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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2021, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Rab-Rab Press / Helsinki
$38.00 - In stock -
Punk Suprematism includes the first English translation of theoretical writings on punk, art, socialism, bureaucracy, and nationalism by Slavoj Žižek, Rastko Močnik, and Zoja Skušek.
Written in the first half of the eighties, these texts are a unique mixture of punk attitude with theoretical concepts borrowed from Althusser, Lacan, and avant-garde art. Written in a turbulent period of Yugoslav socialism, these texts were trying to understand the political importance of punk as a mass movement of impoverished youth. The conclusions of these interventions had a lasting effect on the theoretical formation of Yugoslav post-Marxism, as well to the organizational forms of the socialist alternative. The book also includes a foreword on the historical context of the eighties and the extensive narrative bibliography of punk related publications in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia written by Sezgin Boynik. In addition to this, it also includes translations of the two editorials to Punk Problemi written by renowned Slovenian theoreticians.
The book is the first in an upcoming series on punk research by Rab-Rab press. The series starts from the idea that punk is a break, and focuses on punk as something completely separated from bourgeois culture.
2002, English
Softcover, 164 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ReR Megacorp / Surrey
Edition ReR Megacorp / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful book collection of interviews with Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram conducted by Gilles Peyret, Serge Leroy, Jerome Noetinger, Tim Hodgkinson and Costin Cazaban, collected by the mighty Recommended Records Megacorp into this vital reader published in 2002. Includes a catalogue of works and full discography. "This is serious meditation on the nature of making and receiving music, on the state of music in itself and on procedures and essences. This represents an important crystallisation of the thoughts and practices of two of today's unsung but indubitably important composers (unsung because they tread an unfashionable and deeply radical path - in disregarded Romania - and are therefore deemed 'outsiders to the official Western self declared 'mainstream'. From Phenomenology to Sampling, with a perspective that links deeply to a thread of uniquely Romanian orientation going back 80 years and is yet unquestionably contemporary and directed toward the future. A valuable collection."
Iancu Dumitrescu (b. 1944, Sibiu, Romania) is a Romanian composer, conductor, and musicologist. Between the ages of 7 and 22 he pursued conventional musical studies leading to an M.A. in composition at the National Conservatoire in Bucharest and after that period he became interested in electroacoustic music. In 1976, Dumitrescu founded Hyperion Ensemble. In 1990, with his wife Ana-Maria Avram, he formed the record label Edition Modern.
1968,
Silkscreen and offset print (85 x 46 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galleria Alexandre Iolas / Rome
$1000.00 - Out of stock
Stunning, extremely rare early Jannis Kounellis (1936—2017) exhibition poster, published on the occasion of one of his most iconic early solo exhibitions at Galleria Alexandre Iolas, Rome, 1968. A piece of printed history of the forefather of the Arte Povera movement, issued by the legendary Galleria Alexandre Iolas and published by Sergio Tosi Editore. Gorgeous silkscreen and offset print. Since the 1960s Greek—Italian artist Kounellis investigated the alienation inherent in contemporary society, juxtaposing the materials of mass urban and industrial civilization with symbols and values of the pre-industrial world.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 85 x 46 cm
Very Good condition, well preserved.
Signed offset printed poster (80 x 59 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$900.00 - In stock -
Rare and signed vintage Jannis Kounellis (1936—2017) litho/serigraph print poster. Possibly an Italian museum artist's edition, although we have never seen another like it available. Beautifully large print in offset halftone with over-print of black square and "KOUNELLIS". Hand signed in pencil in the lower right by Jannis Kounellis, Greek Italian artist and forefather of the Arte Povera movement. Since the 1960s Kounellis investigated the alienation inherent in contemporary society, juxtaposing the materials of mass urban and industrial civilization with symbols and values of the pre-industrial world.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 80 x 59 cm.
Very Good condition, well preserved.
