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:
W—F 12—6 PM
Sat 12—5 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
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.
2003, English
Softcover, 632 pages, 17.8 x 22.9 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
October Books / New York
$130.00 - In stock -
Eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years, each looking at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions.
Some critics view the postwar avant-garde as the empty recycling of forms and strategies from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Others view it, more positively, as a new articulation of the specific conditions of cultural production in the postwar period. Benjamin Buchloh, one of the most insightful art critics and theoreticians of recent decades, argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.This collection contains eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years. Each looks at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions. The art movements covered include Nouveau Realisme in France (Arman, Yves Klein, Jacques de la Villegle) art in postwar Germany (Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter), American Fluxus and pop art (Robert Watts and Andy Warhol), minimalism and postminimal art (Michael Asher and Richard Serra), and European and American conceptual art (Daniel Buren, Dan Graham). Buchloh addresses some artists in terms of their oppositional approaches to language and painting, for example, Nancy Spero and Lawrence Weiner. About others, he asks more general questions concerning the development of models of institutional critique (Hans Haacke) and the theorization of the museum (Marcel Broodthaers); or he addresses the formation of historical memory in postconceptual art (James Coleman). One of the book's strengths is its systematic, interconnected account of the key issues of American and European artistic practice during two decades of postwar art. Another is Buchloh's method, which integrates formalist and socio-historical approaches specific to each subject.
2016, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 15.2 x 24.1 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$89.00 - Out of stock
Douglas Crimp is the rare art critic whose work profoundly influenced a generation of artists. He is best known for his work with the "Pictures Generation" the very name of which Crimp coined to define the work of artists like Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman who appropriated images from mass culture to carry out a subversive critique. But while his influence is widely recognized, we know little about Crimp's own formative experiences before "Pictures."Before Pictures tells the story of Crimp's life as a young gay man and art critic in New York City during the late 1960s through the turbulent 1970s. Crimp participated in all of what made the city so stimulating in that vibrant decade. The details of his professional and personal life are interwoven with this the particularly rich history of New York City at that time, producing a vivid portrait of both the critic and his adopted city. The book begins with his escape from his hometown in Idaho, and we quickly find Crimp writing criticism for ArtNews while working at the Guggenheim where, as a young curatorial assistant, he was one of the few to see Daniel Buren's Peinture-Sculpture before it was removed amid cries of institutional censorship. We also travel to the Chelsea Hotel (where Crimp helped the down-on-his-luck couturier Charles James organize his papers) through to his days as a cinephile and balletomane to the founding of the art journal October, where he remained a central figure for many years. As he was developing his reputation as a critic, he was also partaking of the New York night life, from drugs and late nights alongside the Warhol crowd at the Max's Kansas City to discos, roller-skating, and casual sex with famous (and not-so-famous) men. As AIDS began to ravage the closely linked art and gay communities, Crimp eventually turned his attention to activism dedicated to rethinking AIDS. Part biography and part cultural history, Before Pictures is a courageous account of an exceptional period in both Crimp's life and the life of New York City. At the same time, it offers a deeply personal and engaging point of entry into important issues in contemporary art.
Includes the work of Cindy Sherman, Jack Goldstein, Daniel Buren, Charles James, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Peter Hujar, Eva Hesse, Bernardo Bertolucci, Walker Evans, Joseph Cornell, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Tworkov, Robert Ryman, Jane Freilicher, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Stanley Kubrick, Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Brice Marden, Ellsworth Kelly, Guilio Romano, Andrea Mantegna, Merce Cunningham, Joan Jonas, Yvonne Rainer, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Alvin Baltrop, Divine, Gordon Matta-Clark, Edgar Degas, Louise Lawler, and so many others.
2018, English
Softcover, 192 pages,
Edition of 2000,
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$29.00 - Out of stock
Just Another Asshole was an influential and now-legendary mixed-media publication series edited by Barbara Ess from 1978 to 1987. The submission process was open and collaborative, and each issue was produced in a different format (e.g., limited-edition zine by Ess, tabloid-sized graphic arts magazine, 4 pages in an issue of Artforum, photography book, LP record album, paperback book). Several were edited with Jane Sherry or Glenn Branca.
