World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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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.
1997, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 21 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Bloomsbury Workshop / London
$30.00 - Out of stock
Rare exhibition catalogue for The Legacy of Omega, The Bloomsbury Workshop, London, April—May, 1997, one of the most comprehensive Omega Workshops exhibitions ever to be staged, comprising a range of artefacts from the Omega such as plates, dishes, bowls, jars, original sketches, fabric, books, woodcuts, tapestry rugs.... likely the last important commercial exhibition of Omega material. Includes texts by Bloomsbury scholars James Beechey and Abigail Willis. Full catalogue of exhibited works, some illustrated in full-colour, and this copy including the loose original price list inserted. Published by The Bloomsbury Workshop, London.
The boundaries between visual and decorative art were broken down in The Omega Workshops, whose Bloomsbury artists brought abstract shapes and bold colours from modern art into designs for the home. In 1913 artist and writer Roger Fry opened Omega Workshops Ltd. at 33 Fitzroy Square in Bloomsbury, central London. Omega Workshops provided Fry and his friends, including fellow Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, with the chance to make a living designing and decorating furniture, textiles and other household goods, alongside their careers as artists. The premises in Fitzroy Square included studios where products were designed and made, and public showrooms where customers could browse and buy Omega's designs. Fry insisted that all Omega work was produced anonymously. He felt that objects and furniture should be bought and valued for their beauty rather than because of the reputation of the artist. Designs were unsigned and marked only with the symbol Ω, which is the Greek letter Omega. Omega is the last letter of the Greek alphabet, and in the late 19th century it was used to mean the ‘last word’ on a subject.
Very Good copy with single National Gallery of Victoria library stamp to first introduction page. Price-list inserted.
1983, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 25.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Geelong Art Gallery / Victoria
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published on the occasion of the travelling 1983 exhibition, Aspects of the unreal : Australian surrealism 1930s—1950s, that travelled between Geelong Art Gallery, Warrnambool Art Gallery, and Shepparton Art Gallery, curated by W. J. Pascoe. Text-based catalogue of works and biographies, along with curator's text and gallery director's introduction. A rare exhibit to survey the influence of Surrealism in the work of modern Australian artists from the 1940s onward, including David Edgar Strachan, John Joseph Wardell Power, Eric Thake, Sydney Nolan, Roy Opie, Jeffrey Smart, Peter Purves-Smith, Carl Olaf Plate, James Montgomery Cant, Vincent Brown, Roy Dalgarno, Donald Friend, James Gleeson, Vincent Brown, Bernard Boles, Oswald Hall, Danila Vassilieff.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1968, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 132 pages, 28.5 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Rudy Komon Gallery / Woollahra
$90.00 - In stock -
First edition of the 1968 hardcover catalogue raisonné of etchings by Australian painter and printmaker Fred Williams (1927—1982). Profusely illustrated with 73 plates and 273 figures of beautiful reproductions on warm print stock gathering together a complete collection of graphic works by one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century's major landscapists. Compiled by James Mollison with an introduction by fellow Australian painter John Brack. This major, now collectible, volume was produced on the occasion of a survey of William's etchings held at the Rudy Komon Gallery in 1968.
Very Good copy with Average dust jacket with creases and tears though mostly all present, now preserved in removable mylar wrap.
1991, English
Softcover, 8 pages, 26 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Charles Nodrum / Melbourne
$30.00 - In stock -
Scarce catalogue published in 1991 on the occasion of the exhibition "Australian Surrealist Paintings" at Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne. Presenting surrealist paintings from the 1940s by its most prominent Australian exponents - James Gleeson, Ivor Francis, and Douglas Roberts, as well as Bernard Boles, Mary Macqueen, Percy Watson, Ronald Steuart, Russell Drysdale, Dusan Marek, John Yule, Roy de Maistre, Sydney Nolan, Ian Sime, Peter Wright, Joel Elenberg, and Stan Ostoja Kotkowski. A rare glimpse into the Australian branch of Surrealism (and its influence) that has received little attention compared to other movements here such as Angry Penguins, Antipodeans, Social Realists, etc. A lovely introduction by Charles Nodrum wit ha full list of exhibited works and select b/w illustrations throughout. Colour illustrated boards.
