa's work, Queen of Execution Island exemplifies his artistic vision through the perfect combination of an art book and a masochistic graphic novel. Harukawa's narrative comic strips are seldom reproduced in his posthumous monographs, and Queen of Execution Island combines here a series of breath-taking fetish stories as chapters rendered in Harukawa's b/w line-work with his beautiful, delicate pencil drawings book-ending the scenarios of each story in loving detail. Chapters (roughly translated) are : "Tongue Service Chair"; "Thigh Hanging"; "Face Pressure Execution"; "Holy Water Drowning Death Penalty", involving activities of "femdom", Urolagnia, Scatology, etc. The chaptered stories are followed by a new series of illustrations, and one of the best work groups of Harukawa that is also seldom seen anywhere else, "Deformed Livestock Race", involving Harukawa's male masochists undergoing transformations into fantasy beasts better equipped to service their female mistresses. Ends with advertisements of many Japanese SM publications that centre around the central fetishes of Harukawa's art, and further magazines featuring his illustrations. Highly recommended — near impossible to get, even in Japan.
Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan, Harukawa’s distinctive penname combines the name of film actress Harukawa Masumi with an anagram of Naomi, the sadistic heroine in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel "Chijin no ai / A Fool’s Love". While in high school, Harukawa began contributing work to the readers’ column of leading postwar Japanese SM pulp magazine "Kitan Club". Since then, Harukawa’s drawings of male masochism have lovingly portrayed noble, voluptuously beautiful women and the men who serve them as human furniture. An extraordinary and prolific artist who remained committed to the regime of “absolute Ganmen Kijo Shugi (facesitting principle)” throughout his artistic life, Namio Harukawa passed away on April 2020, he was 72 years old.
Very good—Near Fine with only light wear to the very glossy black foiled covers printed over red card stock(!).
1980, Japanese
Softcover, 132 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$590.00 - In stock -
Absolutely incredible, super rare, ultra collectible first edition of the first Namio Harukawa art book, published in Japan in 1980 by leading SM magazine SM Collector and their publishing house, Sun. An absolute treasure of vintage Namio Harukawa femdom works, released a full 20 years prior to his "Big Girl Love / My Fair Fat Lady" (2000) and 32 years before his late "Garden of Domina". By 1980 Namio was already a prolific master of fetish illustration, contributing to countless cult SM magazines. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with gorgeous reproductions on various paper stocks, including full-colour fold-out poster, this volume introduces so many early works never seen in any later monographs with a diverse array of "femdom" fetishes and narratives, including all his SM magazine work through to the establishment of his iconic face-sitting queens. A breath-taking, comprehensive collection that is a must for any fan of Harukawa or erotic illustration, period. Appropriately this "treasured art collection" was named "Chijin No Ai" ("A Fool’s Love") by Harukawa, after Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel featuring Naomi, the sadistic heroine whose name was adopted by Harukawa. Cannot recommend this book more.
Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan, Harukawa’s distinctive penname combines the name of film actress Harukawa Masumi with an anagram of Naomi, the sadistic heroine in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel "Chijin no ai / A Fool’s Love". While in high school, Harukawa began contributing work to the readers’ column of leading postwar Japanese SM pulp magazine "Kitan Club". Since then, Harukawa’s drawings of male masochism have lovingly portrayed noble, voluptuously beautiful women and the men who serve them as human furniture. An extraordinary and prolific artist who remained committed to the regime of “absolute Ganmen Kijo Shugi (facesitting principle)” throughout his artistic life, Namio Harukawa passed away on April 2020, he was 72 years old.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved, only light cover wear.
2000, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 27.5 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Taiyo Tosho / Japan
$640.00 - In stock -
Super rare, very collectible Namio Harukawa oversized hardcover art book, published in Japan in 2000 and long out-of-print. This deluxe art book is considered the first book devoted entirely to Harukawa's "Paradise under the grand hips" — his iconic big-girl-love-femdom-facesitting illustrations. Beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated heavy book full of the exceptional work of Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. As well as an impeccably reproduced collection of Harukawa's works in full-bleed colour, the book features Harukawa's complete illustrated "lewd love story of a noble lady and a beast", a collection of many of his best known works beautifully reproduced alongside sado-masochist narratives. A stunning book and must for any Harukawa fan.
Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan, Harukawa’s distinctive penname combines the name of film actress Harukawa Masumi with an anagram of Naomi, the sadistic heroine in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel "Chijin no ai / A Fool’s Love". While in high school, Harukawa began contributing work to the readers’ column of leading postwar Japanese SM pulp magazine "Kitan Club". Since then, Harukawa’s drawings of male masochism have lovingly portrayed noble, voluptuously beautiful women and the men who serve them as human furniture. An extraordinary and prolific artist who remained committed to the regime of “absolute Ganmen Kijo Shugi (facesitting principle)” throughout his artistic life, Namio Harukawa passed away on April 2020, he was 72 years old.
Fine copy in original illustrated, gold foiled Very Good dust jacket, only light wear. Hardcovers also illustrated. A well-preserved copy.
1991, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and slipcase), 168 pages, 26 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
The incredible and rarely seen 1991 Japanese slipcased, hardcover edition of Jacques Henric's monographic volume on the great Pierre Klossowski. One of the most comprehensive books ever published on the artist, with beautiful large reproductions of artworks in colour and b/w heavily featured throughout, alongside Henric's text (here translated into Japanese from the original French) with a full catalogue of works and bibliography. First printing in original dust jacket, illustrated slipcase, beautifully printed in Italy and bound in Japan.
Jacques Henric (b. 1938) is a French literary critic, essayist and novelist.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Fine As New copy of book and dj, preserved in Good slipcase with some wear and bumps.
1987, English
Softcover, 233 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$45.00 - Out of stock
"Dazzling deceptions and provocative put-ons from some of the most outrageous artists and personalities living today. Spontaneous, improvised craziness from the Underground in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and points in between. This book opens up a whole new territory of fun and pleasure."
First 1987 edition of the cult classic and most iconic of the RE/Search publications, PRANKS! A prank is a trick, a mischievous act, and a ludicrous act. Although not regarded as poetic or artistic acts, pranks constitute an art form and genre. Here, a wild chorus of pranksters such as Mark Pauline, Timothy Leary, Monte Cazazza, Boyd Rice, Abbie Hoffman, Jello Biafra, Joe Coleman, Richard Meltzer, Karen Finley, John Waters and Henry Rollins challenge the sovereign authority of words, images and behavioral convention. Some tales are bizarre, as when Boyd Rice presented the First Lady with a skinned sheep's head on a platter. This iconoclastic compendium will dazzle and delight all lovers of humour, satire and irony. A great quotations section is also included.
Contributions from: Mark Pauline, Boyd Rice, Henry Rollins, Joey Skaggs, Ed Hardy, Michael Bidlo, Jello Biafra, Abbie Hoffman, Bruce Conner, Monte Cazazza, Timothy Leary, Paul Krassner, John Day, Karen Finley, Richard Meltzer, Alan Abel, Jeffrey Vallance, John Waters, Earth First!, Paul Mavrides, Mark Mccloud, Kerri Kwinter, Robert Delford Brown, John Cale, Danny Kelly, Frank Discussion, David Levi Strauss, Bruno Richard, Mal Sharpe, Bob Zoell, Joe Coleman, Michael Osterhout, Jerry Casale, John Trubee, Carlo Mccormick, Erik Hobijn, Barry Alfonso, Harry Kipper, and more…
Very Good copy.
1990 re-print, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 20.3 x 28 cm
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$50.00 - In stock -
Revised, Expanded, Illustrated, and Annotated Edition of the author’s classic, published by RE/Search in 1990. Original text supplemented with Annotations, Commentary, and Four Additional Stories by J.G. Ballard.
Contains beautifully shocking Illustrations by Phoebe Gloeckner and Ana Barrado; design was conceived by V. Vale and executed at his typesetting shop. J.G. Ballard wrote the explanatory annotations for this RE/Search edition at Vale’s request.
Foreword by William S Burroughs, Introduction by V. Vale. First published in 1970 and widely regarded as a prophetic masterpiece, this is a groundbreaking experimental novel by the acclaimed author of “Crash” and “Super-Cannes”.
