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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
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
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
2012, English
Hardcover, 304 pages, 216 x 254 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Lucy R. Lippard's famous book, itself resembling an exhibition, is now brought full circle in an exhibition (and catalog) resembling her book.
“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized.’” — Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. Nearly forty years later, the Brooklyn Museum takes Lippard’s celebrated experiment in curated concatenation as a template, turning a book that resembled an exhibition into an exhibition materializing the ideas in her book.
The artworks and essays featured in this publication recall the thrill that was tangible in Lippard's original documentation, reminding us that during the late sixties and early seventies all possible social and material parameters of art (making) were played with, worked over, inverted, reduced, expanded, and rejected. By tracing Lippard’s own activities in those years, the book also documents the early blurring of boundaries among critical, curatorial, and artistic practices.
With more than 200 images of work by dozens of artists (printed in color throughout), this book brings Lippard’s curatorial experiment full circle.
Edited by Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin
Published on the occasion of the exhibition The Six Years' Project: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012-February 3, 2013, organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center at the Brooklyn Museum, and the independent scholar Vincent Bonin.
2007, English
Softcover (spray-painted), 96 pages, 30 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Peres Projects / Los Angeles
$100.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
First, limited edition first issue of Daddy Magazine, brings together texts by Bruce LaBruce and Richard Lidinsky interviewing AA Bronson, with artwork by Terence Koh, John Kleckner, Dean Sameshima, assume vivid astro focus, Agnes Martin, Sol Lewitt, Nate Lowman, Bruce Nauman, Matt Greene, Dan Colen, Yves Klein, Joe Bradley, Bruce LaBruce, General Idea, Erik Hanson, Rodney Werden, Matthias Herrmann and AA Bronson. This issue is a special edition by American artist Terrence Koh with each cover painted in gold by the artist and (almost) every page methodically crossed out with a large black sharpie marker. Long out of print.
Very Good copy with some cover wear.
1973, German
Softcover, 138 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum / Cologne
$40.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue published by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln, in 1973 to document the museums extensive collection of international contemporary sculpture. Profusely illustrated in black and white with the works of Jean Arp, Paul Thek, Nancy Graves, John Chamberlain, Larry Bell, Carl Andre, Christo, Eva Hesse, Joachim Bandau, Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Nevelson, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, Germaine Richier, Schöffer, Bernard Schultze, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), John Tweed, Franz Erhard Walther, Hanns Gasser, Merdardo Rosso, Joseph Beuys, Günter Haese, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Jesús Rafael Soto, Richard Tuttle, Helmut Moos, Bruce Nauman, Ansgar Nierhoff, Jim Dine, Gary Indiana, Karl Zeno Rudolf Schadow, Julio Le Parc, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, G. F. Ris, George Segal, Nicolas Schöffer, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jean Tinguely, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Arman, Claes Oldenburg, Marisol Escobar, Niki Saint-Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Wolf Vostell, Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, Pol Bury, Erwin Heerich, Horst-Egon Kalinowski, Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Honoré Daumier, Gasser, Adolf von Hildebrand, Max Klinger, Rosso, Aristide Maillol, Tweed, Julio González, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, and many more... Texts in German.
Very Good copy.
1986, English / Dutch / German / French / Italian
Hardcover (cloth w. dust jacket, inc. ephemera, guide/ticket, prints), 366 pages, 27 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst / Gent
$220.00 - Out of stock
First and only edition of this very special, scarce exhibition catalogue / photo-book published to document and accompany the innovative exhibition Chambres d'Amis (‘friends’ rooms’), organised by Jan Hoet in Ghent in 1986, awarding him an international reputation as a leading artistic figure in Belgium. Chambres d'Amis featured about 50 European and American artists invited by Hoet to create works for 50 private homes in Ghent, which were then opened to the public for several weeks between June 21 - September 21, 1986. Artists included are Carla Accardi, Christian Boltanski, Raf Buedts, Daniël Buren, Michaël Buthe, Jacques Charlier, Nicola de Maria, Luciano Fabro, Günther Förg, Jef Geys, Dan Graham, Milan Grygar, François Hers, Kazuo Katase, Niek Kemps, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Bertrand Lavier, Sol LeWitt, Danny Matthys, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Helmut Middendorf, Juan Muñoz, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Oswald Oberhuber, Heike Pallanca, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Royden Rabinowitch, Norbert Radermacher, Roger Raveel, Wolfgang Robbe, Claude Rutault, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Remo Salvadori, Rob Scholte, Ettore Spalletti, Paul Thek, Niele Toroni, Charles Vandenhove, Philip van Isacker, Jan Vercruysse, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Martin Walde, Lawrence Weiner, Robin Winters, Gilberto Zorio.
The entire city-wide exhibition is comprehensively documented herein (from the domestic interior installations themselves to behind-the-scenes photography, social and working imagery of the artists installing and meeting, public events, etc.) in colour and b/w on various paper stocks with many fold-out panels and reproductions of artist's sketches, alongside extensive texts by Jan Hoet and statements accompanying the work of each artist all in Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian. Includes a list of all hosts/hostesses alongside the artists.
An incredible document of one the most important and unique contemporary art exhibitions in Belgium's history. Jan Hoet (23 June 1936 – 27 February 2014) was the Belgian founder and director of SMAK (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent (director from 1975 until 2003) and subsequently managed several important exhibitions all over the world including curating Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, presenting several hundred works by 190 artists from nearly 40 countries.
