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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
2024, English
Hardcover, 180 pages, 24.2 x 17.2 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$65.00 $40.00 - In stock -
An in-depth look at a public art project by David Hammons with an overview of the enigmatic artist’s career
Published to commemorate David Hammons’s (b. 1943) public art project Day’s End, located in New York City, this book documents the sculpture and offers broader context into Hammons’s enigmatic work. In 2014, Hammons sent the Whitney Museum of American Art a sketch for a monument to Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), paying homage to Matta-Clark’s legendary Day’s End (1975)—an industrial, cathedral-like space of altered architecture—once located near today’s Whitney in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Completed in 2021, Hammons’s work, also titled Day’s End, was realized by the Whitney in collaboration with Hudson River Park, and is on permanent view. One of the most important artists working in the United States, Hammons makes art across mediums, often outside traditional venues. In addition to photographic documentation, the book includes essays on the origins of Day’s End, Hammons’s career scope, and a contribution by poet Ben Okri.
2014, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 20 x 26 cm
Published by
Aspen Art Museum / Aspen
$85.00 - In stock -
This volume offers a compelling examination of the surprising conceptual and visual correspondences between the works of these two pivotal artists known for their innovative practices. Klein (1928-1962) was a major figure in postwar art who opened up new possibilities for material, conceptual and performative expression, often touching on the metaphysical. Hammons (born 1943) is a conceptual artist whose works in performance, installation, sculpture, printmaking and other media confront contemporary realities with an often hard-hitting wit. This publication aims not to draw out any notion of influence or direct correlation between these bodies of work, but rather to elucidate a resonance between two artists who both engage transformative processes to invest the humblest of everyday materials with deep aesthetic significance.
1992, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$80.00 - Out of stock
1992 issue of Parkett (Vol. 31), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists David Hammons and Mike Kelley, lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by with texts by Robert Farris Thompson, Iwona Blazwick & Emma Dexter, John Ffarris, Lynne Cooke, Louise Neri in conversation with David Hammons, Diedrich Diederichsen, Lane Relyea, Bernard Marcadé, Mike Kelley & Julie Sylvester talking about “Failure.” The Insert artist is Candida Höfer and the spine artist is Niele Toroni. Also in this issue: Vija Celmins by Sheena Wagstaff, Larry Clark, What is This? by Jim Lewis, Jean-Pierre Bordaz “Imi Knoebel, Isa Genzken, Gerhard Merz,” Claude Ritschard “Rémy Zaugg.” Imi Knoebel: Working With Success – Working With Unsucces by Rudolf Bumiller, Imi Knoebel and Grace Kelly, The High by Rainer Crone & David Moos, Imi Knoebel First Impressions by Lisa Liebmann, Sherrie Levine: The Transgressions of Sherrie Levine by Daniela Salvioni, Presence Withdrawn by Erich Franz, Looking After Sherrie Levine by Howard Singerman, Damien Hirst — Insert, Making Work and Turning Your Back on it : Bethan Huws by Liam Gillick, The Work of Art as the Ideal Center for Human Beings, Walter de Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture by Thomas Kellein, International Time Capsule Society, Les Infos du Paradis, Inside the White Cube, Cumulus from America by Ralph Rugoff, Cumulus from Europe by Robert Fleck, Talk o’ the Town by Jeanne Sliverthorn.
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Average—Good copy with some marking and wear. Ex-sticker resudue to cover.
2023, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$40.00 - In stock -
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 2020–2021. A cultural examination of the enigmatically iconic figure of the Dandy, both in history and as a figure for the future.
With Kai Althoff, Lutz Bacher, Kévin Blinderman / Pierre-Alexandre Mateos / Charles Teyssou, Marcel Broodthaers, Ursula Böckler, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Hanne Darboven, Stephan Dillemuth, Victoire Douniama, Lukas Duwenhögger, Cerith Wyn Evans, Sylvie Fleury, Andrea Fraser, Sophie Gogl, Gogo Graham, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, David Hammons, Birgit Jürgenssen, K Foundation, John Kelsey, Michael Krebber, Miriam Laura Leonardi, David Lieske, Mathieu Malouf, Ulrike Ottinger, Mathias Poledna, Raymond Roussel, Heji Shin, Reena Spaulings, Sturtevant, Bernadette Van-Huy, James McNeill Whistler, Virginia Woolf.