Good copy with some light rubbing to covers.
1994 / 1998, French
Softcover, 158 pages, 28.7 × 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fondation pour l'Architecture / Brussels
$260.00 - In stock -
The great "L'Utopie du Tout Plastique 1960-1973", first published in Brussels and France in 1994 by Fondation pour l'Architecture and Norma Editions. Long out of print, this comprehensive volume quickly became an invaluable bible of sorts for plastic collectors of the 1960s, 1970s period. In 1994, on the occasion of a major exhibition in Brussels, editors Philippe Decelle, Diane Hennebert, and Pierre Loze compiled the most detailed printed survey of plastic products to date, from Art, Functional Furniture, Fiberglass, Inflatable PVC, Transparent PMMA, Pop and Radical Design, Cookware, Electronics, Mod Fashions, Utopian Architecture. Heavily researched and lavishly illustrated throughout with close to 200 of the finest examples, L’ Utopie has become the standard reference on 1960s plastic design - an essential aid in identifying the designers, companies and manufacture details of many classic plastic objects from this era.
Includes detailed biographies of the artists, designers, architects, manufacturers, plus a chronology and bibliography.
Translated blurb:
"The sixties are marked by unprecedented prosperity and technological progress. To this optimism corresponds an extraordinary freedom of creation until the oil crisis of 1973 which tempers this enthusiasm. The vogue of plastic is linked to this society of abundance. Yellow, red, orange, soft, hard, inflatable, it identifies with cheap, serial and disposable productions. Starting from a private collection unique in the world, the book offers a selection of plastic objects created between 1960 and 1973. Tupperware box, Kelton watch, Courrèges dress, Ettore Sottsass portable typewriter Valentine for Olivetti, first chair of Verner Panton, Joe Colombo ABS plastic chair, Niki de Saint Phalle's Nana, Caesar's Compression, cupola of the United States Pavilion by Richard Buckminster Fuller at the Montreal World's Fair or Frei Otto and Günter Behnisch overhead roof for the stadium of the Olympic Games in Munich, all show their diversity, their spirit and sometimes their beauty of the inventiveness of the time."
Features the work of Pierre Paulin, Sergio Mazza, Vico Magistretti, César, Studio 65, Nicola L, Piero Gilardi, Verner Panton, Arman, Gianfranco Frattini, Jonathan De Pas, Donato d'Urbino, Paolo Lomazzi, Gae Aulenti, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Joe Colombo, Enzo Mari, Iseo Hosoe, Mario Bellini, Dorothée Maurer-Becker, Cesare Leonardi and Franca Stagi, Günter Beltzig, Maurice Calka, Eero Aarnio, Wendell Castle, Alberto Rosselli, Quasar Khanh, Rossi Molinary, Ennio Lucini, Ugo la Pietra, Ettore Sottsass, Superstudio, Archizoom, Roy Adzak, Studio Gruppo 14, Dieter Rams, Reinhold Weiss, Marco Zanuso, Rodolfo Bonetto, Roger Tallon, Pierre Cardin, Courreges, Frei Otto, Buckminster Fuller, Jean Maneval, Paolo Soleri, Archigram, and many more.
Second edition, published in 1998 on the occasion of Plastiques: Matieres e créér at l'lnstitut Claude-Nicolas Ledoux a la Saline Royale de Arc et Senans-France, October 1997—March 1998. Rare and immediately out-of-print. Very good copy with some light tanning, ageing.
1992, English
Softcover, 24 x 29.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunstmuseum Den Haag / Netherlands
$140.00 - Out of stock
Lovely over-sized landscape exhibition catalogue designed by Sol LeWitt and published in conjunction with his exhibition of drawings, 1958—1992, held at Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, 1992. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, accompanied by texts by Rudi Fuchs, Franz W. Kaiser, Trevor Fairbrother. All texts in English. Includes 270 works illustrated, and checklist of the exhibition. Edited by Susanna Singer. This major survey exhibition later traveled to the UK, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain and the USA between 1993—1995.
Very Good copy. Light cover tanning.