1970—1980,
Offset poster (82 x 48 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Alexandre Iolas / Paris
$220.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous vintage Man Ray (1890—1976) exhibition poster from the 1970s of the artist at the legendary Galerie Alexandre Iolas, Paris, where the American artist spent much of his life as a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. Issued by the gallery in a beautiful offset print on lovely wove paper featuring Man Ray's "Pêchage"Peaches"), 1969, painted wooden box, artificial peaches and cotton.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 82 x 48 cm
Very Good condition, well preserved.
2022, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
After 8 Books / Paris
$35.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
This volume gathers a collection of diary-like texts, posted in 2015 by Evelyn Taocheng Wang on her Facebook page, recording the experiences she had as an undercover transgender masseuse in a massage parlour in Amsterdam. The vignette-like chapters retrace the daily routine at the parlour, incidents with clients and conversations with fellow workers. A series of watercolours by the artist accompanies and illustrates the texts, interpreting her anecdotes in colourful visions. Also includes personal reflections that deftly mix bursts of humour with moments of tension, poetical notes and an acute sense of observation.Through transcriptions of discussions between Chinese immigrant women working together, the author proposes an unconventional portrait of the Chinese diaspora. Inaccuracies of language are an integral part of the narrative.
1994, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 392 pages, 30.5 x 23.5 cm
Edition of 1000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
D.A.P. / New York
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$460.00 - In stock -
Very rare, first 1994 limited deluxe hardcover edition catalogue raisonné of American artist Bruce Nauman, published on the occasion of the major 1994-1995 touring retrospective that stunned critics by bringing together the full and largely underrated range of Bruce Naman's work, first held at Nuseo Nacioal Centro de Arte Rena Sofía, Madrid, before travelling to the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
A most vital reference on the artist's oeuvre, this deluxe hardbound version of the exhibition catalogue was issued in limited edition (1000 copies), almost doubling in page-count to contain the full illustrated catalogue raisonné of over five hundred works created (and in some instances destroyed) by the artist between 1965 and 1993. With provenance and notes for each, the work spans sculptures, films, videos, performances, drawings, neons, holograms, texts, installations, photographic pieces, et al. Profusely illustrated throughout with enlarged exhibition plates, along with a full exhibition checklist, chronology, exhibition history and bibliography, alongside texts by Neal Benezra, Kathy Halbreich, Paul Schimmel, Robert Storr, Laurie Haycock Makela and Kristen McDougal. Edited by Joan Simon and designed by Laurie Haycock Makela and Kristen McDougall. Still the most valuable published reference on Nauman.
Very Good copy only with minimal unobtrusive ex-libris stamps to preliminary pages, not affecting content. No library markings to outside, spine or edges. Very Good throughout with Very Good dust jacket protected under removable mylar wrap.
1997, English
Softcover, 86 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art / Connecticut
$55.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 edition of Bruce Nauman 1985—1996 Drawings, Prints, and Relate Works, published on the occasion of an exhibition held May 4 to Aug. 31, 1997 at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art February 27-April 19, 1998. Illustrated throughout in colour an b/w with many of Nauman's works accompanied by a prologue by Jill Snyder and with a sixteen-page essay by Ingrid Shaffner, "Circling Oblivion/Bruce Naumann through Samuel Beckett", plus a checklist of all works.
Good—Very Good copy.
1986, English
Softcover, 400 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pantheon / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1984 edition of The Foucault Reader, published by Pantheon, New York, edited by Paul Rabinow.
Michel Foucault was one of the most influential thinkers in the contemporary world, someone whose work has affected the teaching of half a dozen disciplines rang-ing from literary criticism to the history of criminology. But of his many books, not one offers a satisfactory introduction to the entire complex body of his work. The Foucault Reader was commissioned precisely to serve that purpose. The Reader contains selections from each area of Foucault's work as well as a wealth of previously unpublished writings, including important material written especially for this volume, the preface to the long-awaited second volume of The History of Sexuality, and interviews with Foucault himself, in the course of which he discussed his philosophy at first hand and with unprecedented candor. This philosophy comprises an astonishing intellectual enter-prise: a minute and ongoing investigation of the nature of power in society. Foucault's analyses of this power as it manifests itself in society, schools, hospitals, factories, homes, families, and other forms of organized society are brought together in The Foucault Reader to create an overview of this theme and of the broad social and political vision that underlies it.