Designed by HIT.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages, 19 x 12 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$44.00 - Out of stock
The most significant critical, theoretical, and art historical texts by the artist, writer, and filmmaker Aria Dean.
Compiled here for the first time, the selected writings of Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles) mount a trenchant critique of representational systems. A visual artist and filmmaker, Dean has also emerged as one of the leading critical voices of her generation through a body of writing that maps the forces of aesthetic theory, image regimes, and visibility onto questions of race and power. Dean's work across media has long been defined by what she calls a "fixation on the subject and its borders," and the texts collected here filter that inquiry through digital networks, art history, and Black radical thought. Equally at home discussing artists who embrace difficulty-from Robert Morris to David Hammons, Lorna Simpson, and Ulysses Jenkins-and conceptual frameworks such as Afropessimism, Dean often contends with how theoretical positions brush against the grain of lived reality: how the Structuralism handed down from the academy, for instance, can be commingled with critiques of structural racism, or how Georges Bataille's notion of base matter transforms through an encounter with Blackness.
Dean's thinking embraces a definition of "Black art that luxuriates in its outside-the-world-ness," as she writes in this volume, which works to elucidate "Blackness's proclivity for making and unmaking its own rules as it produces objects" of cultural necessity. Originally published in November-of which Dean is a founding editor-as well as in Texte zur Kunst, e-flux journal, and in exhibition contexts, the essays compiled in Bad Infinity were written over a six-year span that charts our rapidly evolving forms of subjectivity and sociality.
2023, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 20 x 23 cm
Published by
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts / San Francisco
Inventory Press / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
Artists from Francis Alys to the Otolith Group meditate on the aesthetic and political possibilities of “the percussive”
Accompanying the 2022 exhibition at Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, 'Drum Listens to Heart' reflects on the many ways that percussion exists beyond the framework of music and imagines 'the percussive' as an aesthetic, expressive and political form more broadly. The publication includes a new essay by the curator, images of the works in the exhibition by the 25 artists and artist collectives, and short texts by 10 scholars, writers, artists and curators.
Artists include: Francis Alÿs, Luke Anguhadluq, Marcos Ávila Forero, Raven Chacon, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Theaster Gates, Milford Graves, David Hammons, Consuelo Tupper Hernández, Susan Howe & David Grubbs, NIC Kay, Barry Le Va, Rose Lowder, Lee Lozano, Guadalupe Maravilla, Harold Mendez, Rie Nakajima, the Otolith Group, Lucy Raven, Davina Semo, Michael E. Smith, Haegue Yang and David Zink Yi. Live performances by Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Moor Mother, Nkisi, Nomon, Karen Stackpole, Marshall Trammell and William Winant.
Edited with text by Anthony Huberman. Text by Diego Villalobos, Geeta Dayal, Natasha Ginwala, Lê Quan Ninh, Hannah Black, Anthony Elms, Hamza Walker, Hypatia Vourloumis, JJJJJerome Ellis, Will Holder, Sofia Lemos.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25.4 x 19 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
How California's counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artists.
The 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period's youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, "I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets." And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.
Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.
The result is a major new account of the counterculture's enduring influence on modern art.
1996, English
Softcover, 328 pages, 18 x 22.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$69.00 - Out of stock
In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today. After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real -- to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-garde, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation -- and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.
Includes the work of David Hammons, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Jasper Johns, Daniel Buren, Marcel Broodthaers, Michael Asher, Hans Haacke, Fred Wilson, Silvia Kolbowski, Larry Bell, Sol Lewitt, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Tony Smith, Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, Jeff Koons, Haim Steinbach, Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, Ross Bleckner, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Gordon Matta-Clark, Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Allan McCollum, Gerhard Richter, Richard Estes, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, John Miller, Zoe Leonard, Gran Fury, Renée Green, Dan Graham, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Lothar Baumgarten, Fred Wilson, Jimmie Durham, and many more.
1982, English
Softcover, 34 pages, 17.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Alternative Museum / New York
$100.00 - In stock -
Extremely scarce, lovely catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Visual Politics", curated by Geno Rodriguez at the Alternative Museum in New York, 1982.