“Intriguingly titled ‘Chambres d’Amis’ –-‘guest rooms’,” or, literally, ‘friends’ rooms’-– the show places art in 58 houses belonging to everyday townspeople, carrying the work outside the separate universe, the total institution, of the museum, to bring it within the private zone of the private home, an asocial place insofar as it is removed from the public arena. (...) His [Hoet’s] project takes the exhibition structure off its hinges, goes beyond the limits of the frame and spills over, whole, into an interior. Art here no longer offers a mirror or a window, nor constitutes the privileged sign of a choice, but is an actual, provocative presence, confirming its difference both from the museum space, which has lost its sanctity, and from the contextual frame in which the object serves as a fetish.”—Pier Luigi Tazzi, “Albrecht Dürer would have come too”, Artforum, September 1986
Very Good copy w. some wear/light spine fading to Good dust jacket, now preserved under mylar wrap. This special copy comes most complete, including exhibition guide/work checklist, Ghent map of exhibit locations, and a selection of 4 loose photographic press prints of featured installations.
1973, English
Softcover (denim-bound, stitched and silk-screened), 96 pages, 24 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
Art Gallery of South Australia / Adelaide
City of Auckland Art Gallery / Auckland
$200.00 - In stock -
The art catalogue wearing denim! Fantastic, scarce exhibition catalogue from 1973 for "Some Recent American Art", a major contemporary survey exhibition that toured Australia and New Zealand, organised under the auspices of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art New York with the assistance of Graeme Sturgeon, David Sampietro, and Peter Cripps. Wrapped in jeans denim covers (screen-printed and stitched), and profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with the work of exhibiting artists Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Robery Irwin, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner. Each artist section includes a list of works, biographical information and text(s) from the artist. Opening text by curator Jennifer Licht, acknowledgments by NGV director Gordon Thomson, with further sections on exhibited Video Tapes, bibliography and artist index.
This special copy also includes the inserted National Gallery of Victoria director's announcement for Yvonne Rainer's "Performance around an unfinished film", February 13, 1974, 8:30 pm at National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, during the exhibition. The stapled, 4-page letterhead announcement includes information on the performance, list of performances, list of technical assistants, texts on Rainer, biography, chronology, and selected reading.
Very Good copy, well preserved.
1969, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 240 pages, 21 x 22 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Praeger Publishers Inc. / New York
$140.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover US printing of "Art Povera", the now legendary critical/photographic book by Germano Celant (Italian art historian, critic and curator) documenting the so-called "Art Povera /Arte Povera" movement (meaning "poor art", coined by Celant in 1967) and published by Studio Vista, London in 1969 and Praeger, New York, the same year.
Includes profiles of major artists of the movement, including a short text followed by pages of full-page photographs for each artist.
Artists featured: Walter de Maria, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Stephen Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbets, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Giulio Paolini, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Franz Erhard Walther, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Emilio Prini, Richard Serra.
"This book does not aim at being an objective and general analysis of the phenomenon of art or life, but is rather an attempt to flank (both art and life) as accomplices of the changes and attitudes in the development of their daily becoming. This book does not attempt to be objective since the awareness of objectivity is false consciousness. The book, made up of photographs and written documents, bases its critical and editorial assumptions on the knowledge that criticism and iconographic documents give limited vision and partial perception of artistic work. The book, when it reproduces the documents of artistic work, refutes the linguistic mediation of photography. The book, even though it wants to avoid the logic of consumption, is a consumer's item. ... This book produces a collection of already old material. ... In this book there is no need to reflect in order to seek a unitary and reassuring value, immediately refuted by the the authors themselves, rather there is the necessity to look into it for the changes, limits, precariousness and instability of artistic work." -- text from Celant's introduction "Stating That.
Good ex-library copy with light associated markings, without dust jacket. Otherwise clean, tightly bound Very Good copy throughout (never loaned).
2018, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25x 31 cm
Published by
Getty Publications / Los Angeles
$126.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Glenn Phillips, Doris Chon, Pietro Rigolo, Philipp Kaiser
Harald Szeemann is associated with some of the most important artistic developments of the postwar era. A passionate advocate of avant-garde movements like conceptualism and post minimalism, he collaborated with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly, developing new ways of presenting art that reflected his sweeping vision of contemporary culture.
Szeemann once stated that his goal as an exhibition maker was to create a "Museum of Obsessions." This richly illustrated volume is a virtual collection catalogue for that imaginary institution, tracing the evolution of his curatorial method through the materials he collected and produced while researching and organising his exhibitions, including letters, drawings, personal datebooks, installation plans, artists' books, posters, photographs, and handwritten notes.
This book documents all phases of Szeemann's career, from his early stint as director of the Kunsthalle Bern, where he organized the seminal Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969); to documenta 5 (1972) and the intensely personal exhibition he staged in his own apartment using the belongings of his hairdresser grandfather (1974); to his reinvention as a freelance curator who realised projects on wide-ranging themes until his death in 2005.
The book contains essays exploring Szeemann's curatorial approach as well as interviews with collaborators. Its more than 350 illustrations include previously unpublished installation photographs and exhibition documents as well as many other materials from the curator's archive.