1992, English
Softcover, 222 pages, 23.2 x 29.2 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Sala Recalde / Bilbao
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful over-sized landscape catalogue raisonné designed by Sol LeWitt and of his wall drawings, 1984—1992, originally published in conjunction with show held at Kunsthalle Bern, January 27 - March 12, 1989. Republished in this third revised, expanded and most complete edition, in conjunction with show held at Sala Recalde, Bilbao, Spain, 1992. Traveled to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 1993. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w illustrations extensively documenting the wall drawings by Sol LeWitt executed between 1984 and 1992. Edited by Susanna Singer, translated by Margaret Joss with text by Ulrich Loock. Catalogue raisonné by Susanna Singer of Sol LeWitt's wall drawings numbered 410 to 701. Text in English and German.
Good—VG copy, tight and clean internally with one crease to cover and light shelf wear to covers.
2021, English
Softcover, 496 pages, 20.2 x 15 cm
Published by
Blank Forms / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
Archival documents and new writings on the intermedia collaborations of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry.
Edited by Lawrence Kumpf with Naima Karlsson and Magnus Nygren. Introduction by Lawrence Kumpf and Magnus Nygren. Text by Keith Knox, Rita Knox, Bengt af Klintberg, Iris R. Orton, Åke Holmquist, Pandit Pran Nath, John Esam, Michael Lindfield, Sidsel Paaske, George Trolin, Alan Halkyard, Moki Cherry, Don Cherry, Ben Young, Christer Bothén, Ruba Katrib, and Fumi Okiji. Interviews by Keith Knox and Rita Knox with Don Cherry, Terry Riley, and Steve Roney.
Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson) met in Sweden in the late sixties. They began to live and perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children’s education, and pan-ethnic expression “Organic Music.” Organic Music Societies, Blank Forms’ sixth anthology, is a special issue released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name devoted to the couple’s multimedia collaborations. The first English-language publication on either figure, the book highlights models for collectivism and pedagogy deployed in the Cherrys’ interpersonal and artistic work through the presentation of archival documents alongside newly translated and commissioned writings by musicians, scholars, and artists alike.
Beginning with an overview by Blank Forms Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf and Don Cherry biographer Magnus Nygren, this volume further explores Don’s work of the period through a piece on his Relativity Suite by Ben Young and an essay on the diasporic quality of his music by Fumi Okiji. Ruba Katrib emphasizes the domestic element of Moki’s practice in a biographical survey accompanied by full-color reproductions of Moki’s vivid tapestries, paintings, and sculptures, which were used as performance environments by Don’s ensembles during the Sweden years and beyond. Two selections of Moki’s unpublished writings—consisting of autobiography, observations, illustrations, and diary entries, as well as poetry and aphorisms—are framed by tributes from her daughter Neneh Cherry and granddaughter Naima Karlsson. Swedish Cherry collaborator Christer Bothén contributes period travelogues from Morocco, Mali, and New York, providing insight into the cross-cultural communication that would soon come to be called “world music.”
The collection also features several previously unpublished interviews with Don, conducted by Christopher R. Brewster and Keith Knox. A regular visitor to the Cherry schoolhouse in rural Sweden, Knox documented the family’s magnetic milieu in his until-now unpublished Tågarp Publication. Reproduced here in its entirety, the journal includes an interview with Terry Riley, an essay on Pandit Pran Nath, and reports on counter-cultural education programs in Stockholm, including the Bombay Free School and the esoteric Forest University.
Taken together, the texts, artwork, and abundant photographs collected in Organic Music Societies shine a long overdue spotlight on Don and Moki’s prescient and collaborative experiments in the art of living.
2009, English
Softcover, 82 Pages, 21.6 x 14.2 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$29.00 - In stock -
Where have all the interesting women gone? If the contemporary portrayal of womankind were to be believed, contemporary female achievement would culminate in the ownership of expensive handbags, a vibrator, a job, a flat and a man. Of course, no one has to believe the TV shows, the magazines and adverts, and many don't. But how has it come to this? Did the desires of twentieth-century women's liberation achieve their fulfilment in the shopper's paradise of 'naughty' self-pampering, playboy bunny pendants and bikini waxes? That the height of supposed female emancipation coincides so perfectly with consumerism is a miserable index of a politically desolate time. Much contemporary feminism, particularly in its American formulation, doesn't seem too concerned about this coincidence.