Featuring the work of Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Francesc Torres, Sonia Balassanian, Benedict J. Fernandez, Daniel Kazimierski, Despo Magoni, Juan Sanchez, Randy Lee White, amongst others. Illustrated throughout with the artworks featured in the exhibit, plus biographical info for each artist and a foreword essay by Robert H. Browning.
Very Good with light edge tanning with age.
2021, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 14.5 x 21 cm
Published by
Whitechapel / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$40.00 - Out of stock
From the hexing of presidents to a renewed interest in herbalism and atavistic forms of self-care, magic has furnished the contemporary imagination with mysterious and complex bodies of arcane thought and practice. This volume brings together writings by artists, magicians, historians, and theorists that illuminate the vibrant correspondences animating contemporary art's varied encounters with magical culture, inspiring a reconsideration of the relationship between the symbolic and the pragmatic.
Dispensing with simple narratives of re-enchantment, Magic illustrates the intricate ways in which we have to some extent always been captivated by the allure of the numinous. It demonstrates how magical culture's tendencies toward secrecy, occlusion, and encryption might provide contemporary artists with strategies of remedial communality, a renewed faith in the invocational power of personal testimony, and a poetics of practice that could boldly question our political circumstances, from the crisis of climate collapse to the strictures of socially sanctioned techniques of medical and psychiatric care.
Tracing its various emergences through the shadows of modernity, the circuitries of ritual media, and declarations of psychic self-defence, Magic deciphers the evolution of a 'magical-critical' thinking that productively complicates, contradicts and expands the boundaries of our increasingly weird present.
Artists surveyed:
Holly Pester, Katrina Palmer, Ithell Colquhoun, Anna Zett, Monica Sjoeo, Sofia Al-Maria, Jack Burnham, Jeremy Millar, Susan Hiller, Mike Kelley, Morehshin Allahyari, Center for Tactical Magic, David Steans, Porpentine, Travis Jeppesen, Linda Stupart, Caspar Heinemann, Elizabeth Mputu, Faith Wilding, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Henri Michaux, Kenneth Anger, Benedict Drew, Mark Leckey, Robert Morris, Jenna Sutela, Haroon Mirza, Zadie Xa, Saya Woolfalk, Ian Cheng, Tabita Rezaire, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, Elijah Burgher, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Sahej Rahal
Writers:
Charles Fort, Victoria Nelson, Gary Lachman, Yvonne P. Chireau, Randall Styers, Isabelle Stengers, Alan Moore, Simon O' Sullivan, Lucy Lippard, Louis Chude Sokei, Patricia MacCormack, Mark Pilkington, AE, Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater, Michel Leiris, Aime Cesaire, Austin Osman Spare, Erik Davis, Mark Dery, Elaine Graham, Jeffrey Sconce, Giulia Smith, Esther Leslie, Alice Bucknell, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Hannah Gregory, Kristen Gallerneaux, Mahan Moalemi, Jamie Sutcliffe, Gregory Sholette, Aaron Gach, Eugene Thacker, Diane Di Prima, Allan Doyle, Aria Dean, Emily LaBarge, Lou Cornum, Joy KMT, Scott Wark, McKenzie Wark, Phil Hine, Jackie Wang, Sean Bonney
2021, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 15 x 22.6 cm
Published by
The Drawing Center / New York
$44.00 - Out of stock
The first book dedicated to these pivotal early works on paper, David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968-1979 brings together the monoprints and collages in which the artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making. Hammons created the body prints by greasing his own body--or that of another person--with substances including margarine and baby oil, pressing or rolling body parts against paper, and sprinkling the surface with charcoal and powdered pigment. The resulting impressions are intimately direct indexes of faces, skin, and hair that exist somewhere between spectral portraits and physical traces. Hammons' body prints represent the origin of his artistic language, one that has developed over a long and continuing career and that emphasizes both the artifacts and subjects of contemporary Black life in the United States.
More than a half century after they were made, these early works on paper exemplify Hammons' celebration of the sacredness of objects touched or made by the Black body, and his biting critique of racial oppression. The 32 body prints highlighted in this volume introduce the major themes of a 50-year career that has become central to the history of postwar American art. The book features a conversation between curator and activist Linda Goode Bryant and artist Senga Nengudi, as well as a photo essay by photographer Bruce W. Talamon, who documented Hammons at work in his Los Angeles studio in 1974.
