World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER
RE—OPENING JAN 16
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
ORDERS SHIP FROM JAN 6
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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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.
1969, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 21 x 22 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Praeger Publishers Inc. / New York
$250.00 - Out of stock
First US printing of "Art Povera", the now legendary critical/photographic book by Germano Celant (Italian art historian, critic and curator) documenting the so-called "Art Povera /Arte Povera" movement (meaning "poor art", coined by Celant in 1967) and published by Studio Vista, London in 1969 and Praeger, New York, the same year.
Includes profiles of major artists of the movement, including a short text followed by pages of full-page photographs for each artist.
Artists featured: Walter de Maria, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Stephen Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbets, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Giulio Paolini, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Franz Erhard Walther, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Emilio Prini, Richard Serra.
"This book does not aim at being an objective and general analysis of the phenomenon of art or life, but is rather an attempt to flank (both art and life) as accomplices of the changes and attitudes in the development of their daily becoming. This book does not attempt to be objective since the awareness of objectivity is false consciousness. The book, made up of photographs and written documents, bases its critical and editorial assumptions on the knowledge that criticism and iconographic documents give limited vision and partial perception of artistic work. The book, when it reproduces the documents of artistic work, refutes the linguistic mediation of photography. The book, even though it wants to avoid the logic of consumption, is a consumer's item. ... This book produces a collection of already old material. ... In this book there is no need to reflect in order to seek a unitary and reassuring value, immediately refuted by the the authors themselves, rather there is the necessity to look into it for the changes, limits, precariousness and instability of artistic work." -- text from Celant's introduction "Stating That."
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$70.00 - In stock -
First 1977 hardcover edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Very Good in VG dust jacket designed by Krauss with interior architect Alan Buchsbaum!
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 30.5 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$125.00 - In stock -
German-born American artist Eva Hesse (1936–70) was a pioneering figure in Postminimalism, known for her use of materials such as latex and fiberglass to evoke fleshy, organic forms. This volume provides a historical account of Hesse’s landmark institutional exhibitions following her death, from 1972 to the present.
Contributions from the museum curators involved in organizing these shows reflect the personal dimension of crafting an exhibition, such as intent and reception. Extensive installation views are included throughout, along with exhibition-related ephemera, lending historical texture to the curators’ essays.
Edited by Barry Rosen. Text by Fiona Bradley, Helen Cooper, Briony Fer, Sabine Folie, Andrea Gyorody, Ellen Johnson, Brigitte Kölle, Luanne McKinnon, Renate Petzinger, Petra Roettig, Nicholas Serota, Linda Shearer, Lena Stringari, Elisabeth Sussman, Fred Wasserman, Catherine de Zegher.
Curators and corresponding exhibitions include: Linda Shearer (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1972); Nicholas Serota (Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1979); Ellen Johnson (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, 1982); Helen Cooper (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 1992); Elisabeth Sussman (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2002); Renate Petzinger (Museum Wiesbaden, Germany, 2002); Sabine Folie (Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2004); Fred Wasserman (Jewish Museum, New York, 2006); Catherine de Zegher (Drawing Center, New York, 2006); Briony Fer (Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2009); Luanne McKinnon (University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, 2011); Brigitte Kölle and Petra Roettig (Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, 2013–14); Andrea Gyorody (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio, 2019/22); Lena Stringari (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2022).
1969, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 21 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
$320.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1969 printing of the seminal "Art Povera", the phenomenal and now legendary critical/photographic book by the great Italian art historian, critic and curator Germano Celant (1940—2020) that internationally established the so-called Art Povera / Arte Povera movement (meaning "poor art", coined by Celant in 1967) and published by Studio Vista, London and printed in Italy.
Includes profiles of major artists of the movement, including a short text followed by pages of full-page photographs for each artist. Artists featured: Walter de Maria, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Stephen Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbets, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Giulio Paolini, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Franz Erhard Walther, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Emilio Prini, Richard Serra.