Issue 6 of the magazine, co-edited with Branca, was published in the form of a pulp paperback book with writings by sixty-one artists from the early-80s downtown scene. It includes short stories, performance transcripts, aphorisms, plays, monologues, screenplays, and essays that offer a window into the gritty and dynamic culture of New York City before gentrification pushed the underground out of Lower Manhattan.
Contributors include Kathy Acker, Lindsay Amos, Constance Ash, Josh Baer, Barbara Barg, Judith Barry, Nan Becker, Eric Bogosian, Glenn Branca, Brian Buczak, Mitch Corber, Peter Cummings, Margaret De Wys, Bradley Eros, Barbara Ess, Richard Fantina, Dorothea Franck, Matthew Geller, Michael Gira, Jack Goldstein, Dan Graham, Rudolph Grey, Sue Hanel, Jenny Holzer, Peggy Katz, Barbara Kruger, Beth Lapides, Joe Lewis, Amanda Linn, Carla Liss, Meredith Lund, Matthew Maguire, Aline Psyche Mare, Sam Marshall Harvey, Alan Moore, Richard Morrison, Cookie Mueller, Peter Nadin, Joseph Nechvatal, Richard Prince, Lee Ranaldo, David Rattray, Mike Roddy, David Rosenbloom, Ann Rower, Arleen Schloss, Jane Sherry, Kiki Smith, Michael Smith, Jim Sutcliffe, Fiona Templeton, Wharton Tiers, Lynne Tillman, Anne Turyn, Gail Vachon, S.Weisser, Sally A. White, Reese Williams, Martha Wilson, Stephan Wischerth, David Wojnarowicz, and Linda Yablonsky.
Barbara Ess is an artist living and working in New York City and upstate New York. She uses photography, video, and sound to make her work, which has been shown widely in the United States and Europe. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at Bard College.
Glenn Branca was a composer whose work included music for experimental rock bands, large ensemble instrumentals for electric guitars, symphonies for both electric instrumentation and acoustic orchestras, chamber ensemble pieces, an opera, a ballet, choral works, and music for film, dance, theater, and art installations. He was an early pioneer of the no wave punk scene that emerged in downtown New York in the late ’70s.
Edition of 2000
1971, German
Softcover, 464 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
DuMont / Köln
$85.00 - Out of stock
Huge, densely-illustrated volume compiled by German publisher/editor/essayist/curator Walter Aue, who worked closely with conceptual and performance artists in the 1960s-1970s. Laid-out by Aue himself, the book feels like a very natural scrap-book compendium of artist contributions, reproducing artworks, documentation of happenings, texts, photographs, diagrams, collages, news-clippings, instructions, etc. across over 450 pages, with Aue's type-written opening essay and cataloguing throughout. Features the most notable conceptual, actionist and performance artists of the period, spanning Fluxus, Arte Povera, radical architecture, Nouveau Realisme, etc. including Dieter Rot, Joseph Beuys, Robert Smithson, Pino Pascali, Stanley Brouwn, Jannis Kounellis, Klaus Rinke, Ben Vautier, Al Hansen, Walter Pichler, Hilla and Bernhard Becher, Giuseppe Penone, Ettore Sottsass, Gilbert and George, Walter De Maria, Wolf Vostell, Hans Hollein, Imi Knoebel, Barry Flanagan, Allan Kaprow, Carolee Schneemann, Hamish Fulton, Christo, Elfriede Jelinek, Dennis Oppenheim, Urs Lüthi, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Rühm, Blink Palermo, Lawrence Weiner, Ed Ruscha, HA Schult, Hermann Nitsch, James Lee Byars, Jan Dibbets, Jochen Gerz, Mauricio Kagel, Nam June Paik, Otto Mühl, Arnulf Rainer, Jan Voss, George Brecht, Robert Filliou, Franz Erhard Walther, Timm Ulrichs, Daniel Spoerri, Erich Reusch, Paul Pechter, Rainer Giese, Jörg Immendorff, Henning Christiansen, Gilberto Zorio, Panamarenko, Joseph Kosuth, Dan Graham, Dick Higgins, Ian Baxter, Mel Bochner, Haus-Rucker-Co, Markus Raetz, Sottsass, Nam June Paik, Hans Haacke, Tetsumi Kudo, Bruce Mclean, On Kawara, and so many more.
Depending on the artist, texts are in English, German, Dutch, etc. Opening essay in German.
Very Good, light wear/tear to top spine.