2018, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
The September issue of Texte zur Kunst focuses on Amerika (U.S. America principally): the land, the idea, and all that seems to come with it. What is Amerika today other than a contradiction between brute political reality and a largely fictional self-image, where fiction says as much about fact as “alternative facts” say about the truth? Within this contradiction, this issue tries to imagine modes of engaging with the current political machinery without opting for the one-dimensional dive into micropolitics that has plagued much recent activist discourse. The Trump regime has introduced a new form of politics whose tactics are closer to artistic practice—inventing parallel truths and questioning facts—than anything like traditional governance. As such, those familiar with art are in a unique position to offer an analysis of the specific forms that define contemporary politics in Amerika. We have thus commissioned artists and critics to come up with new strategies for analyzing the rampant barbarism, resisting the urge to sink into paralysis and defeat in the face of the endless onslaught.
Issue No. 111 / September 2018 "America"
Table Of Contents :
Foreword
Prefaces
Colin Lang
- The Horror, Vacui
Ken Okiishi -
Liberty and Justice For All, Not Us
Aria Dean -
Trauma And Virtuality
Letter To A Friend In New York / By Isabelle Graw
The Golden Hoard / Conversation With Andrea Fraser
Sina Najaf - i
The American Dream State
Robert F. Reid-Pharr -
What We Dare Not Remember
New Development
Is Space The Place? / Eva Díaz On Feminist Futures In The Anthropocene
Love Work Cinema
Between Bildersturm And Artistic Research / Rainer Bellenbaum About Films From The Years Around 1968 In The Historical Program Of The Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Reviews
Decolonialized Narrative In The National Art Temple / Susanne Von Falkenhausen On "Hello World" At Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
That Fluctuating Moment / Jesi Khadivi At The 10Th Berlin Biennale
The Silent Ship / Övül Ö. Durmusoglu On Manifesta 12 In Palermo
Love And Salt / Adrienne Rooney On Adrian Piper At The Museum Of Modern Art, New York
Tracks Of Disappearance / Tobi Maier About Bruce Nauman In The Schaulager, Basel
Man In The Mirror / Dan Kidner On "Picasso 1932 - Love, Fame, Tragedy" At Tate Modern, London
In The Bure Of The Circle / Marietta Kesting About Raster-Noton In The Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich
Looking But Not Seeing? / Darla Migan On Faith Ring Gold At Weiss Berlin
Mad / Ame / Jenny Nachtigall About Jutta Koether At The Museum Brandhorst, Munich
If You Are Once Big / Nadja Abt About Philip Wiegard At Between Bridges, Berlin
Marked By Trade / Sven Lütticken On "Trade Markings" At The Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Amazone Retired / Tina Schulz On Astrid Klein In The Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg
Born To Die / Colin Lang On Jeanette Mundt At Société, Berlin
Limitations Of Utopia / Christina Irrgang On Cyril Lachauer In The Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Hereditary Peers / Saim Demircan On Luke Willis Thompson At Kunsthalle Basel
Zoology Of The Falls / Niklas Lichti On Peter Wächtler With Lars Friedrich, Berlin
Below The Surf / Steven Warwick On Georgie Nettell At The Kunstbunker Forum For Contemporary Art, Nuremberg
The Hour Of The Historics / Ariane Müller About Valie Export At The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein
Foreign Powers / Johanna Burton On Zoe Leonard At The Whitney Museum Of American Art
Committee Criteria / Kerstin Stakemeier On Henrike Naumann At The Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
Related Practices / Sandra Neugärtner On Anni Albers In The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Term (s) Of Endearment / Kathi Hofer On "Milieu" At After The Butcher, Berlin
Obituary
Claude Lanzmann (1925-2018)
Edition
Cecily Brown
Mark Leckey
2018, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 356 pages, 22.8 x 26.8 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
MoMA / New York
$140.00 - Out of stock
With a magician’s sleight of hand, Nauman’s art makes disappearance visible.
At 76 years old, Bruce Nauman is widely acknowledged as a central figure in contemporary art whose stringent questioning of values such as good and bad remains urgent today. Throughout his 50-year career, he has explored how mutable experiences of time, space, sound, movement and language provide an insecure foundation for our understanding of our place in the world.
This richly illustrated catalog offers a comprehensive view of Nauman’s work in all mediums, spanning drawings across the decades; early fiberglass sculptures; sound environments; architecturally scaled, participatory constructions; rhythmically blinking neons; and the most recent 3D video that harks back to one of his earliest performances. A wide range of authors—curators, artists and historians of art, architecture and film—focus on topics that have been largely neglected, such as the architectural models that posit real or imaginary sites as models for ethical inquiry and mechanisms of control. An introductory essay explores Nauman’s many acts of disappearance, withdrawal and deflection as central formal and intellectual concerns. The 18 other contributions discuss individual objects or themes that persist throughout the artist’s career, including the first extensive essay on Nauman as a photographer and the first detailed treatment on the role of color in his work. A narrative exhibition history traces his reception, and features a number of rare or previously unpublished images.
Edited by Kathy Halbreich, Isabel Friedli, Heidi Naef, Magnus Schaefer, Taylor Walsh.
Text by Thomas Beard, Briony Fer, Nicolás Guagnini, Kathy Halbreich, Rachel Harrison, Ute Holl, Suzanne Hudson, Julia Keller, Liz Kotz, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Catherine Lord, Roxana Marcoci, Magnus Schaefer, Felicity Scott, Martina Venanzoni, Taylor Walsh, Jeffrey Weiss.