"This book does not aim at being an objective and general analysis of the phenomenon of art or life, but is rather an attempt to flank (both art and life) as accomplices of the changes and attitudes in the development of their daily becoming. This book does not attempt to be objective since the awareness of objectivity is false consciousness. The book, made up of photographs and written documents, bases its critical and editorial assumptions on the knowledge that criticism and iconographic documents give limited vision and partial perception of artistic work. The book, when it reproduces the documents of artistic work, refutes the linguistic mediation of photography. The book, even though it wants to avoid the logic of consumption, is a consumer's item. ... This book produces a collection of already old material. ... In this book there is no need to reflect in order to seek a unitary and reassuring value, immediately refuted by the the authors themselves, rather there is the necessity to look into it for the changes, limits, precariousness and instability of artistic work." — text from Celant's introduction "Stating That."
A must.
Very Good copy, usual tanning.
1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$500.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.
Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.
Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.
Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 368 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Farrar Straus & Giroux / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
"Destined to become a new classic ... Elkin shatters the truisms that have evolved around feminist thought."—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography
One of Lit Hub's most anticipated books of 2023
What kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty.
In this dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies, and art, Lauren Elkin—the celebrated author of Flaneuse—explores the ways in which feminist artists have taken up the challenge of their work and how they not only react against the patriarchy but redefine their own aesthetic aims. How do we tell the truth about our experiences as bodies? What is the language, what are the materials, that we need to transcribe them? And what are the unique questions facing those engaged with female bodies, queer bodies, sick bodies, racialized bodies?
Encompassing with a rich genealogy of work across the literary and artistic landscape, Elkin makes daring links between disparate points of reference—among them Julia Margaret Cameron's photography, Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits, Eva Hesse's rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann's body art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's trilingual masterpiece DICTEE—and steps into the tradition of cultural criticism established by Susan Sontag, Helene Cixous, and Maggie Nelson.
An erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine—and enact—our lives.
1969 / 2006, English / French / German / Italian
Softcover binder (w. spring-loaded plate), 170 pages, 31.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
$290.00 - Out of stock
One of the great art documents of the 20th century, "Live in Your Head : When Attitudes Become Form", curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, March 22 - April 27, 1969. This is the impeccably re-produced facsimile edition of the exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition honouring the legacy of Szeemann in 2006, published by the Kunsthalle Bern, the producers of the original. Strictly limited edition and immediately out-of-print, this most faithful reprint, with the unique die-cut alphabetically tabbed index bound with hardware-fittings, has become as collectible as the 1969 edition.
Sponsored by the Philip Morris tobacco company, this was an important, extensive and primary exhibition dedicated to the amalgam of Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art in Europe and the United States. The catalogue itself is designed and produced by Szeemann, and printed in Switzerland by Stämpfli & Cie in Bern. Alongside those of Seth Siegelaub, Szeemann's now historical catalogues changed the way exhibition publishing performed. Presented as a indexical binder (spring-bound with a metal plate) forming an index of alphabetical artist pages and accompanying texts. Includes a biography, bibliography, illustrations and portrait for each artist.
Texts by Harald Szeemann, Scott Burton, Grégoire Müller and Tommaso Trini.
Artists include Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Jared Bark, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Marinus Boezem, Bill Bollinger, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Alighiero Boetti, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Jo Ann Kaplan, Eva Hesse, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Bruce McLean, Walter De Maria, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul Pechter, Panamarenko, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Viner, Erhard Walther, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman, William Wiley and Gilberto Zorio.
Texts in English, French, German and Italian.
As New with only light creasing to the overhanging edges of the cover edges, otherwise a Fine copy.
2006, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
The Drawing Center / New York
$150.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of this out-of-print volume on Eva Hesse's drawing practice. Hesse (1936—1970) was a highly experimental artist who continually challenged the conventions of her time. For Hesse, drawing played a unique role, providing the nexus between her works in all media. Eva Hesse Drawing is the first book to explore her drawing process, following her work from drawing to painting and sculpture, and always back to drawing. The book features important, recently rediscovered “working drawings,” providing an intimate look at Hesse’s everyday practice and methodology.