Born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, David Hammons moved to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of 20 and began making his body prints several years later. He studied at Otis Art Institute with Charles White and became part of a younger generation of Black avant-garde artists loosely associated with the Black Arts Movement. He moved to New York in 1978.
2018, English
Hardcover, 88 pages, 21.6 x 30.2 cm
Ed. of 750,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts / San Francisco
$180.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Anthony Huberman. Text by Tongo Eisen-Martin, David Hammons, Fred Moten.
The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, an exhibition space and research institute in San Francisco, dedicates year-long seasons of discussions and public events to a single artist. In 2016–17, the American artist David Hammons (born 1943) was "on our mind." The book begins with the previously unpublished transcript of a rare artist talk given by Hammons in 1994 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, on the occasion of his exhibition there. It then introduces a series of photographs the artist sent to the Wattis Institute in 2017, interspersed with texts by the Bay Area poet Tongo Eisen-Martin and the writer and critic Fred Moten. Much like Hammons’ work, this publication raises more questions than answers. Rather than functioning as a comprehensive introduction to the artist, David Hammons Is on Our Mind offers visual and textual elements that relate obliquely to the enigmatic artist’s oeuvre.
Edition of 750 copies. Now out-of-print.
2016, English
Hardcover, 280 pages, 31.6 x 3.1 x 26 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$120.00 - Out of stock
The resurgent interest in contemporary painting in recent years has coincided with an explosion of new digital media and technologies. Contrary to canonical accounts premised on medium-specificity, painting’s most advanced positions since the 1960s have developed in productive friction with contemporaneous forms of mass media and culture. From the rise of television and computers to the Internet revolution, painting has assimilated precisely those cultural and technological developments that were held responsible for its presumed “death.” Moving far beyond its technical definition as “oil on canvas,” painting during the information age has consistently offered a site for negotiating the challenges of a mediated life-world.
Featuring over 230 works by 107 artists, Painting 2.0 is one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions of contemporary painting in recent years.
Artists include:
Kai Althoff, Ei Arakawa/Shimon Minamikawa, Monika Baer, Nairy Baghramian, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynda Benglis, Sadie Benning, Judith Bernstein, Joseph Beuys, Ashley Bickerton, Cosima von Bonin, KAYA (Debo Eilers & Kerstin Brätsch), Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Merlin Carpenter, Leidy Churchman, William Copley, René Daniëls, Guy Debord/Asger Jorn, Carroll Dunham, Mary Beth Edelson, Thomas Eggerer, Michaela Eichwald, Nicole Eisenman, Jana Euler, Louise Fishman, Andrea Fraser, Isa Genzken, Mary Grigoriadis, Philip Guston, Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Raymond Hains, Harmony Hammond, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Rachel Harrison, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Charline von Heyl, Ull Hohn, Jacqueline Humphries, Jörg Immendorff, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Yves Klein, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Manfred Kuttner, Maria Lassnig, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Lee Lozano, Konrad Lueg, Michel Majerus, Piero Manzoni, Kerry James Marshall, Hans-Jörg Mayer, John Miller, Joan Mitchell, Ree Morton, Ulrike Müller, Matt Mullican, Elisabeth Murray, Cady Noland, Hilka Nordhausen, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Steven Parrino, Ed Paschke, Howardena Pindell, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Stephen Prina, R.H. Quaytman, Robert Rauschenberg, David Reed, Gerhard Richter, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Mario Schifano, Amy Sillman, Sylvia Sleigh, Josh Smith, Joan Snyder, Reena Spaulings, Nancy Spero, Gruppe SPUR, Frank Stella, Walter Swennen, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Jacques de la Villeglé, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol, Sue Williams, Karl Wirsum, Martin Wong, Christopher Wool, Heimo Zobernig, u.a.