Bruce Nauman was born in Indiana in 1941 and raised near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studied math, music and physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before switching his major to visual art, and received an MA in sculpture from the University of California, Davis, in 1966. In 1979 he moved to New Mexico, where he continues to reside. Nauman’s work has been the subject of two previous retrospectives, in 1972 and 1994. In 2009 he represented the United States at the Venice Biennale, where he won the Golden Lion.
2018, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 12.7 x 19.7 cm
Published by
Laurenz Foundation / Schaulager
$54.00 - Out of stock
Bruce Nauman: A Contemporary presents the artist as contemporary in a double sense. First, the works of Nauman's 50-plus-year career are placed in the context of contemporary positions and discourses. Second, the publication analyses the extent to which Nauman's themes, media and forms have forged connections to the present, remaining of enduring importance for artists of subsequent generations. This publication seeks to counter the tendency to cast Bruce Nauman as an outstanding, solitary figure of postmodernism by putting the artist's work back in context. Nauman's early works were originally discussed in the context of contemporary practices and discourses, such as minimal music, postmodern dance, conceptual art, Gestalt therapy or the philosophy of language. But soon Nauman's reputation came to precede him, and his more recent work has largely been appraised independently of any artistic, social, historical or theoretical context. Critical consideration of Nauman's work has narrowed to a relatively small selection of the artist's works and ideas. Bruce Nauman: A Contemporary redresses this imbalance by focusing on thematic concerns shared by Nauman and his contemporaries. Scholarly essays explore how Nauman and his works enter contemporary conversations on the relationship of art and work, art and globalisation, and corporeality in the digital age.
1989, German
Softcover, 289 pages, 32 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Christians / Hamburg
$48.00 - Out of stock
Large catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Einleuchten: Will, Vorstel und Simul in HH." curated by Harald Szeemann, 11 November 1989 to 18 February 1990, Hamburg.
Profusely illustrated in full-colour and b&w with biographies on all exhibiting artists, alongside texts by Harald Szeemann, Heinz Liesbrock, Christoph Schenker, and Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen
Artists include : Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselme, Donald Baechler, Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Christian Botanski, Daniel Buren, Lawrence Carroll, Hanne Darboven, Thierry De Gordier, David Deutsch, Martin Disler, Jiri Georg Dokoupil, Etienne-Martin, Dan Flavin, Günther Förg, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Thomas Grünleid, Tishan Hsu, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Harald Klingelhöller, Wollgang Laib, Cary S. Leibowitz, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Lüscher, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Reinhard Mucha, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, Cady Noland, Holt Quentel, David Rabinowitch, Royden Rabinowitch, Ulrich Rückriem, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Serge Spitzer, Niele Toroni, Rosemarie Trockel, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Jan Vercruysse, Michel Verjux, Didier Vermeiren, Bill Viola, Mark Wallinger, Lawrence Weiner, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread, Jerry Zeniuk, Otto Zitko
Very good copy with some bumping to top right corner.
2010, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 145 x 210 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Whitechapel / London
$49.00 - Out of stock
The chance situation or random event—whether as a strategy or as a subject of investigation—has been central to many artists' practices across a multiplicity of forms, including expressionism, automatism, the readymade, collage, surrealist and conceptual photography, fluxus event scores, film, audio and video, performance, and participatory artworks. But why—a century after Dada and Surrealism's first systematic enquiries—does chance remain a key strategy in artists' investigations into the contemporary world?The writings in this anthology examine the gap between intention and outcome, showing it to be crucial to the meaning of chance in art. The book provides a new critical context for chance procedures in art since 1900 and aims to answer such questions as why artists deliberately set up such a gap in their practice; what new possibilities this suggests; and why the viewer finds the art so engaging.Artists surveyed include: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Francis Alÿs, William Anastasi, John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Mark Boyle, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Marcel Duchamp, Brian Eno, Fischli & Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Huang Yong Ping, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jiri Kovanda, Jorge Macchi, Christian Marclay, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Cornelia Parker, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Daniel Spoerri, Keith Tyson, Jennifer West, Ceryth Wyn Evans, La Monte Young
Writers include: Paul Auster, Jacquelynn Baas, Georges Bataille, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Bishop, Guy Brett, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Stanley Cavell, Lynne Cooke, Fei Dawei, Gilles Deleuze, Anna Dezeuze, Russell Ferguson, Branden W. Joseph, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Sarat Maharaj, John Miller, Alexandra Munroe, Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, Jasia Reichardt, Julia Robinson, Sarah Valdez, Katharina VossenkuhlDocuments of Contemporary Art series
Copublished with Whitechapel Gallery, London
1992, German / English
Hardcover (in original slipcase), Vol. 1 : 255 pages; Vol. 2 : 310 pages; Vol. 3 : 619 pages, 18.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$120.00 - Out of stock
Hardcover edition, three volume exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany, June 13 - September 9, 1992.
Documenta 9 is remembered as one of the most popular of all documenta exhibitions, thanks not least of all to the influence of its artistic director, the charismatic Belgian curator Jan Hoet. Hoet wanted to make the human being and our sensual, perceptual, agonized corporeality, which had been progressively displaced by the digitized, virtual world, the focus of attention at his exhibition. “From body to body to bodies” was the meaningful, poetic motto of documenta 9. Hoet described his curatorial mission in the following words: “At a time in which the human race is confronted more than ever with such dangers as AIDS and multinational wars, nuclear catastrophes, and global climate disasters, at a time in which threats are growing increasingly abstract and the fears more and more diffuse, I see reflection on the physical conditions of life as an appropriate answer.”