An accomplished draftswoman, Hesse began to develop her wandering, tentative line while studying at Yale University in the late 1950s. Her early 1960s works on paper engaged with visual vocabularies from geometry to biomorphic abstraction. In 1965, Hesse combined her tactile sensibility for materials with her stringlike line to achieve a breakthrough: her astonishing reliefs, which began to bridge the space between two and three dimensions. Balancing the disembodiment of line with its intensified materialization, Hesse went on to develop one of the most innovative oeuvres of the twentieth century, anticipating the hybridization of media and crossing borderlines linking one impossible space to another.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
2011, English
Hardcover, 228 pages, 23.3 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MoMA / New York
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of long out-of-print important catalogue published to accompany the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 21 Nov. 2010—7 Feb. 2011. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century explores a radical transformation of drawing that began over a century ago and continues as a vital impulse in art today. In a revolutionary departure from traditional ideas of drawing, and from the reliance on paper as the medium's fundamental support, artists have pushed the line of drawing into real space, expanding its relationship to gesture and form and invigorating its links with painting and sculpture, photography and film, and, particularly notably, dance and performance. Through works by over 100 artists, and through essays by Cornelia Butler and Catherine de Zegher that illuminate both broad themes and individual practices, On Line presents a groundbreaking history of an art form. The great, recognized art movements, from Cubism and Futurism at the beginning of the twentieth century through Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Concretism, arte povera, Conceptualism, and many other approaches up to the diverse present, are shown from a new perspective, and are joined by a host of less familiar artworks that properly claim a place in this differently defined field. The exhibition and catalogue includes works by a wide range of artists, both familiar and relatively unknown, from different eras of the past century and from many nations, including Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alexander Calder, Karel Malich, Eva Hesse, Anna Maria Maiolino, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, and Monika Grzymala.
Very Good / As New copy.
1999, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 152 pages, 30.5 x 24.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
MOCA / Los Angeles
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of long out-of-print important catalogue published to accompany Afterimage : Draw Through Process, a major survey of conceptual / post-minimalist drawing at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, before travelling to Texas and Washington. Co-published by the MIT Press and MOCA.
The term "process art" describes a moment of radical, a formal experimentation in postwar American sculpture. Through the medium of drawing, Afterimage revisits process art in terms of the artists who defined the movement and suggests a transitional moment when many of its practitioners anticipated the feminist and post minimalist art of the 1970s.
The term "process art" describes a moment of radical, a formal experimentation in postwar American sculpture. Through the medium of drawing, Afterimage revisits process art in terms of the artists who defined the movement and suggests a transitional moment when many of its practitioners anticipated the feminist and postminimalist art of the 1970s. Nancy Grossman's use of language, for example, suggests a kind of material abstraction, and Nancy Holt's earth works and related drawings introduced content into a minimalist vocabulary. The book also explores the drawing as a residual object in works in which the process of making dictates the form of the drawing. Examples include Gordon Matta-Clark's stacked cuttings, Robert Morris' "blind time" drawings, and Sol Lewitt's folded construction drawings. Other works, such as those by Bruce Nauman and Robert Smithson, record a particular approach to body-based and process-oriented sculpture. The book, which accompanies an exhibition, contains an essay by Cornelia H. Butler on the historical ambiguity surrounding process art and one by Pamela M. Lee on temporality in work of the late 1960s.
The artists included in the book are William Anastasi, Richard Artschwager, Mel Bochner, Agnes Denes, Nancy Grossman, Robert Grosvenor, Marcia Hafif, Eva Hesse, Nancy Holt, Barry LeVa, Sol Lewitt, Lee Lozano, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Saret, Joel Shapiro, Robert Smithson, Michelle Stuart, Richard Tuttle, and Jack Whitten.
Very Good copy. Only very light wear to soft dust jacket, light tanning to edges.
2003, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 21 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$110.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this lovely hardcover catalogue, published on the occasion of a special travelling exhibition of drawings at The Drawing Centre, New York; Tate, London; MCA, Sydney, 2003 — over 140 important works from the Tate Collection organised, from William Blake to Andy Warhol, selected by the British artist Avis Newman and curated Catherine de Zegher. Newman chose these works because they demonstrated her interest in drawing as an exploratory or discursive act - ie as 'the nearest equivalent to the operation of thought'. The presentation of rarely-seen drawings by so many major artists gives way to fresh and startling connections between their work and new insights into their creative processes. Edited by Catherine De Zegher, this lavishly illustrated book features so many rarely seen drawings by artists, alongside interviews and essays.