1984, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$50.00 - Out of stock
Softcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
A Good copy throughout, with cover rubbing and corner bumping. Tightly bound and clean copy internally.
1982, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Biennale of Sydney / Sydney
$70.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published on the occasion of the Fourth Biennale of Sydney 1982, 7 April – 23 May 1982. Under the artistic direction of William Wright the 1982 Biennale was titled "Vision in Disbelief" and featured the work of Jörg Immendorff, Dan Graham, Brian Eno, Sue Ford, Joan Jonas, Lyndal Jones, John Baldessari, Robert Ashley, Billy Apple, Gary Hill, Fiona Hall, Philip Guston, General Idea, Bill Henson, Slave Guitars, Michael Snow, Severed Heads, Martha Rosler, Nam June Paik, Mike Parr, Tony Oursler, Davida Allen, Dale Frank, Rebecca Horn, Gareth Sansom, Lucas Samaras, Pe Kirkeby, Maria Kozik, Laughing Hands, Bertrand Lavier, Liz Magor, Anne Marsh, Markus Lupertz, William Wegman, Bill viola, Niele Toroni, Ken Unsworth, Marina Abramovic, John Ahearn, Vivienne Binns, Ian Breakwell, Georg Baselitz, Frank Auerbach, Claus Bohmler, Sydney Ball, Anti-Music, Laurie Anderson, Terry Allen, →↑→ and many more.
This catalogue includes colour and black and white examples of the work of all participating artists alongside texts and biographies.
2017, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 17.3 x 22 cm
Published by
MUDAM / Luxembourg
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Carl Andre, Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, Barbara Bloemink, Jan Boelen, Louise Bourgeois, Sheldon Cheney and Martha Candler Cheney, Alex Coles, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Hal Foster, Sigmund Freud, Dan Graham, Isabelle Graw, Sebastian Hackenschmidt and Dietmar Rübel, Graham Harman, G. W. F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Dave Hickey, Matthew Higgs, Donald Judd, Immanuel Kant, Frederick J. Kiesler, Sven Lütticken, Alessandro Mendini, W. J. T. Mitchell, Jasper Morrison, Bruno Munari, Robert Nickas, Alice Rawsthorn, Jeff Rian, Richard Rinehart, Anthony Vidler
This collection of more than thirty texts, which were originally published between 1790 and the present day, explores man’s rich relationship with material things. Devised largely in response to the gradual breakdown of the divide between art and design that began over a century ago, this book sheds light on the ways that the concept of the thing as idea has been considered over time. Writers from different fields explore how things interact with materials, structures, and production processes while defining and registering the intangible qualities of the material world. Each author considers the different relationships between the context of a thing and its thingness, describing the ways in which things and ideas intersect.
Copublished with MUDAM Luxembourg
Design by Florence Richard
1968, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 20 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
$30.00 - Out of stock
Battock's definitive 1968 collection of writings by and about the work of the 1960s minimalists, generously illustrated with photographs of paintings, sculpture, and performance, published by E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., New York.
A collection of twenty-eight seminal essays by both critics and artists across over 400 pages, analyzing all aspects of Minimal Art at it's height in the late 1960s. Includes Lawrence Alloway (Systemic Painting), Mel Bochner (Serial Art, Systems, Solipsism), David Bourdon (The Razed Sites of Carl Andre), Nicolas Calas (Subject Matter in the Work of Barnett Newman), Bruce Glaser (Questions to Frank Stella and Donald Judd), Lucy R. Lippard (Eros Presumptive), John Perreault (Minimal Abstracts), Irving Sandler (Gesture and Non-Gesture in Recent Sculpture), Peter Hutchinson (Mannerism in the Abstract0, Willoughby Sharp (Luminism and Kineticism), Elayne Varian (Schemata 7), Richard Wollheim (Minimal Art), and texts by Martial Raysse, Michael Fried, Clement Greenberg, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson, and more.