Texts by Jan Hoet, Denys Zacharopoulos, Bart de Baere, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Claudia Herstatt, Joyce Carol Oates, Jacques Roubaud, Cornelius Castoriadis, Heiner Müller, Paul Robbrecht, Hilde Daem.
Artists include Marina Abramovic, Absalon, Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, Marco Bagnoli, Nicos Baikas, Miroslaw Balka, Matthew Barney, Jerry Barr, Lothar Baumgarten, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Michael Biberstein, Guillaume Bijl, Dara Birnbaum, Jonathan Borofsky, Louise Bourgeois, Herbert Brandl, Ricardo Brey, Tony Brown, Marie José Burki, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Michael Buthe, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Waltercio Caldas, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Ernst Caramelle, Lawrence Carroll, Saint Clair Cemin, Tomasz Ciecierski, Tony Clark, James Coleman, Tony Conrad, Patrick Corillon, Damian, Richard Deacon, Thierry De Cordier, Silvie Defraoui & Chérif Defraoui, Raoul De Keyser, Wim Delvoye, Braco Dimitrijevic, Eugenio Dittborn, Helmut Dorner, Stan Douglas, Marlene Dumas, Jimmie Durham, Mo Edoga, Jan Fabre, Luciano Fabro, Belu-Simion Fainaru, Peter Fend, Rose Finn-Kelcey, FLATZ, Fortuyn/O'Brien, Günther Förg, Erik A.Frandsen, Michel François, Vera Frenkel, Katsura Funakoshi, Isa Genzken, Gaylen Gerber, Robert Gober, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Angela Grauerholz, Michael Gross, George Hadjimichalis, David Hammons, Georg Herold, Gary Hill, Peter Hopkins, Rebecca Horn, Geoffrey James, Olav Christopher Jenssen, Tim Johnson, Andrej N. Joukov, Ilya Kabakov, Anish Kapoor, Kazuo Katase, Tadashi Kawamata, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kelly, Bhupen Khakhar, Per Kirkeby, Harald Klingelhöller, Kurt Kocherscheidt, Peter Kogler, Vladimir Kokolia, Joseph Kosuth, Mariusz Kruk, Guillermo Kuitca, Suzanne Lafont, Jonathan Lasker, Jac Leirner, Zoe Leonard, Eugène Leroy, Via Lewandowsky, Bernd Lohaus, Ingeborg Lüscher, Attila Richard Lukacs, James Lutes, Marcel Maeyer, Brice Marden, Cildo Meireles, Ulrich Meister, Thom Merrick, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Meuser, Jürgen Meyer, Liliana Moro, Reinhard Mucha, Matt Mullican, Juan Muñoz, Christa Näher, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, Pekka Nevalainen, Nic Nicosia, Moshe Ninio, Jussi Niva, Cady Noland, Manuel Ocampo, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Tony Oursler, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A. R. Penck, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Hermann Pitz, Stephen Prina, Richard Prince, Martin Puryear, Royden Rabinowitch, Rober Racine, Philip Rantzer, Charles Ray, Martial Raysse, readymades belong to everyone, José Resende, Gerhard Richter, Ulf Rollof, Erika Rothenberg, Susan Rothenberg, Ulrich Rückriem, Thomas Ruff, Stephan Runge, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Remo Salvadori, Joe Scanlan, Eran Schaerf, Adrian Schiess, Thomas Schütte, Helmut Schweizer, Maria Serebriakova, Mariella Simoni, Susana Solano, Ousmane Sow, Ettore Spalletti, Haim Steinbach, Pat Steir, Wolfgang Strack, Thomas Struth, János Sugár, Yuji Takeoka, Robert Therrien, Frederic Matys Thursz, Niele Toroni, Thanassis Totsikas, Addo Lodovico Trinci, Mitja Tušek, Luc Tuymans, Micha Ullman, Juan Uslé, Bill Viola, Henk Visch, James Welling, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Wool, KeunByung Yook, Heimo Zobernig, Gilberto Zorio, and Constantin Zvezdochotov.
Very Good condition volumes in hardcover (much less common edition than usual softcover), preserved in their original illustrated slipcase (with common repaired splitting and bumping damage).
1969, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 22 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Praeger Publishers Inc. / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
First US printing of "Art Povera", the now legendary critical/photographic book by Germano Celant (Italian art historian, critic and curator) documenting the so-called "Art Povera / Arte Povera" movement (meaning "poor art", coined by Celant in 1967) and published by Praeger, New York in 1969 and printed in Italy. A must!
Includes profiles of major artists of the movement, including a short text followed by pages of full-page photographs for each artist.
Artists featured: Walter de Maria, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Stephen Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbets, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Giulio Paolini, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Franz Erhard Walther, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Emilio Prini, Richard Serra.
"This book does not aim at being an objective and general analysis of the phenomenon of art or life, but is rather an attempt to flank (both art and life) as accomplices of the changes and attitudes in the development of their daily becoming. This book does not attempt to be objective since the awareness of objectivity is false consciousness. The book, made up of photographs and written documents, bases its critical and editorial assumptions on the knowledge that criticism and iconographic documents give limited vision and partial perception of artistic work. The book, when it reproduces the documents of artistic work, refutes the linguistic mediation of photography. The book, even though it wants to avoid the logic of consumption, is a consumer's item. ... This book produces a collection of already old material. ... In this book there is no need to reflect in order to seek a unitary and reassuring value, immediately refuted by the the authors themselves, rather there is the necessity to look into it for the changes, limits, precariousness and instability of artistic work." -- text from Celant's introduction "Stating That."