Artists : Eileen Agar, Carl Andre, Jean Arp, Heneage Finch Aylesford, Francis Bacon, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beckmann, William Blake, Pierre Bonnard, Constantin Brancusi, André Breton, British School, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Paul Cézanne, Alexander Cozens, Jean Crotti, George Dance, Nathaniel Dance-Holland, John Charles Denham, Marcel Duchamp, Jacob Epstein, Luciano Fabro, Jean Fautrier, Barry Flanagan, John Flaxman, Lucio Fontana, Henry Fuseli, Naum Gabo, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Alberto Giacometti, Natalya Goncharova, Juan Gris, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Hepworth, Eva Hesse, William Henry Hunt, Giles Hussey, John William Inchbold, Gwen John, Jasper Johns, John Latham, Fernand Léger, Sol LeWitt, El Lissitzky, René Magritte, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden, André Masson, E.L.T. Mesens, Henri Michaux, John Hamilton Mortimer, Barnett Newman, William Young Ottley, Blinky Palermo, Giuseppe Penone, Francis Picabia, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Elizabeth Rigby, Edward Ruscha, Kurt Schwitters, Albert Seba, Thomas Stothard, James Thornhill, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, George Montard Woodward, Joseph Wright.
Very Good copy.
2020, English
Flexi (cloth), 904 pages, 14 x 20 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$90.00 - In stock -
‘I open my new book. What will you tell for the next year. To bring forth a new chapter of wisdom, hopes, joys fears. I shall be honest with myself; and therewith SUCCEED.’ These lines open Eva Hesse’s 1955 diary and lay out the task of her writing. In between weekly to-do lists and personal musings, Hesse used her diaries as a space to process her experience of the world and to reckon with what it means to be an artist.
An American sculptor best known for her pioneering work with materials such as rope, latex, and fiberglass, Hesse is regarded as one of the artists who ushered in the Post-Minimalist movement of the late 1960s. This publication presents Hesse’s diaries from 1955 to 1970, providing an intimate glimpse into the artist’s psyche. Her diaries and journals, which she kept for the entirety of her life, convey her anxieties, her feelings about family and friends, her quest to be an artist, and the complexities of living in the world.
Hesse's biography is well known: her family fled Nazi Germany, her mother committed suicide when Hesse was ten years old, her marriage ended in divorce, and she died at the age of thirty-four from a brain tumor. The diaries featured in this publication begin in 1955 and describe Hesse's time at Yale University, followed by a sojourn in Germany with her husband, Tom Doyle, and her return to New York and a circle of friends that included Sol LeWitt, Mel Bochner, Lucy Lippard, Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Robert Ryman, Mike Todd, and Paul Thek.
Poignant, personal, and full of emotion, these diaries convey Hesse's struggle with the quotidian while striving to become an artist.
Now in its second edition, ‘Eva Hesse: Diaries’ was first published in 2016 in association with Yale University Press and was awarded that year’s Most Beautiful Swiss Book Award by the Swiss Culture Awards Federal Office of Culture.
Edited by Barry Rosen with Tamara Bloomberg Publisher Hauser
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.
1969, English / French / German / Italian
Softcover binder (w. spring-loaded plate), 170 pages, 31.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
$600.00 - Out of stock
One of the great art documents of the 20th century, the original printing of the legendary catalogue for "Live in Your Head : When Attitudes Become Form", curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, March 22 - April 27, 1969. Very rare original 1969 edition!
Sponsored by the Philip Morris tobacco company, this was an important, extensive and primary exhibition dedicated to the amalgam of Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art in Europe and the United States. The catalogue itself is designed and produced by Szeemann, and printed in Switzerland by Stämpfli & Cie in Bern. Alongside those of Seth Siegelaub, Szeemann's now historical catalogues changed the way exhibition publishing performed. Presented as a indexical binder (spring-bound with a metal plate) forming an index of alphabetical artist pages and accompanying texts. Includes a biography, bibliography, illustrations and portrait for each artist.
Texts by Harald Szeemann, Scott Burton, Grégoire Müller and Tommaso Trini.
Artists include Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Jared Bark, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Marinus Boezem, Bill Bollinger, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Alighiero Boetti, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Jo Ann Kaplan, Eva Hesse, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Bruce McLean, Walter De Maria, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul Pechter, Panamarenko, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Viner, Erhard Walther, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman, William Wiley and Gilberto Zorio.
Texts in English, French, German and Italian.