2017, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 15.2 x 21.6 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Afterall / London
$39.00 - Out of stock
One wintry day in 1983, alongside other street sellers in the East Village, David Hammons peddled snowballs of various sizes. He had neatly laid them out in graduated rows and spent the day acting as obliging salesman. He called the evanescent and unannounced street action Bliz-aard Ball Sale, thus inscribing it into a body of work that, from the late 1960s to the present, has used a lexicon of ephemeral actions and self-consciously “black" materials to comment on the nature of the artwork, the art world, and race in America. And although Bliz-aard Ball Sale has been frequently cited and is increasingly influential, it has long been known only through a mix of eyewitness rumors and a handful of photographs. Its details were as elusive as the artist himself; even its exact date was unrecorded. Like so much of the artist’s work, it was conceived, it seems, to slip between our fingers—to trouble the grasp of the market, as much as of history and knowability.
In this engaging study, Elena Filipovic collects a vast oral history of the ephemeral action, uncovering rare images and documents, and giving us singular insight into an artist who made an art of making himself difficult to find. And through it, she reveals Bliz-aard Ball Sale to be the backbone of a radical artistic oeuvre that transforms such notions as “art,” “commodity,” “performance,” and even “race” into categories that shift and dissolve, much like slowly melting snowballs.
About the Author
Elena Filipovic, an art historian, is Director and Chief Curator of Kunsthalle Basel. She is author of The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press).
1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 23.7 x 29 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$280.00 - Out of stock
The now very scarce and collectable MIT Press monograph on David Hammons, published in 1991. First and only edition in original dust jacket.
Essays by Steve Cannon, Tom Finkelpearl, and Kellie Jones
Photographs by Dawoud Bey and Bruce Talamon
Rousing the Rubble celebrates two decades of work by artist David Hammons, who has risen to prominence while at the same time consciously ducking the attention of critics, galleries, and museums, preferring to "do things in the street." A recipient of both a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award and a Prix de Rome, Hammons places himself as an artist between Arte Povera and Marcel Duchamp. He makes his art from refuse and the detritus of African-American life: chicken wings, Thunderbird and Night Train bottles, clippings from dreadlocks, basketball hoops. Hammons's deeply felt political views on race and cultural stereotypes give his witty and elegant sculptures, installations, and body prints an integrity that promises to keep the focus on his art rather than on his career.
Illustrated with nearly 100 photographs (both black and white and color), Rousing the Rubble covers the full range of Hammons's art and his methods of creating it. Steve Cannon's rap poem takes the reader on a freewheeling bicycle ride from Harlem to the Lower East Side in New York and is joyously infused with the same energies and inspirations as Hammons' work. Tom Finkelpearl discusses the power of the dirty, used objects Hammons prefers and how they relate to the clean" art exhibited in conventional gallery settings. And Kellie Jones examines how Hammons's art evolved from Los Angeles in the 1960s to New York and Rome in the present day.
Very Good copy with Good dust jacket (some small repaired tears, now preserved under plastic sleeve)
2017, English
Softcover, 416 pages, 21 x 28 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
Walther König / Köln
$49.00 - Out of stock
With texts by Alexander Alberro, Monica Amor and Carlos Basualdo, Biljana Ciric, Ekaterina Degot, Elena Filipovic, Claire Grace, Anthony Huberman, Dean Inkster, Alhena Katsof, William Krieger, Elisabeth Lebovici, Ana Longoni, James Meyer, Isabelle Moffat, Nina Möntmann, Natalie Musteata, Sandra Skurvida, Dirk Snauwaert, Lucy Steeds, Monika Szewczyk, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Edited by Elena Filipovic.
Taking that ontologically ambiguous thing we call “the exhibition” as a critical medium, artists have often radically rethought conventional forms of exhibition making. This anthology surveys seminal examples of such exhibitions from the postwar to the present, including rare documents and illustrations. It includes an introduction and the twenty essays that first appeared in Mousse, a newly commissioned afterword by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and two additional essays that appear here for the first time.
The publication focuses on the following artists: Avant-Garde, the Argentinean artist group - Mel Bochner - Marcel Broodthaers - Hank Bull, Shen Fan, Zhou Tiehai, Shi Yong, and Ding Yi - John Cage - Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and the CalArt's Feminist Art Program - Collaborative Projects Inc. (Colab) - Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, and Max Jorge Hinderer - Liam Gillick and Philippe Parreno - Group Material - Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore - David Hammons - Martin Kippenberger - Mark Leckey - Goshka Macuga - Lucy McKenzie and Paulina Olowska - Hélio Oiticica - Walid Raad and Akram Zaatari - Martha Rosler - Avdey Ter-Oganyan - Philippe Thomas - Andy Warhol.