Heavily illustrated throughout with 170 photographs featuring the work of Sol LeWitt, Lee Bontecou, Donald Judd, Hanne Darboven, Carl Andre, Claes Oldenburg, Yves Klein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain, Agnes Martin, Christo, Barnett Newman, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Kienholz, Anne Truitt, Joseph Kosuth, Piet Mondrian, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Marcel Duchamp, Chryssa, Anthony Caro, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson, Frank Stella, Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Carlo Belloli, William Anastasi, Richard Artschwager, Ronald Balden, John Cage, Walter De Maria, Stephen Antonakos, Walter Darby Bannard, Allan D'Arcangelo, Stuart Davis, Mark di Suvero, Helen Frankenthaler, Jim Dine, Al Held, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Ralph Humphrey, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Will Insley, Patricia Johanson, Allan Kaprow, Roy Lichtenstein, Morris Louis, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Yvonne Rainer, Julio Le Parc, David Smith, Richard Tuttle, Tony Smith, Keith Sonnier, James Raphael Soto, Clyfford Still, Les Levine, Victor Vasarely, Ad Reinhardt, John McCracken, Robert Morris, Kenneth Noland, Robert Whitman, Jules Olitski, Milton Resnick, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jackson Pollock, Larry Poons, Jack Youngerman, George Rickey, Dorothea Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Edward Ruscha, Jan van Eyck, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and many others.
Good with general wear and previous owner underlining / notation. Ex-library.
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).
2007, English
Softcover, 21 x 28 cm, 320 pages
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$59.00 - In stock -
REAL LIFE Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994 highlights a selection of writings and artists' projects from REAL LIFE magazine, which was originally edited by artist, writer, and curator, Thomas Lawson and writer, Susan Morgan. Published in twenty-three issues from 1979-1994 as an intermittent black and white magazine, REAL LIFE featured artists and art historians writing on art, media and popular culture interspersed with pictorial contributions. The development of the magazine through its 15 year history, traces the influences, development and transitions of artists through the 80s.
The anthology features writings by and about Dara Birnbaum, Eric Bogosian, Rhys Chatham, Mark Dion, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Thomas Lawson, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Dave Muller, Matt Mullican, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince, David Robbins, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Michael Smith, John Stezaker, Bernard Tschumi, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, and James Welling among others.
Table of Contents:
Thomas Lawson and Susan Morgan: Various Histories of REAL LIFE Magazine
Matthew Higgs: REAL LIFE
Susan Morgan: an interview with Robert Moskowitz, 1979
Valentin Tatransky: Collage And The Problem Of Representation: Sherrie Levine's new work, 1979
Grahame Shane: Crime as Function, 1979
Susan Morgan: an interview with Steve Gianakos, 1979
Barbara Kruger: Game Show, 1979
James Welling: Untitled, 1979
Thomas Lawson: Every Picture Tells A Story Don't It? 1979
Thomas Lawson: Fashion Moda, 1980
Richard Prince: Primary Transfers, 1980
Dan Graham: The Destroyed Room of Jeff Wall, 1980
Kim Gordon: Trash Drugs And Male Bonding, 1980
Thomas Lawson: Going Places, 1980
Susan Morgan: Michael Hurson, 1980
Barbara Kruger: Devils With Red Dresses On, 1980
Thomas Lawson: Long Distance Information, 1980
Joseph Bishop: Desperate Character, 1980
Richard Prince: Menthol Pictures, 1980
Laurie Simmons: Sam and Dottie Dance, 1980
Jim Bradley: Radical Genitalia, 1980
Allan McCollum: Matt Mullican's World, 1980
Michael Smith: Mike In... What Should I Do About The Car? 1980
Sherrie Levine: Two Photographs After Walker Evans, 1980
Kim Gordon: Honeymoon Habit, 1980
Post-Modernism: a symposium, 1981
Dan Graham: BOWWOWWOW (the Age of Piracy), 1981
Howard Singerman: The Artist as Adolescent, 1981
Elsa Bulgari: Your Everyday Critic, 1981
Thomas Lawson: Too Good to be True, 1981
Jenny Bolande: Elk Grazed as if Nothing Had Happened, 1981
David Robbins: Notes toward film, 1981
Eric Bogosian: Fascination, 1981
Fulton Ryder: Pissing on Ice, 1981
Joan Wallace and Geralyn Donohue: Edit deAk, 1982
Rex Reason: Democratism, 1982
The Holy Ghost Writers: Condensation and Dish-Placement, 1982-3
Howard Singerman: Paragraphs toward an essay entitled 'Restoration Comedies', 1982-3
John Roberts: Ruins in the Realm of Thought, 1983