Light wear and marking to folder covers, internal rubbing from metal plate, previous owners name and "69" to top of inside cover, otherwise very good copy throughout, complete.
1969, English
Softcover (textured wraps, staple-bound), 40 pages, 22 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
New Jersey State Museum Cultural Center / New Jersey
$290.00 - In stock -
Rare, collectable catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Soft Art", organized by Ralph Pomeroy at New Jersey State Museum Cultural Center, March - April 1969.
With an introductory essay by Pomeroy and works throughout by the artists featured in the exhibition : Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Sue Bitney, John Chamberlain, Bruce Conner, Paul Harris, Eva Hesse, Susan Lewis, Jean Lindner, Robert Morris, Harold Paris, Robert Rohm, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, William Wegman. Includes a list of the works exhibited, artist biographies and a list of lenders. A historic, very rarely seen catalogue.
Very Good copy.
1969, English / German
Flexible plastic covers, screw-bound in acrylic spine, multiple stocks throughout, approx 500 pages, 28 x 15 cm
3rd enlarged edition,
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
$300.00 - Out of stock
The extraordinary, definitive 1960s art exhibition catalogue, in it's 3rd expanded and corrected edition, designed by Wolf Vostell for the Ludwig collection in Cologne in 1969. A work of art itself, "Kunst der sechziger Jahre" perfectly embodies the materiality of the pop-era in book form. Housed in thick blind-stamped clear soft plastic covers bound in a hard acrylic plexiglass spine with stainless steel screws, this remarkable book opens with an introductory text and lexicon in German and English, printed on styrofoam pages and graph stock, with contributions by Gert von der Osten, Peter Ludwig, Horst Keller, and Evelyn Weiss. Featuring 92 artists, all part of the private collection of Peter Ludwig, each artist is presented with a portrait on transparent acetate followed by a selection of glossy offset-printed colour artworks tipped-in (often concertina fold-out!) on thick raw kraft paper pages. This enlarged 3rd edition features over 200 objects in total, a vast expansion on the first editions.
Featuring the greats of European-American Pop, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Art Informel, Abstraction, Minimalism and more, this mighty tome includes the work of Josef Albers, Carl Andre, Horst Antes, Shusaku Arakawa, Allan D'Arcangelo, Arman, Richard Artschwager, Jo Baer, Larry Bell, Miguel Berrocal, Joseph Beuys, Peter Blake, Gernot Bubenik, Anthony Caro, John Chamberlain, Dan Christensen, Alex Colville, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ronald Davis, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Richard Estes, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Dan Flavin, Lucio Fontana, Domenico Gnoli, Bruno Goller, Robert Graham, Nancy Stevenson Graves, Gunter Haese, Richard Hamilton, Hans Hartung, Erwin Heerich, Eva Hesse, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Allen Jones, Donald Judd, Howard Kantovitz, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Kienholz, R. B. Kitaj, Konrad Klapheck, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Linder, Morris Louis, Heinz Mack, Piero Manzoni, Marisol, Malcolm Morley, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Niki de Saint Phalle, Nicolas Schoffer, Bernhard Schultze, George Segal, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Pierre Soulages, Daniel Spoerri, Lawrence Stafford, Lewis Stein, Frank Stella, Antoni Tapies, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Jean Tinguely, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Gunther Uecker, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), Victor Vasarely, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Wols (Wolfgang Schulze).
A Very Good copy of this fragile and collectible catalogue. The usual bowing to pages, some general ageing, with a split to the lower back of plastic spine where the screw hole is, yet all still intact, nothing missing. Complete copy.
1976, English
Softcover, 314 pages, 15 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
E P Dutton / New York
$90.00 - Out of stock
First 1976 printing of this fantastic and now rarely seen classic book collection of essays by internationally acclaimed writer, art critic, activist and curator, Lucy R. Lippard.