Good—VG copy.
2000, English
Hardcover, 221 pages, 23 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Harwood Academic Publishers / UK
$180.00 - Out of stock
Impossibly rare, first edition of this first extensive study in English of the Greek composer Jani Christou (1926—1970), Anna M. Lucciano presents his exceptionally striking personality, that of a highly original composer who made an essential contribution to new music. Anna M. Lucciano has long studied the private archives of Jani Christou. She is a musicologist specializing in Greek contemporary music and is Professor of the History of Music, Musical Aesthetics and Analysis at the Conservatoire d'Aix-en Provence.
"Lucciaino provides important insights into the music of a Greek composer whose works are not widely known or performed at the current time....These texts contribute greatly toward the understanding not only of the composer's compositional techniques but also his artistic temperament....Uniquely and effectively organized....Recommended for all serious collections of 20th-century music."—CHOICE
Jani Christou was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1926 and died in a car accident in Athens, Greece in 1970. In 1945 he went to England to study at Cambridge, where he read philosophy with Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. In 1948 he gained an MA in philosophy. During this period Christou studied composition privately with H. F. Redlich, and in 1949 he travelled to Rome to study orchestration with F. Lavagnino. Later in Zurich he attended lectures in psychology with Carl Jung. In 1951 he returned to Alexandria where he married Theresia Horemi. Already at an early age his works displayed an inclination towards the mystical and the ecstatic. This tendency culminated during his last years (1965-1970) producing, next to incidental music for the staging of ancient Greek dramas, his works Mysterion, Praxis for 12, The Strychnine Lady, Enantiodromia, Anaparastasis I & Anaparastasis III and Epicycle that share a strong ritual feel, an exploration of primeval acts and of the state of trance plus an urge to unleash powers and behaviours that go beyond the self (a state Christou had named metapraxis).
Very Good—Fine copy, almost As New, light shelf wear to boards.
1999, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 11 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Purple Books / Paris
Association Belle Haleine / Paris
$250.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful first printing of this long out-of-print artist book by Mark Borthwick, published in 1999 by Association Belle Haleine and Purple Books in Paris. An intimate, pocket-sized volume that collects together a gorgeous selection of Mark Borthwick's personal and fashion photographs. Mark Borthwick is a British photographer, film-maker and musician now living in Brooklyn, New York. He is among the generation of photographers who in the ’90s broke through the conventions of fashion photography, his distinct style being very light, intuitive and personal. He worked regularly shooting for Purple magazine, Vogue, and collaborated closely with Maison Martin Margiela in the 1990's. This book is in As New condition. Now very collectable.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 376 Pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$72.00 - Out of stock
Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique probes the relationship between the enormous, extraordinary, and sometimes baffling body of Goya’s work and the interconnected issues of modernity, Enlightenment, and critique. Taking exception to conventional views that rely mainly on Goya’s darkest images to establish his relevance for modernity, Cascardi argues that the entirety of Goya’s work is engaged in a thoroughgoing critique of the modern social and historical worlds, of which it nonetheless remains an integral part. The book reckons with the apparent gulf assumed to divide the Disasters of War and the so-called Black Paintings from Goya’s scenes of bourgeois life or from the well-mannered portraits of aristocrats, military men, and intellectuals. It shows how these apparent contradictions offer us a gateway into Goya’s critical practice vis-à-vis a European modernity typically associated with the Enlightenment values dominant in France, England, and Germany. In demonstrating Goya’s commitment to the project of critique, Cascardi provides an alternative to established readings of Goya’s work, which generally acknowledge the explicit social criticism evident in works such as the Caprichos but which have little to say about those works that do not openly take up social or political themes. In Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique, Cascardi shows how Goya was consistently engaged in a critical response to—and not just a representation of—the many different factors that are often invoked to explain his work, including history, politics, popular culture, religion, and the history of art itself.