This short book is partly an attack on the apparent abdication of any systematic political thought on the part of today's positive, up-beat feminists. It suggests alternative ways of thinking about transformations in work, sexuality and culture that, while seemingly far-fetched in the current ideological climate, may provide more serious material for future feminism.
"It's rare for anger to be so witty, wit to be so angry, or either to be so compelling. An outstanding dose of sal volatile."—China Mieville, author of "weird fiction" Embassytown, The City and the city, Railsea...
"Nina Power is keen to confront the uncomfortable and unpalatable, a refreshing trait in a culture perpetually moving toward anodyne."—Catherine Scott, Bitch
Nina Power is an English writer and philosopher. She is a senior editor of and columnist for the online magazine Compact.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 321 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Souvenir Press / London
$30.00 - In stock -
First hardcover 1973 edition.
When we ask what the phrase "Great Society" means, we are actually thinking about an age-old idea—that of utopia, the ideal society. Here is a collection of essays by leading scholars in many fields that explore the reasons why men have been yearning for utopia—or scorning it—at least since Plato's time. Edited by Frank E. Manuel.
Frank Edward Manuel (1910—2003) was an American historian, Kenan Professor of History, emeritus, at New York University and Alfred and Viola Hart University Professor, emeritus, at Brandeis University. He was known for his work on the idea of utopia.
Very Good copy, light age/wear to book and jacket.
1972, English
Softcover, 266 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$30.00 - Out of stock
Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord by Olaf Stapledon, first published in 1944.
Sirius is a tale of immense and tragic pathos in which Olaf Stapledon evokes the terrible loneliness of a dog born with the mind of a man. Thomas Trelone's life-work was to explore the possibilities of producing a superman by experimenting with hormone injections into various mammals. Sirius himself is infinitely the most successful of these trials. He is the only viable puppy born with the train capacity of a human being, but he still has the senses, the instincts, and the physique of a dog. Born at the same time as Plaxy, Thomas's youngest daughter, the child and puppy are brought up together, share the same lessons, and develop an intense understanding of one another's humanness and dogness.
It is the inevitable conflict between Sirius's intellect and instincts and its effects upon the girl, Plaxy, which has produced one of the most moving of the 'Wonder Stories' we call Science Fiction.
William Olaf Stapledon (1886—1950) – known as Olaf Stapledon – was a British philosopher and author of science fiction. In 2014, he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Very Good copy of the 1972 Penguin edition.
1989, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 726 pages, 21.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Guild America Books / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first hardcover edition of Xenogenesis by Octavia E. Butler, comprising her acclaimed trilogy Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago, collected in this now out-of-print volume published in 1989. Later known as Lilith's Brood, Xenogenesis, a profoundly evocative, sensual — and disturbing — epic of human transformation, is multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best.
Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected — by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and all humanity must now share the world with uncanny, unimaginably alien creatures: their own children. This is their story.
Octavia Estelle Butler (1947-2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. Butler was the renowned author of numerous ground-breaking novels and recipient of the Locus, Hugo and Nebula awards, and a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work, in 1995 she became the first science-fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship ‘Genius Grant’. A pioneer of her genre, Octavia’s dystopian novels explore myriad themes of Black injustice, women’s rights, global warming and political disparity.
Very Good—Fine copy in VG dust jacket.
1977, English
Softcover, 155 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Pan / London
$28.00 - In stock -
1977 Pan edition of Galactic Pot-Healer, a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in 1969. The novel deals with a number of philosophical and political issues such as repressive societies, fatalism, and the search for meaning in life.
The Glimmung wants Joe Fernwright. Fernwright is a pot-healer - a repairer of ceramics - in a drably utilitarian future where such skills have little value. And the Glimmung? The Glimmung is a being that looks something like a gyroscope, something like a teenaged girl, and something like the contents of an ocean. What's more, it may be divine. And, like certain gods of old Earth, it has a bad temper.
What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.
Philip K. Dick (1928—2007) was born in Chicago and lived most of his life in California. In 1952, he began writing professionally and proceeded to write numerous novels and short-story collections. He won the Hugo Award for the best novel in 1962 for The Man in the High Castle and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year in 1974 for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten of his stories have been adapted into popular films since his death, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series. Philip K. Dick died on March 2, 1982, in Santa Ana, California, of heart failure following a stroke.