"FROM THE CENTER : Feminist Essays on Women's Art" is broken into three sections: GENERAL ESSAYS, MONOGRAPHS, and FICTION. GENERAL ESSAYS include 12 major essays such as "Sexual Politics : Art Style", "Household Images in Art", "Fragments", "What is Female Imagery", "Making Up: Role-Playing and Transformation in Women's Art", "The Pains and Pleasures of Rebirth: European and American Women's Body Art", "The Womens' Art Movement - What Next?" and more. MONOGRAPHS is made up of writings dedicated to single artists, including essays on the work of Eva Hesse, Adrian Piper, Jo Baer, Joan Mitchell, Hanne Darboven, Ree Morton, Irene Siegel, Rosemarie Castoro, Louise Bourgeois, Faith Ringgold, Yvonne Rainer, Judy Chicago, Jackie Winsor, Nancy Graves and many more. A suburb collection, illustrated throughout with examples of the artists written about, including a colour plate section.
Very Good copy with cover/spine tanning, light wear.
1976, English
Softcover, 249 pages, 28.2 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
New York University Press / New York
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1976 edition of the best book on American artist Eva Hesse (1936—1970), and one of the great artist monographs. Long out-of-print, this classic text is both an insightful critical analysis and a tribute to an artist whose genius has become increasingly apparent with the passage of time. Authored by American writer, art critic, activist, and curator Lucy R. Lippard (b. 1937), Eva Hesse was designed by Hesse's friends and colleagues Sol LeWitt and Pat Stier; her sculptures, drawings, and paintings are reproduced throughout the entire book and discussed; and the text includes numerous quotations from her diaries.
Eva Hesse (1936—1970), was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. As Lippard points out, Hesse's use of obsessive repetition in her works served to increase and exaggerate the absurdity she saw in her life. In many ways, her works were "psychic models," as Robert Smithson has said, of "a very interior person." In pioneering the use of "soft" materials, her sculptures betrayed her awareness of the manner in which her experience as a woman altered her art and career. Although she died before feminism affected the art world to any great extent, her major works have since become talismans for succeeding generations of women artists.
Very Good copy of the softcover first edition.
1990, English
Softcover, 389 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$100.00 - Out of stock
The bountiful exhibition catalogue published to accompany the first large-scale assessment of the work of ten American sculptors working during a critical period in postwar American art; held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 20 February to 3 June, 1990. Organised by Richard Armstrong and Richard Marshall, this extraordinary exhibition brought together the work of Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Barry Le Va, Bruce Nauman, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, and Richard Tuttle, to survey a radical and widely misunderstood chapter in the history of American art. Twenty-five years after its heyday, Process Art or antiform or Post-Minimalism, as this work is generally called, still exuded a sense of fierce radicality, as it does to this day. This incredible, over-sized, profusely illustrated book presents countless examples of work by each participating artist (in colour and b/w), an illustrated chronology of their exhibitions, bibliography, alongside texts by Richard Armstrong, John G. Hanhardt, Robert Pincus-Witten, Lucy R. Lippard, Jane Livingstone, Rosalind E. Krauss, Cindy Nemser, Emily Wasserman, Philip Leider, Klaus Kertess, Max Kozloff, Gregoire Müller, Fidel A. Danieli, Richard Marshall, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, James Collins, Thomass Hess, Lizzie Borden, Ellen Lubell, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Rose, Willoughby Sharp, Marcia Tucker, and texts by/interviews with the artists themselves, making it an extraordinary resource.
Very Good copy with some edge and reading wear/marking.
2013, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 24.1 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$130.00 - Out of stock
In 1964, Eva Hesse and her husband Tom Doyle were invited by the industrialist Friedrich Arnhard Scheidt to a residency in Kettwig an der Ruhr, Germany. ‘Eva Hesse. 1965’ brings together key drawings, paintings and reliefs from this short, yet pivotal, period where the artist was able to rethink her approach to colour, materials and her two-dimensional practice and begin preparing herself for the momentous strides she would take upon her return to New York.
Edited by Barry Rosen. Texts by Todd Alden, Jo Applin, Susan Fisher Sterling, Kirsten Swenson
1973, English
Softcover (denim-bound, stitched and silk-screened), 96 pages, 24 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$150.00 - In stock -
The art catalogue wearing denim! Fantastic, scarce exhibition catalogue from 1973 for "Some Recent American Art", a major contemporary survey exhibition that toured Australia and New Zealand, organised under the auspices of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art New York with the assistance of Graeme Sturgeon, David Sampietro, and Peter Cripps. Wrapped in jeans denim covers (screen-printed and stitched), and profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with the work of exhibiting artists Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Robery Irwin, Donald Judd, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner. Each artist section includes a list of works, biographical information and text(s) from the artist. Opening text by curator Jennifer Licht, acknowledgments by NGV director Gordon Thomson, with further sections on exhibited Video Tapes, bibliography and artist index.