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).
2016, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 12.8 x 19.7 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$46.00 - Out of stock
This collection of essays by Martin Herbert considers various artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an antagonistic position toward its mechanisms. A large part of the artist’s role in today’s professionalized art system is being present. Providing a counterargument to this concept of self-marketing, Herbert examines the nature of retreat, whether in protest, as a deliberate conceptual act, or out of necessity. By illuminating these motives, Tell Them I Said No offers a unique perspective on where and how the needs of the artist and the needs of the art world diverge. Essays on Lutz Bacher, Stanley Brouwn, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Trisha Donnelly, David Hammons, Agnes Martin, Cady Noland, Laurie Parsons, Charlotte Posenenske, and Albert York.
Martin Herbert is a writer and critic living in Berlin. He is associate editor of ArtReview and writes for international art journals. Previous books include The Uncertainty Principle (2014) and Mark Wallinger (2011).
Design by Fraser Muggeridge studio
2000, English
Plastic binder, 60 page catalogue/booklet, poster, brochure, press release, CD, 600 loose leaf A4 pages, 30.2 x 22 x 4 cm
Edition of 500,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia - Palacio de Cristal - Parque del Retiro / Madrid
$2900.00 - Out of stock
Incredible limited edition (500 copies) "Global Fax Festival" binder created by David Hammons on the occasion of the "Global Fax Festival - Arkestrated by David Hammons" exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Madrid (June 1 – November 6, 2000). This extraordinary edition contains a 60-page book of wonderful black-and-white photography documenting the exhibition and related events, the exhibition brochure, a large folded exhibition poster, press release, CD (Butch Morris "Conduction #113, Interflight), and a selection of six hundred faxes selected by David Hammons from the show. In this exhibition, in the Palacio de Cristal, Hammons provided the public with nine fax numbers corresponding to nine receivers installed in the ceiling of the Palacio. When messages sent from anywhere in the world are received they fall from the top of the space, progressively landing and filling up the floor. The project, Global Fax Festival, was used by Hammons to draw on the parallel between the surroundings, where the leaves of the trees in the Retiro park follow the same path. One of his intentions for the exhibition, created especially for the Palacio de Cristal, was to minimally involve the building's architecture, which he himself defines as being like “a sacred cathedral”. This sacrosanct dimension does not only belong to the spaces, but also the materials and objects and is a constant in his work.
Among the faxes received over the five months of the exhibition, there are also newspaper stories, adverts, drawings, artist dossiers, obituaries, letters, declarations of love, collages, social statements, messages for David Hammons, instructions on origami techniques, famous phrases and proclamations, graphic humour, poems, short stories and book excerpts, music scores, photos of people, puzzles, slogans, etc., all of which demonstrate the boundless diversity of possible expression through paper. The sounds in the inside of the Pabellón de Cristal, the trill of the birds in the park, the noise of the fax machine and the falling paper, are equally part of the installation and fulfil the artist's intentions.
Moreover, five days before its official closure the exhibition includes a concert by Butch Morris, a preeminent figure in contemporary classical music, improvisation and jazz. The American composer performs an improvisation combining sampled recordings and the live sounds from the surroundings. One hour before sunset, the sounds are displaced, with all the musicians participating in the concert by playing collectively from their designated places until one hour after sundown, when they change their positions once more.
A true document of the exhibition and it's events, Hammons' selection of six hundred messages received over the course of the exhibition make up the rare catalogue edition of this example of Fax-Art, falling somewhere between Mail Art and Net-Art.
The work of artist David Hammons (Springfield, USA, 1943), which begins in the Seventies, has been characterised by its commitment towards civil rights and its link to the Black Power movement in the United States - the defence of the rights of black people. Hammons commonly questions the separation between public and private spaces through an aesthetic with influences from Minimalism, Arte Povera and the school of Zen.
A Fine / As New copy of this very rare, highly collectable title.