Paul McMahon: From The Permanent Collection, 1983
Jo Baer and Bruce Robbins: Beyond the Pale, 1983
Kathi Norklun: Courage, 1983
Tim Rollins: Particles, 1980-1983, 1983-4
Doug Ashford: Kiss of Death, 1983-4
Thomas Lawson: Komar & Melamid, 1983-4
Robin Winters: The Secret Agent: an interview with Jacki Ochs , 1983-4
Robert C. Morgan: a conversation with Lawrence Weiner , 1983-4
Judith Kirshner: A Blinding Light , 1983-4
Rex Reason: Brie Popcorn: an interview with the directors of Nature Morte Gallery, 1983-4
John Miller: Morality and the Poetic, 1984
Susan Morgan: Portraits of the Artists/Composite Drawings, 1984
B.P. Gutfreund: Four Photographs, 1984
Susan Morgan: Each and Every One of You, 1985
Mark Dion: Tales From The Dark Side, 1985
Jeff Wall: Dan Graham's Kammerspiel Parts I and II, 1985
Jana Sterbak: Premeditated: an interview with Ed Ruscha, 1985
Walter Robinson: The Quest For Failure, 1985-6
Derek Boshier: John Dugger, 1985-6
John A.Walker: Unholy Alliance: Chairman Mao, Andy Warhol, and the Saatchis, 1985-6
Kellie Jones: David Hammons, 1986
John Miller: Swiss Family Robbins, 1986
Adrian Piper: An Open Letter to Donald Kuspit, 1987-8
Susan Morgan: when X does not equal Y , 1987-8
Thomas Lawson: Critical Art Ensemble, 1988-9
Christine N. Lea: Beyond Belief, 1988-9
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Untitled 1988: Detail of a Sculpture (Endless Copies), 1988-9
Thomas Lawson: No Bull, 1990
Allan McCollum: Photo from TV (with Paintings), 1990
Dara Birnbaum: The Wondering Of Context, 1990
James Welling: Corridors, 1989, 1990
Michael Smith and R. Sikoryak: Mike, 1990
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Untitled, 1990
Judith Barry: Drive-In or Walk-In Museum, 1990
Group Material: AIDS Timeline, 1990
David Robbins: Three Cancelled TV Families, 1990
Louise Lawler: Untitled 1988, 1990
Susan Morgan: Carlos Gutierrez-Solana, 1994
Josef Strau and Stephan Dillemuth: Friesenwall 120, 1994
David A. Muller: Three Day Weekend, 1994
Spencer Finch: Amnesia And Saying Nothing, 1994
1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First, hardcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
Very uncommon hardcover edition, with dust jacket.
2015, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 11 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$22.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Donatien Grau
Afterword by Paul McCarthy
One day I went to interview Dan Graham about the legendary John Daniels Gallery in New York, which he ran from 1964 to ’65. Right after I arrived, Dan started talking to me about Michel Butor and his fascination with the writer’s work back in the 1960s. I merely asked: “And did you ever meet him?” Dan answered: “No. Some people wanted to introduce us, but it never happened.” I asked: “And would you like to meet him?” And he said, with his very own smile: “Of course I would.”
—From the editor’s preface
In the fall of 2013, Dan Graham and Mieko Meguro traveled with Donatien Grau to a town in the French Alps to meet Michel Butor, one of the foremost innovators of postwar literature. This is their conversation.
Michel Butor is a writer. He redefined the genre of the novel, notably with Second Thoughts (1957), further developing new forms with Mobile (1962) and other fundamental works.
Dan Graham is an artist. A major retrospective of his work was held in 2009 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Design by Thomas Bizzarri & Alain Rodriguez
2014, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 182 pages (36 b/w ills.), 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$24.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Branden W. Joseph
Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, Kim Gordon—widely known as a founding member of the influential band Sonic Youth—produced a series of writings on art and music. Ranging from neo-Conceptual artworks to broader forms of cultural criticism, these rare texts are brought together in this volume for the first time, placing Gordon’s writing within the context of the artist-critics of her generation, including Mike Kelley, John Miller, and Dan Graham. In addressing key stakes within contemporary art, architecture, music, and the performance of male and female gender roles, Gordon provides a prescient analysis of such figures as Kelley, Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Tony Oursler, and Raymond Pettibon, in addition to reflecting on her own position as a woman on stage. The result—Is It My Body?—is a collection that feels as timely now as when it was written. This volume additionally features a conversation between Gordon and Jutta Koether, in which they discuss their collaborations in art, music, and performance.