Good copy.
1982 , English
Softcover, 320 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
1982 Panther edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed".
Le Guin called her 1974 novel an “anarchist utopia”, a reaction to the Vietnam war. Originally “a very bad short story” according to Le Guin, “there was a book in it, and I knew it, but the book had to wait for me to learn what I was writing about and how to write about it. I needed to understand my own passionate opposition to the war that we were, endlessly it seemed, waging in Vietnam, and endlessly protesting at home,” she writes in an introduction.
The Dispossessed is set in the fictional universe of the seven novels of the Hainish Cycle, e.g. The Left Hand of Darkness, about anarchist and other societal structures. The book won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1974, won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1975, and received a nomination for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1975. It achieved a degree of literary recognition unusual for science fiction due to its exploration of themes such as anarchism (on a planet called Anarres) and revolutionary societies, capitalism, and individualism and collectivism.
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. She was primarily known for her works of speculative fiction. These include works set in the fictional world of Earthsea, stories in the Hainish Cycle, and standalone novels and short stories. Though frequently referred to as an author of science fiction, critics have described her work as being difficult to classify.
Very Good copy.
1974, English
Softcover, 156 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Panther / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1974 Panther edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven".
The plot of 1971's The Lathe of Heaven concerns a character whose dreams alter past and present reality. George Orr, a draftsman, has long been abusing drugs to prevent himself from having "effective" dreams, which change reality. After having one of these dreams, the new reality is the only reality for everyone else, but George retains memory of the previous reality. Under threat of being placed in an asylum, Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse. George begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber. Orr claims that he has the power to dream "effectively" and Haber, gradually coming to believe it, seeks to use George's power to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine, nicknamed the Augmentor, enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternative worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises. The story was first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The novel received nominations for the 1972 Hugo and the 1971 Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Novel in 1972. Theodore Sturgeon, reviewing Lathe for The New York Times, praised Le Guin for "produc[ing] a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion."
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American author of speculative fiction, realistic fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, librettos, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary critiques, chapbooks, and children's fiction. She was primarily known for her works of speculative fiction. These include works set in the fictional world of Earthsea, stories in the Hainish Cycle, and standalone novels and short stories. Though frequently referred to as an author of science fiction, critics have described her work as being difficult to classify.
Good copy. General page tanning / cover wear.
1978, English
Softcover, 175 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1978 Panther Granada edition of Ursula K. Le Guin's Orsinian Tales, a collection of eleven short stories, most of them set in the imaginary country of Orsinia.
Orsinia ... a land of medieval forests, stonewalled cities, and railways reaching into the mountains where the old gods dwell. A country where life is harsh, dreams are gentle, and people feel torn by powerful forces and fight to remain whole. In this enchanting collection, Ursula K. Le Guin brings to mainstream fiction the same compelling mastery of word and deed, of story and character, of violence and love, that has won her the Pushcart Prize, and the Kafka and National Book Awards.
Very Good copy.
1987, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 17.5 x 10.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ace Books / New York
$35.00 - In stock -
1987 Ace paperback edition. Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, Count Zero is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the groundbreaking cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, which begins with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive.
They set a Slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair.
When the Maas Biolabs and Hosaka zaibatsus fight it out for world domination, computer cowboys like Turner and Count Zero are just foot soldiers in the great game: useful but ultimately expendable.
When Turner wakes up in Mexico - in a new body with a beautiful woman beside him - his corporate masters let him recuperate for a while, then reactivate his memory for a mission even more dangerous than the one that nearly killed him: the head designer from Maas Biolabs says he wants to defect to Hosaka, and it's Turner's job to deliver him safely.
Count Zero is a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the designer's defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo gods in the Net and angels in the software, he can only hope that the megacorps and the super-rich have their virtual hands too full to notice the amateur hacker with the black market kit trying desperately to stay alive . . .