2004, English
Softcover, 87 pages, 18.5 x 12.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
ICA / Pennsylvania
$45.00 - Out of stock
Conceptions of “nothing” are one of the driving themes of twentieth-century art. One thinks of Piet Mondrian's reductivist approach to abstraction, Marcel Duchamp's contention that art resides in ideas, not objects, Mark Rothko's painterly reach for the sublime, Andy Warhol's affirmations of the vacuity of Pop culture. The Big Nothing will focus on themes of nothing, nothingness and negation in contemporary art and culture, surveying the legacy of these and other manifestations of absence made manifest in contemporary art. Artist include Gareth James, Jutta Koether, Louise Lawler, Richard Prince, Yves Klein, Bernadette Corporation, John Miller and James Welling, among others. Given its broad connotations, “nothing” provides general audiences with immediate access to looking at and thinking about the art of today.
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held May 1 - August 1, 2004. Curated and with essays by Ingrid Schaffner, Bennett Simpson, and Tanya Leighton. Additional essay by Paula Marincola. Artists include: Bas Jan Ader, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, Michel Auder, Jo Baer, Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Bernadette Corporation, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Chimes, Bruce Conner, Day Without Art, Jessica Diamond, Roe Ethridge, Lili Fleury, Rene Gabri, Jack Goldstein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nicolas Guagnini, David Hammons, Heavy Industries, Nancy Holt, Richard Hoeck, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Gareth James, Ray Johnson, Yves Klein, Joachim Koester, Jutta Koether, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Lawler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Allan McCollum, Patrick McMullen, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Eileen Neff, Gabriel Orozco, Raphael Ortiz, Charlemagne Palestine, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Doris Salcedo, Karin Schneider, Allan Sekula, Arlene Shechet, Santiago Sierra, John Smith, Robert Smithson, Paul Swenbeck, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andy Warhol, James Welling, John Wesley, and Steve Wolfe. Includes checklist of the exhibition.
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 / Italian
Softcover (w. French-folds and inserted booklets), 200 pages, 19.5 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Marsilio / Venice
$85.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Danh Vo, Caroline Bourgeois, Julie Ault, Heinz Peter Knez, Stefan A. Peterson.
Exhibition curated by Danh Vo and Caroline Bourgeois
Texts by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion
Photography by Heinz Peter Knes
Danh Vo’s conceptual artworks and installations often draw upon elements of personal lived experience (his own, the lives of his parents and other family members) to explore broader historical, social or political themes, particularly those relating to the history of Vietnam at the close of the twentieth century. The works shown in this book—closely related to an exhibition at the Pinault Foundation in Venice—in addition to Vo’s site-specific installations, include some curious old works of art from Venetian museums and collections, provocatively chosen by Vo to establish an unprecedented dialogue between past and present.
Beautifully designed, comprehensive exhibition catalogue with two inserted booklets (text book with words by Patricia Falguieres, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Amy Zion; and exhibition guide/artist profile book and work list), with the main book entirely made up of elegant colour photographic imagery by Heinz Peter Knez of the exhibition itself and the wonderful collection of works assembled. Profusely illustrated with installation views, works and details, featuring the work of Leonor Antunes, Nairy Baghramian, Giovanni Bellini, Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Giovanni Buonconsigliodetto Il Marescalco, Hubert Duprat, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Luciano Fabro, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Petrit Halilaj, David Hammons, Roni Horn, Peter Hujar, Tetsumi Kudo, Bertrand Lavier, Zoe Leonard, Francesco Lo Savio, Lee Lozano, Robert Manson, Piero Manzoni, Sadamasa Motonaga, Jean-Luc Moulène, Henrik Olesen, Pablo Picasso, Sigmar Polke, Carol Rama, Charles Ray, Auguste Rodin, Cameron Rowland, Andres Serrano, Nancy Spero, Sturtevant, Alina Szapocznikow, Paul Thek, Harald Thys & Jos Degruyter, Danh Vo, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong.
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
1995, English / German
Softcover, 48 pages, 21 x 26.5 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Salzburger Kunstverein / Salzburg
$190.00 - Out of stock
Very rare catalogue published on the occasion of David Hammons' solo European institutional exhibition "Been There and Back" at Salzburger Kunstverein, 4 August - 27 September 1995. Catalogue features colour documentation of the exhibition installation, plus individual works, alongside essays by Silvia Eiblmayr and Dawoud Bey.