Institut für Kunstkritik series
Design by Surface
2015, English
Softcover, 161 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Ed. of 200 copies,
Published by
Pure Fiction / Frankfurt Am Main
$18.00 - In stock -
Dysfyction II
Edited by Erika Landström, Aislinn McNamara.
With contributions by Josef Strau, Olga Pedan, Ellen Yeon Kim, Simon Spieser, Aislinn McNamara, Hilda Stammarnäs, Erika Landström, Dan Graham, Mariana Lopez, Anna Zacharoff, Reece York, Dan Kwon, Dario Wokurka, Magnus Andersen, Rosa Aiello, Elif Saydam, Lena Phillip, John Miller, Buck Ellison, Luzie Meyer, Suart Middleton, Ryan Karlsson, Franziska Wildt, Mahsa Saloor, J.s. Teixeira, Thy-Han Nguyen-Chi, George Rippon, Ian Edmonds, Mikhail Wassmer, John Ryan, Julien Nguyen, Yuki Kushino, Kitsum Cheng and Leda Bourgogne.
LAZY WRITING, NOT LONGER THAN DAN’S, REAL FICTION, SELF-CRYT (BACK SEAT), EXERPTS, UNRELATABLE NARRATOR
Published by Mark von Schlegell and the Pure Fiction seminar, February 2015, in an edition of 200 copies.
2014, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 110 pages, 39 color and 70 b/w ills., 10.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$25.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Nikolaus Hirsch, Markus Miessen
Featuring artwork by Dan Graham
The history of the avant-garde (in art, architecture, literature) can’t be separated from the history of its engagement with mass media. It is not just that the avant-garde used media to publicize its work; the work did not exist before its publication.
In architecture, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe came to be known through their influential writings and manifestos published in newspapers, journals, and little magazines. Entire groups, from Dada and Surrealism to De Stijl, became an effect of their manifestos. The manifesto was the site of self invention, innovation, and debate. Even buildings themselves could be manifestos. The most extreme and radical designs in the history of modern architecture were realized as pavilions in temporary exhibition.
In the third book in the Critical Spatial Practice series, Beatriz Colomina traces the history of the modern architecture manifesto, with particular focus on Mies van der Rohe, and the play between the written and built work. This essay propels the manifesto form into the future, into an age where electronic media are the primary sites of debate, suggesting that new forms of manifesto are surely emerging along with new kinds of authorship, statement, exhibition, and debate.
Design by Zak Group
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, 132 pp. (b&w ill.), 21.7 x 16.5 cm.
Published by
Overduin and Kite / Los Angeles
$20.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue produced on the occasion of "Joint Dialogue - Lozano/Graham/Kaltenbach" curated by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer at Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles, January 31st-March 13th, 2010.
“Joint Dialogue” investigates the intersecting material histories of Lozano, Graham and Kaltenbach at the end of the 1960s in New York. It’s about close personal relationships between artists and the way ideas are traded down forking paths of influence to become variously manifest, suppressed, and rerouted in art. It’s about three related but divergent models of how being an artist dictates an extreme experience of consciousness, one in which the self is constantly lost and refound, or, as Lozano put it, a total revolution simultaneously personal and public. It’s about a transformative time in these artists’ overlapping practices that is reflective of the explosive historical period of rapid experimentation in conceptual art. It’s about real stakes- and the profundity of humor. It’s about trying to process the still astounding after-effects of Lozano’s absent body through the presence of Graham’s and Kaltenbach’s.
Motivated by Lozano’s Dialogue Piece (1969), in which stoned socializing and conversations about ideas were prioritized over art making, the structure of “Joint Dialogue” is split into two dialogues linked by Lozano, the joint. In one room, the juxtaposition of eight related and contemporaneous works establishes a conversation about drugs, sex, and money between Graham and Lozano, who were intimate friends during the time these works were made. A dialogue between Lozano and Kaltenbach, another close friend, takes place in a second room where several related works from the late 60s are joined by two never before seen time capsules by Kaltenbach and two previously unknown pieces by Lozano, remembered here by Kaltenbach.
“Joint Dialogue” is an ongoing project of personal investigation and investment for the curator who privately documents the many discoveries made throughout. The project continues to feed back great quantities of info.