Very good, well-preserved copy. Only light tanning.
1998, German
Hardcover, 366 pages, 22.5 x 31 cm
1st German edition, Out of print title / used / very good,
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$70.00 - Out of stock
The long out-of-print heavyweight "Out of Actions" book (First German hardcover edition) that was published to accompany the spectacular 1998 Paul Schimmel-curated travelling exhibition. "Out of Actions" surveyed the broad international history and influence of post-war Performance Art, and the objects that exist today as its documentation. It features significant texts by Schimmel, Kristine Stiles, Guy Brett, Hubert Klocker, Shinichiro Osaki, Leslie King-Hammond and Lowery Stokes Sims, and Keiko Okamura.
This important and heavily researched document is lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, capturing the work and actions of the artists featured in the exhibition and essays: Marina Abramovic, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, Vito Acconci, Genpei Akasegawa, Laurie Anderson, Eleanor Antin, Rasheed Arseen, Mowry Baden, Artur Barrio, Joseph Beuys, Mark Boyle and Joan Hills, George Brecht, Stuart Brisley, Robert Delford Brown, Gunter Brus, Chris Burden, James Lee Byars, John Cage, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Lygia Clark, Pinchas Cohen Gan, Collective Action Group, Houston Conwill, Paul Cotton, COUM Transmissions, Guy de Cointet, Jim Dine, John Duncan, Felipe Ehrenberg, Roberto Evangelista, Valie Export, Robert Filliou, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Sherman Fleming, Lucio Fontana, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Gideon Gechtman, Gilbert & George, Alberto Greco, Ion Grigorescu, Victor Grippo, Red Grooms, Guerrilla Art Action Group, David Hammons, Al Hansen, Maren Hassinger, Lynn Hershman, Dick Higgins, Tatsumi Hijikata, Susan Hiller, Rebecca Horn, Tehching Hsieh, Joan Jonas, Kim Jones, Michel Journiac, Akira Kanayama, Tadeusz Kantor, Allan Kaprow, Mike Kelley, Juergen Klauke, Yves Klein, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Komar & Melamid, Jannis Kounellis, Shigeko Kubota, Tetsumi Kudo, Yayoi Kusama, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, John Latham, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Lea Lublin, George Maciunas, Leopoldo Maier, Piero Manzoni, Tom Marioni, Georges Mathieu, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy, Bruce McLean, David Medalla, Cildo Meireles, Ana Mendieta, Gustav Metzger, Marta Minujin, Jan Micoch, Linda Montano, Robert Morris, Otto Muehl, Saburo Murakami, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Bruce Nauman, Paul Neagu, Senga Nengudi, Joshua Neustein, Hermann Nitsch, Helio Oiticica, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Orlan, Raphael Montanez Ortiz, Lorenzo Pace, Nam June Paik, Gina Pane, Lygia Pape, Giuseppe Pinot Gallizio, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jackson Pollock, William Pope L., Robert Rauschenberg, Carlyle Reedy, Klaus Rinke, Ulrike Rosenbach, Dieter Roth, Zorka Saglova, Niki de Saint Phalle, Alfons Schilling, Tomas Schmit, Carolee Schneemann, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Bonnie Sherk, Shozo Shimamoto, Ushio Shinohara, Kazuo Shiraga, Barbara T. Smith, Daniel Spoerri, Petr Stembera, Wolfgang Stoerchle, Jiro Takamatsu, Atsuko Tanaka, Mark Thompson, Jean Tinguely, Rasa Todosijevic, Kerry Trengove, Ulay, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, Peter Weibel, Franz West, Hannah Wilke, Emmett Williams, and Zaj.
Scarce first German edition, published by Hatje Cantz.
2016, English
Hardcover, 312 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Published by
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
$67.00 - Out of stock
'Invisible Adversaries' was a major exhibition curated by Lauren Cornell and Tom Eccles inspired by the 1976 feature film by the radical Austrian artist Valie Export. The film presents a woman’s struggle to retain her sense of self against hostile alien forces that appear increasingly ubiquitous, colonizing the minds of all those around her. Motifs from the film – among them, architecture’s influence on identity; feminist critique; and the power of political fantasy – operate as filters through which to consider significant pieces from the Marieluise Hessel Collection.
With works by over 50 artists including Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Chantal Akerman, Kai Althoff, Janine Antoni, Ida Applebroog, Phyllida Barlow, Lynda Benglis, Barbara Bloom, Paul Chan, Patty Chang, Anne Collier, Rineke Dijkstra, Trisha Donnelly, VALIE EXPORT, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, K8 Hardy, Rachel Harrison, Mona Hatoum, Roni Horn, Emily Jacir, Annette Kelm, Leigh Ledare, Nikki S. Lee, Sarah Lucas, Tala Madani, Christian Marclay, Helen Marten, Ulrike Müller, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Seth Price, Magali Reus, Rachel Rose, Thomas Ruff, Ilene Segalove, Cindy Sherman, Stephen Shore, Diane Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Jo Spence, Hito Steyerl, Tunga, Gillian Wearing, Martha Wilson, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, amongst others.