William Gibson (b. 1948) began writing in 1977 and burst upon the literary world with his acclaimed first novel, Neuromancer, the book that launched the cyberpunk generation, and the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction, the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards. Although best known for his early cyberpunk novels, Gibson's work has continued to evolve over the ensuing years, always casting an astute critical eye on modern societal trends.
Very Good copy. Scarcer first Ace ed.
1968, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Panther / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1968 Panther paperback edition of English author J.G. Ballard's The Crystal World, featuring the cover artwork of Max Ernst. A science fiction masterpiece, The Crystal World is regarded as the best of Ballard's "catastrophe novels."
J. G. Ballard’s fourth novel tells the story of a physician trying to make his way deep into the jungle to a secluded leprosy treatment facility. While trying to make it to his destination, his chaotic path leads him to try to come to terms with an apocalyptic phenomenon in the jungle that crystallises everything it touches.
Ballard previously used the theme of apocalyptic crystallisation in the 1964 short story "The Illuminated Man" (included in The Terminal Beach), which is also set in the same locations.
Very Good copy of this scarcer edition, with light wear and tanning.
1968, English
Softcover, 172 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$45.00 - In stock -
1968 Penguin British edition with cover design by British graphic designer Richard Hollis.
First published in 1962, British science fiction author J.G. Ballard's mesmerising and ferociously prescient novel "The Drowned World" imagines a terrifying future in which solar radiation and global warming have melted the polar ice caps and Triassic-era jungles have overrun a submerged and tropical London. Set during the year 2145, the novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kerans and his team of scientists as they confront a surreal cityscape populated by giant iguanas, albino alligators, and endless swarms of malarial insects. "The Drowned World" is the second of a series of classic early Ballard novels dealing with scenarios of natural disaster.
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist who first became associated with the New Wave of science fiction for his post-apocalyptic novels such as The Wind from Nowhere (1961) and The Drowned World (1962). In the late 1960s, he produced a variety of experimental short stories (or "condensed novels"), such as those collected in the controversial The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). In the mid 1970s, Ballard published several novels, among them the highly controversial Crash (1973), a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism, and High-Rise (1975), a depiction of a luxury apartment building's descent into violent chaos.
Good copy with some cover creases and tanning.
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.
1992, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 15.6 x 23.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$18.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Employing an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the complexities of contemporary urban culture, this work examines a diverse range of cultural expressions that may be considered typical of the 1980s, from retro fashion, to Latinization, to the recycling of religious imagery as kitsch. The topics Olalquiaga explores are shown to be exemplary condensations of different cultural currents, and she establishes reception as a vantage point from which to think about city life. "Megalopolis" sees in 1950s and 1960s retro fashion a re-enactment of space-age fears of technological dehumanization, in the resurfacing of kitsch an attempt at recovering emotional intensity, in an aesthetics of death and ruins a lament for the loss of a concrete and organic reality. Consumption is the basis of an unavoidable postmodernity in which the traditional ways of looking at the world have become so many icons; technology is the new language through - or against - which experience is articulated.
Very Good copy with some cover marks, otherwise as new.
2015, English
Softcover, 450 pages, 18 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Station Hill Press / Barrytown
$72.00 - In stock -
Bernadette Mayer is among the most influential American poets of the late 20th century and the present, and much of that influence is based on her early books, previously available only in fragmentary form. As a Brooklyn high school student at the beginning of the 1960s, Mayer began writing with an embodied directness and resource belying her youth. Over the next two decades, this precocious start would culminate in a body of writing extraordinary in its range and impact. Even in a New York milieu given to radical practice—as evidenced in the journal 0 TO 9 that she co-edited in the late '60s—these books in their collective force represent an explosion of poetic forms and investigation as profound and sustained as any in contemporary poetry.
Eating the Colors is a sprawling collection of these early works from the 1960s and 70s, including selections from seven out-of-print texts, and one previously unpublished book. The collection holds a vast body of work, work which often broke “every rule about well-made poems”. Mayer’s early books originally found audience among second-generation New School poets, precluding her later success and influence in avant-garde circles. Eating the Colors gives new life to Mayer’s early poetry, which, in the words of Anne Waldman, “changed and challenged the landscape of what was possible with the word, the sentence, the book, and daily consciousness.”