The 1970 First American Edition was banned by court order, forcing Doubleday to shred the entire print run. An experimental (rather than a conventional) novel, it has lost none of its awesome power to shock. Atrocity Exhibition is widely regarded as Ballard’s finest, most complex work…
The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force. The central character’s dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoils to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.
A “must-have” edition for J. G. Ballard collectors.
1991, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$65.00 - Out of stock
“Anger is an emotion which must be reclaimed and legitimised as Woman’s rightful, healthy expression – anger can be a source of power, strength and clarity as well as a creative force,”—Andrea Juno and V. Vale in the introduction.
First 1991 edition of this amazing issue of San Francisco's RE/Search. Full of punk black-and-white photographs and illustrations, Angry Women pushed the boundaries of what feminism could look like in the early 1990s – 16 cutting-edge performance artists discuss a wide range of topics including menstruation, masturbation, racism, S&M, vibrators, failed utopias and the death of the Sixties. Armed with total contempt for dogma, stereotype and cliche, these creative visionaries probe deep into our social foundation of taboos, beliefs and totalitarian linguistic contradictions from whence spring (as well as thwart) our theories, imaginings, behaviour and dreams... features exclusive, long-form interviews with feminist theorist bell hooks, avant-garde writer Kathy Acker, pioneering performance artists Carolee Schneemann and Valie Export, musicians Lydia Lunch and Diamanda Galas, and many other female figureheads.
"How can you have a revolutionary feminism that encompasses wild sex, humor, beauty and spirituality plus radical politics?"—blurb
Very Good copy.
1990, English
Softcover, 130 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$45.00 - In stock -
First 1990 edition of the first English translation of the racy and riveting Confessions of Wanda von Sacher-Masoch—married for ten years to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (author of Venus in Furs) whose whip-and-fur bedroom games spawned the term "maso-chism." Originally published in French in 1907, this narrative of an idealistic, sensitive woman embroiled in a net of sexual peril, betrayal and deceit is well ahead of its time.
A feminist classic, this is the story of a woman living in an era when dependence on the husband could force one to face literal starvation and poverty. Blackmailed by Leopold, who insisted he could not write and earn their living unless she "cooperated," she was forced to play "sadistic" roles in his exotic sexual fantasies to ensure the survival of herself and her three children-games which called into serious question who was the Master and who the Slave. Besides being a compelling study of a woman's search for her own identity, strength and ultimately—complete independence-this is a true-life adventure story-an odyssey through many lands peopled by amazing characters, ranging from the famous (Ludwig II; Liszt) to the unsung great (the totally fearless adventuress—skeptic Catherine Strebinger). Underneath its unforgettable poetic imagery and almost unbearable emotional cataclysms reigns a woman's consistent unblinking investigation of the limits of morality and the deepest meanings of love.
1993, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
RE/SEARCH / San Francisco
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1993 edition of the first (only) monographic book devoted to Los Angeles performance artist and poet Bob Flanagan. An indispensable document of one of the great outsider artists of the 20th Century. In this volume's deeply confessional interviews, Bob details his sexual practices and his extraordinary relationship with long-term partner and Mistress, photographer Sheree Rose. He tells how frequent near-death encounters modified his concepts of gratification and abstinence, reward and punishment, and intensified his masochistic drive. The most extreme narratives are infused with humor, honesty, and self-reflective irony. Bob's performances with partner Sheree Rose shocked and inspired audiences from Seattle to Boston to Berlin. Combining text, video, and live performance, Bob's performances are highly personal but universal in his deep commitment to deciphering philosophical issues regarding the body, childhood, power, sex, illness, and mortality.
Those who have read the text were overcome by the sincerity, humanity & warmth of Bob Flanagan. In his last days, Bob did a living performance installation at the New Museum in New York City; dozens of people consulted him as a (somewhat humorous) Oracle and Psychiatric Advisor before Cystic Fibrosis took him away…
Bob Flanagan (1952—1996) was an American poet and performance artist known for his work on sadomasochism and lifelong struggle with cystic fibrosis.
Very Good copy.