This 300-page publication designed by Zak Group with original essays by nine influential writers, scholars and artists: Zach Blas, Johanna Fateman, Nav Haq, Vít Havránek, J. Hoberman, Alex Kitnick, Tavia Nyong’O, Lauren O’Neill-Butler, and Julian Rose. The catalogue also includes original interviews with VALIE EXPORT, Trevor Paglen, and Hito Steyerl.
1980, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Cornell Paperbacks / London
Phaidon / London
$38.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
"Edward Lucie-Smith, a critic and historian of art who is deeply immersed in the works and trends of the seventies here provides the first general survey of the decade. In a volume alive with visual images that are often surprising and sometimes disturbing, he analyzes the development both of old forms and of new ones, and provides a coherent framework for the general reader."
Contents: The Popular Arts; Post Pop and Mandarin Taste; Abstract Painting; Illusionary Art; Figurative Painting; Fetish Art and Happenings; Political Art; Art as Environment and Architecture; High-Tech and the Third World, plus a biographical list of the artists featured and a "further reading" list.
Includes the work of: Stephen Willats, Lawrence Weiner, Brice Marden, Robert Mapplethorpe, Vito Acconci, Jo Baer, Joseph Beuys, Lynda Benglis, Bob Law, Philip King, Alan Kessler, On Kawara, Douglas Huebler, John Kacere, Richard Long, Robert Mangold, Philip Guston, Hans Haacke, Nancy Grossman, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Graves, Walter de Maria, U-Fan, Claude Viallet, Nancy Spero, Peter Saul, Robert Ryman, James Rosenquist, Joel Shapiro, Sylvia Sleigh, Robert Stackhouse, Paul Thek, Giulio Paolini, Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, Roman Opalka, Dennis Oppenheim, Tony Cragg, Judy Chicago, Larry Bell, Daniel Buren, Chuck Close, and many more.
2016, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 26.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Kunstmuseum Basel / Basel
$82.00 - Out of stock
What new paths have sculptors opened up since the end of World War II? Based on late works by Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti, this comprehensive volume illustrates the exciting and multifaceted developments in this dynamic art form. The long list of the first-class artists presented ranges from Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, and Jean Tinguely to Franz West, Damien Hirst and Monika Sosnowska. Sculpture on the Move demonstrates how the classic notion of form and sculpture was set in motion, became more abstract, came closer to the ordinary everyday object, dissolved spatial or conceptual boundaries, and even reconstituted itself, returning to figurative traditions. On the basis of selected works from the Kunstmuseum Basel and from international museums and private collections, the book opens up a dense, extremely rich world of contrasts. Featured artists include Absalon, Carl Andre, Jean Arp, Max Bill, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Eduardo Chillida, Peter Fischli und David Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Gober, Duane Hanson, Eva Hesse, Damien Hirst, Donald Judd, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Mario Merz, Henry Moore, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Gabriel Orozco, Pablo Picasso, Charles Ray, Richard Serra, Monika Sosnowska, David Smith, Jean Tinguely, Oscar Tuazon, Danh Vo and Franz West.
2013, English
460 individual cards in wrapper, 15.25 × 10.15 cm
Published by
New Documents / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
Between 1969 and 1974, the influential curator Lucy Lippard (born 1937) curated four decisive Conceptual art exhibitions, and in doing so reinvented the exhibition catalogue. 4,492,040 is a facsimile reprint of the extremely scarce and hugely important catalogues produced for these hugely important “numbers shows” - 557,087 (the Seattle Art Museum), 955,000 (the Vancouver Art Gallery), 7,500 (the California Institute of Art) and 2,972,453 (the Centro de Arte y Comunicación). Titled after the populations of the cities in which the shows were held, each catalogue was an envelope of loose note cards containing statements, documentation and conceptual works by each artist, to be rearranged, filed or discarded at will. If Lippard described Conceptual art as the dematerialization of the art object, these catalogues effectively announced the dematerialization of the art exhibition. (One reviewer claimed Lippard had been the artist, and that her medium had been other artists.) 4,492,040 includes such iconic figures as Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Terry Atkinson, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Barthelme, Daniel Buren, Rosemarie Castoro, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Christos Dikeakos, Eleanor Antin, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, On Kawara, Edward Kienholz Sol LeWitt, Roelof Louw, Duane Lundon, Bruce McLean, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Jeff Wall and Lawrence Weiner.
2010, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 152 x 229 mm
Published by
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$18.00 - Out of stock
True to its title, the exhibition "Abstract Resistance" considers the metaphor of "resistance" as a complex political and compositional force defining art of the past half century.
Abstract Resistance (an exhibition held at the Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, in 2010) proposes an alternative framework for aesthetically inventive, ethically engaged, and politically defiant art. The exhibition, drawn mostly from the Walker’s collection, highlights works in assemblage, collage, and photomontage by Francis Bacon, Lynda Benglis, Anthony Caro, Sarah Charlesworth, Bruce Conner, Willem de Kooning, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Philip Guston, Rachel Harrison, Hirschhorn, Ellsworth Kelly, Paul McCarthy, Robert Motherwell, Bruce Nauman, Cady Noland, Charles Ray, Gedi Sibony, Kara Walker, Andro Wekua, and Cathy Wilkes.To accompany the exhibition, the Walker published this collection of essays by exhibition curator Yasmil Raymond, art historian Simon Baier, and philosopher Marcus Steinweg as well as artist statements by Thomas Hirschhorn, Gedi Sibony, and Cathy Wilkes.