Lee Lozano, Dan Graham and Stephen Kaltenbach lived and worked near each other in New York City during the late 1960s. Kaltenbach left for California in 1970. Lozano dropped out of the scene around 1972. Graham continues to live and work in New York.
Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer is a writer and curator who lives and works in Los Angeles. She is the publisher of the journal Pep-Talk.
Catalogue features texts by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Dan Graham, and Stephen Kaltenbach.
2011, English/French
Softcover, 272 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$36.00 - Out of stock
“To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”
—Bernadette Devlin
Put together in the wings of the “Dystopia” exhibition at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, acting as a resonance chamber, this illustrated novel raises the issue of possible futures in the form of a critical fiction, and involves the outposts of the novel to come. About New Dystopia, the city in which the novel’s protagonists live, the narrator states: “As an American … one only came to New Dystopia City to become an artist. That only there was it a way of life.” According to von Schlegell, we are living in that new metropolis. He states, “Dystopia is today.”
After Venusia (2005) and Mercury Station (2009), both published by Semiotext(e), New Dystopia is Mark von Schlegell’s third novel.
Artists: Wallace Berman, Cosima von Bonin, Brian Calvin, Tony Carter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Peter Coffin, Simon Denny, Andreas Dobler, Roe Ethridge, Keith Farquhar, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Aurélien Froment, Cyprien Gaillard, Isa Genzken, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Sebastian Hammwöhner, Roger Hiorns, Ull Hohn, Des Hughes, Peter Hutchinson, Eugene Isabey, Sergej Jensen, On Kawara, Michael Krebber, Jesus Mari Lazkano, Rita McBride, John Miller, Pathetic Sympathy Seekers, Manfred Pernice, Stephen G. Rhodes, Glen Rubsamen, Sterling Ruby, Julia Scher, Frances Scholz, Michael Scott, Markus Selg, Reena Spaulings, Michael Stevenson, Tommy Støckel, Josef Strau, Blair Thurman, Mathieu Tonetti, Oscar Tuazon, Franz West, Jordan Wolfson
Co-published with CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux
2008, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 143 x 212 mm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$28.00 - Out of stock
A collection of texts by critics (Lucian Harris, "The Art Newspaper"), curators (Ian White, Whitechapel and Emily Pethick, Casco Projects) and artists (Morgan Fisher and Dan Graham), this publication takes on the timely challenge of conceptualizing a museum designed to exhibit film and video works whose meaning is contingent on the context of cinema.
2009, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 140 x 208 mm
Edition of 3000,
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$28.00 - Out of stock
The first collection in English of Dan Graham’s influential body of writing on Rock and Roll music. Stretching from the late 60s to the late 80s, Rock/Music Writings contains the following 13 essays, most of which are currently out-of-print or seen here for the first time in a widely distributed form:
Holes and Lights: A Rock Concert Special
All You Need Is Love
Live Kinks
Late Kinks
Country Trip
The End of Liberalism
Punk as Propaganda
Rock My Religion
New Wave Rock and the Feminine
Musical Performance And Stage–Set Utilizing Two–Way Mirror And Time–Delay
McLaren’s Children
Untitled
Artist as Producer
2012, English
Softcover, 526 pages (282 colour ill.), 210 x 277 mm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$46.00 - Out of stock
"Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?" is a reader that brings together essays, artists' writings and works, and countercultural publications to examine the juncture of the political and the erotic during the 1960s and 70s. Adopting as its starting point the postwar perception of Scandinavia as a socialist utopia of sexual freedom, it explores how the avant-garde artistic and cultural production of the time gravitated towards sexual and political liberation. "Whatever Happened to Sex in Scandinavia?" is the conclusion of a four-year research project, and includes many texts published in English here for the first time, by philosophers, artists, psychologists and theorists such as Knut Ove Arntzen, Stan Brakhage, Norman O. Brown, Valie Export, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Herbert Marcuse, Jonas Mekas, Henry Miller, Juliet Mitchell, Katti Anker Moller, Jorgen Nash, Havard Friis Nilsen, Claes Oldenburg, Elise Ottesen-Jensen, Wilhelm Reich, Yvonne Rainer, Jacqueline Rose, Barney Rosset, Barbara Rubin, Jens Jorgen Thorsen and Otto Weininger.