Good copy, with tanning/fading to spine and some light fraying to cover edges.
2000, English
Softcover, 228 pages, 178 x 229 cm
Published by
October Books / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1970s Rosalind Krauss has been exploring the art of painters, sculptors, and photographers, examining the intersection of these artists' concerns with the major currents of postwar visual culture. These essays on nine women artists are framed by the question, born of feminism, "What evaluative criteria can be applied to women's art?" In the case of surrealism, in particular, some have claimed that surrealist women artists must either redraw the lines of their practice or participate in the movement's misogyny. Krauss resists that claim, for these "bachelors" are artists whose expressive strategies challenge the very ideals of unity and mastery identified with masculinist aesthetics. Some of this work (such as that of Louise Bourgeois or Cindy Sherman) could be said to find its power in strategies associated with such concepts as écriture feminine. Bachelors attempts to do justice to these and other artists (Claude Cahun, Dora Maar, Louise Lawler, Francesca Woodman) in the terms their works demand.
Rosalind E. Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University and an editor and cofounder of October magazine, is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), The Optical Unconscious (1993), The Picasso Papers (1999), and Bachelors (1999), all published by the MIT Press, and coauthor (with Yve-Alain Bois) of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997).
"[S]timulating, difficult, and often dazzling...Bachelors is a smart and often profound book that makes avaluable contribution to the gendered field it abhors." Carol Zemel, Women's Review of Books.
Contents: By way of introduction, Claude Cahun and Dora Maar; portrait of the artist as "fillette", Louise Bourgeois; the "cloud", Agnes Martin; contingent, Eva Hesse; untitled, Cindy Sherman; problem sets, Francesca Woodman; bachelors, Sherrie Levine; souvenir memories, Louise Lawler.
1973, German
Softcover, 138 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum / Cologne
$40.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue published by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln, in 1973 to document the museums extensive collection of international contemporary sculpture. Profusely illustrated in black and white with the works of Jean Arp, Paul Thek, Nancy Graves, John Chamberlain, Larry Bell, Carl Andre, Christo, Eva Hesse, Joachim Bandau, Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Nevelson, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, Germaine Richier, Schöffer, Bernard Schultze, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), John Tweed, Franz Erhard Walther, Hanns Gasser, Merdardo Rosso, Joseph Beuys, Günter Haese, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Jesús Rafael Soto, Richard Tuttle, Helmut Moos, Bruce Nauman, Ansgar Nierhoff, Jim Dine, Gary Indiana, Karl Zeno Rudolf Schadow, Julio Le Parc, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, G. F. Ris, George Segal, Nicolas Schöffer, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jean Tinguely, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Arman, Claes Oldenburg, Marisol Escobar, Niki Saint-Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Wolf Vostell, Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, Pol Bury, Erwin Heerich, Horst-Egon Kalinowski, Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Honoré Daumier, Gasser, Adolf von Hildebrand, Max Klinger, Rosso, Aristide Maillol, Tweed, Julio González, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, and many more... Texts in German.
Very Good copy.
2019, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$58.00 - Out of stock
Conceptual Art in a Curatorial Perspective: Between Dematerialization and Documentation focuses on the curatorial practice of exhibiting conceptual art. The fact that conceptual works are not object-based, creates challenges in exhibiting or re-exhibiting them. This book offers various perspectives on how to handle conceptual art in the context of the museum, based on three detailed case studies and an extensive introduction in which the paradox of conceptual art is analyzed. It also elaborates on the history of exhibiting conceptual artworks, and on the influence of curators in their canonization.
The aim of the book is not to offer clear-cut practical solutions, but to raise awareness of the issue and the different ways of dealing with it within the traditional curatorial field. It is relevant for students of art and culture (particularly in museum and curatorial studies), art and museum professionals, and everyone interested in the art of the 1960s and 1970s.
Nathalie Zonnenberg is an art historian and curator. She holds a PhD in Art History from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (NL). Zonnenberg regularly writes on contemporary art, and she lectures at the post-graduate Curatorial Studies programme at KASK/the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (BE).