2011, English
Softcover, 166 pages, 9.25 x 11"
Edition of 500, 1st printing,
Published by
2nd Cannons / Los Angeles
$50.00 - Out of stock
This book brings together new texts written to accompany 79 exhibitions organized by Bob Nickas between 1984 and 2011. Nickas chose one work to represent the memory of each exhibition, and through this visual "lens" he reflects on his activity as a curator, offering many behind-the-scenes views to the art world of the 1980s and 90s, as well as intimate recollections of the artists he worked with, and the art works he encountered over the years. The book, then, can be seen as a sort of memoir. Always placing the artists and their works within a social milieu, while also aware of how art travels across time, he reminds us that both lead multiple lives, as an exhibition can reanimate a work from the past, and occasion the discovery of forgotten and marginalized figures among those who are very well-known. This retrospective catalog is also in many ways an ideal exhibition — or collection — 27 years in the making.
With 90 color and black-and-white reproductions, the book features works by:
Vito Acconci . Richard Aldrich . John M Armleder . Barry X Ball . Lisa Beck . Alan Belcher . Ben Berlow . Walead Beshty . Huma Bhabha . Doug Biggert . Marcel Broodthaers . Henri Cartier Bresson . Graham Caldwell . Vija Celmins . Art Chantry . Larry Clark . Verne Dawson . Jules de Balincourt . Jessica Diamond . Trisha Donnelly . Moira Dryer . Gardar Eide Einarsson . William Gedney . Robert Gober . Daan van Golden . Wayne Gonzales . Felix Gonzalez-Torres . Peter Halley . Richard Hawkins . Adam Helms . Eva Hesse . Peter Hujar . Jacob Kassay . On Kawara . Yves Klein . Louise Lawler . Mark Leckey . Sherrie Levine . Judy Linn . Lee Lozano . Chris Martin . Allan McCollum . McDermott & McGough . Adam McEwen . Ryan McGinley . John Miller . Olivier Mosset . Dave Muller . Chuck Nanney . Bruce Nauman . Cady Noland . Amy O'Neill . Steven Parrino . Laurie Parsons . Raymond Pettibon . Jean Prouvé . David Ratcliff . Alex Rose . Sally Ross . Allen Ruppersberg . Sam Samore . Tom Sandberg . Joan Semmel . Stephen Shore . Harry Smith . Jack Smith . Robert Smithson . Mark Stahl. Haim Steinbach. Rudolf Stingel . Lily van der Stokker . Aaron Suggs . Philip Taaffe . Paul Thek . Wolfgang Tillmans . Betty Tompkins . Josh Tonsfeldt . John Tremblay . Alan Uglow . Kelley Walker . Jeff Wall . Joan Wallace . Wallace & Donohue . Dan Walsh . Andy Warhol . Christopher Wool
2003, English/German
Both softcover, 255 (vol.I) and 180 pages w. 45 colour ill. (vol. II), both 13 x 21 cm
Rare / Out-of-Print,
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$60.00 - Out of stock
Set of both long out-of-print volumes!
VOL. I
Edited by Michael Hirsch, Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Norbert Bolz, Peter Bürger, Alex Demirovic, Diedrich Diederichsen, Alexander García Düttmann, Michael Hirsch, Christoph Menke, Willem van Reijen, Martin Seel
The first volume of Adorno. The Possibility of the Impossible comprises theoretical essays which investigate the relevance of Adorno’s critical theory for the present. The tight connection between individual observations in aesthetics and cultural criticism, on the one hand, and the large speculations of social theory and the history of philosophy, on the other, that is found in Adorno’s own work is taken as a point of departure in many passages. The difference – disparity, even – in the varied attitudes toward the content of Adorno’s theory is evident. Seen from the perspective of the present, this multiple rereading is directed at fragments of a thought that has preserved its radicality even when abstracted from its immediate historical context. Both publications – Adorno. The Impossibility of the Impossible Vol. I and Vol. II – accompany an exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Theodor W. Adorno.
Design by Surface, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main
VOL. II
Edited by Michael Hirsch, Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Isabelle Graw and Georg Schöllhammer
Volume II documents the exhibition which looks at the connection between contemporary art and Adorno’s writings, with the visual arts becoming a central platform for comparison to Adorno’s main subjects. The publication illustrates the works exhibited and discusses the relationship between autonomy and sovereignty. Artists included are Carl Andre, Samuel Beckett, Martin Boyce, André Cadere, Martin Creed, Thomas Demand, Jason Dodge, Maria Eichhorn, Peter Friedl, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Henrik Plenge Jacobsen, Euan McDonald, John Massey, Jonathan Monk, Sarah Morris, Bruce Nauman, Mathias Poledna, Stephen Prina, Florian Pumhösl, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Markus Schinwald, Andreas Slominski, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Cerith Wyn Evans.
Design by Surface, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main
2007, English / German
Softcover, 48 pages (57 col. Ills.), 220 x 270 mm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$35.00 - Out of stock
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, December 2, 2006 - February 18, 2007.
Features:Allen Ruppersberg, Bas Jan Ader, Bruce Nauman, Chris Burden, Christopher Williams, Douglas Huebler, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Larry Johnson, Maria Nordman, Michael Asher, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, William Leavitt...