This collection includes poems from: Ceremony Latin (1964), Red Book in Three Parts, Story, The Old Style Is Finding Out Something About A Whole New Set of Possibilities, Moving, Poetry, Eruditio Ex Memoria, and The Golden Book of Words.
1980, English
Fifty looseleaf lithographs in softcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, 32 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Estate of Harry Bertoia / Pennsylvania
$1500.00 - In stock -
Magnificent, rare, complete portfolio of fifty unbound plates of drawings by Harry Bertoia (1915–1978), privately published in a limited edition of 500 numbered copies by the Estate of Harry Bertoia, Bally, Pennsylvania, 1980. This work is number 69 from the only edition of 500, printed by A. Colish Inc., of Mount Vernon, New York, under the supervision of Bert Clarke. Fifty offset lithographs printed on Mohawk Superfine Softwhite uncut, untrimmed cover stock, wrapped in original brown heavy handmade paper dust jacket with gilt lettering, housed in original brown cardboard slipcase. The letterpress sections were set in Aldine Bembo and printed on Rives heavy weight mould made paper. The plates were printed by offset on Mohawk Superfine Softwhite cover stock. Designed by Quentin Fiore. Frontispiece photograph of Bertoia by Joseph Seraphin.
"Thirty five years ago in a small beach house by the Pacific Ocean on the Coast of California, this book began to take its form. It was my intent to explore a technical means that would permit me to work with great rapidity. I had done a considerable amount of experimentation with materials that were on hand and processes that would evolve in the course of action. All this points to a technical development needed to permit the fluidity of thought to evolve from page to page without disruption or discontinuity. Speed of execution being essential, it became possible by drawing in the back side of paper using fingers, thumb, palm and various tools made of wood or metal. The ink was rolled on glass. Pressure picked up the ink in a granular way, which I liked. Technique and image were developing along parallel lines, interacting and transmogrifying no end. The whole sequence of fifty pages came into being, in about twenty-four hours of uninterrupted work."—Bertoia
Harry Bertoia (1915—1978) was an Italian-born American artist, sound art sculptor, and modern furniture designer, best known for his iconic Bertoia "Diamond" Chair and monumental architectural sculptures. Born in San Lorenzo, Pordenone, Italy, Bertoia, at age 15, was given the opportunity to move to Detroit with his brother, where he enrolled in technical High School and learned the skill of handmade jewellery making (ca.1930-1936). Harry Bertoia’s oeuvre encompasses sound sculptures, furniture, and jewellery design. A successful designer at the mid-century furniture company Knoll, Bertoia famously designed their “Diamond chair”, a delicate and airy steel-framed chair introduced in 1952 and still sold today. He would later devote his artistic energy towards innovative sculpture, finding ways to bend and stretch metal so that when crossed with wind or touch, it would create different sounds. Many of Bertoia's “tonal sculptures” were commissioned for established institutions and as public art displays. He has also performed concerts with these pieces, even recording a series of albums known as “Sonambient” music. From a young age Bertoia was friends with other prominent designers such as Walter Gropius and Ray and Charles Eames, and he regularly designed jewellery for his friends.
As New copy, only single mark to bottom-right of front dust wrapper that could be intrinsic to the stock, otherwise As New. All contents As New and complete, unhandled, slipcase VG—Near Fine with only one tear to single top edge from shelf handling, otherwise only the lightest wear. "69" neatly penned by marker to slipcase bottom spine. "69" numbered inside the edition, also. A stunning copy.
1984, German
Softcover, 116 pages, 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
ABC Verlag / Zürich
$140.00 - Out of stock
The original first Swiss German edition of H.R. Giger's Retrospektive 1964-1984, published by ABC Verlag, Zürich, printed and bound in Switzerland in 1984. H.R. Giger — Retrospektive 1964-1984 presents over 150 artworks, spanning 20 years in the career of the world's most renowned fantasy artist, are gathered chronologically in this one rich and detailed volume. Carefully rendered reproductions of Giger's paintings, drawings, designs, videos, sculptures, costumes and furniture are accompanied by his own commentary and portraits of the artist at work and with Dali, Fuchs, Harry and other colleagues.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good—Very Good copy of the original Swiss edition with light cover creasing/corner bump to top-right.