“This is a landmark study that will change the terms in which Goya’s art will henceforth be understood.”—Peter de Bolla
“One doesn’t need to be a Frankfurt School buff to acknowledge that Anthony Cascardi has written the most convincing account of Goya’s work—all of Goya, the religious frescoes, the court paintings, and the tapestry cartoons as well as the Caprichos, the Disasters of War, and the black paintings in the Quinta del Sordo—using the lens of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of the Enlightenment. An enlightening study indeed, which stops short of wanting to illuminate what in Goya should remain steeped in darkness.” —Thierry de Duve, Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of Art History, Hunter College
“In this deeply reflective and thorough study, Cascardi blows the lid off standard accounts of Goya’s extraordinary art, demonstrating that both the ‘painter of light’ and the ‘painter of darkness’ theses fall way short of the artist’s immersion in the culture of his time. In chapter after chapter, Cascardi argues that Goya was involved in a critique of the world he lived in—its politics, religious belief, ethics, history—and, at the same time, of the means of representation at his disposal. This is a landmark study that will change the terms in which Goya’s art will henceforth be understood.” —Peter de Bolla, Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics, University of Cambridge
1994 / 2000, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 13.9 x 20.9 cm
Published by
Avalon Travel Publishing / Chicago
$38.00 - In stock -
"An astonishment"—Dennis Cooper
"A daring, controversial, necessary book."—Lynne Tillman
This extravagantly imagined tale chronicles the rehabilitation of a teacher who has had a love affair with a twelve-year-old boy. While the man's crime was to mistake molestation for love, his cure will partake of the same confusion: to help and rehabilitate him, the police and the doctors subject the teacher to increasingly bizarre forms of therapy. Called "an astonishment" by Dennis Cooper, The Sex Offender weds compelling mystery with comedy, satire, and politics.
"Equal parts Kafka, Burgess, and Brazil, Matthew Stadler's novel is beautifully morbid. The eloquent, florid prose in which Mr. Uh Uh describes his passions gives him an overwrought nobility.... Stadler's narrative weaves in and out of humor, grandiosity, fantasy, and sentiment with rare grace and cleverness."—The Village Voice
Matthew Stadler (born 1959) is an American author who has written six novels and received several awards. Stadler has compiled four anthologies about literature, city life and public life. His essays, which have been published in magazines and museum catalogs, focus on architecture, urban planning and sprawl. He was the literary editor of Nest magazine and books editor for The Stranger, a fledgling weekly newspaper in Seattle in the early-mid 1990s, bringing accomplished poets and prose writers such as Eileen Myles, Charles D'Ambrosio, Lisa Robertson, Kevin Killian, Bruce Benderson, and Stacey Levine to write for the paper. He co-founded Publication Studio, an independent publisher that prints by demand and binds books by hand in a Portland, Oregon storefront, "creating original work with artists and writers we admire, books that both respond to the conversation of the moment and can endure. We attend to the social life of the book, cultivating a public that cares and is engaged." The publisher has created a global network of studios — among the writers and artists published by Publication Studio are Dodie Bellamy, Dan Graham, Robert Walser, Nate Lippens, Lawrence Rinder, Walter Benjamin, Ari Marcopoulos, Lisa Robertson, Arthur Jafa, Alex Da Corte, Lisa Radon, Kevin Killian, Sylvia Wynter, W. E. B. Du Bois, Elizabeth Jaeger, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Jill Magid, Alex Mackin Dolan, Obe Alkema, Pedro Reyes, Travis Jeppesen, and so many more.
2015, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 22.8 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$42.00 - Out of stock
Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners gathers work by one of the most significant poets of the Black Mountain and Beat generation. Includes poems that have previously never been published, the full text of the 1958 edition of his influential The Hotel Wentley Poems, plus poems from rare sources, facsimiles, notes, and collages by Wieners. An invaluable collection for new and old fans.
"There is no doubt in my mind or in anyone's mind who knows these poems well that they are major American poetry and will be in anthologies for one hundred years, I mean that good."—Allen Ginsberg
"A graceful rigor seems to be Wieners' natural mode; we feel the force of deliberation in his most free forms—he is never casual. The grace is miraculous, for he aims at intensities, by orders that shape and then restrict feeling to the ardent."—Robert Duncan
"What moves us is not the darkness of the world in which the poems were written by the pity and terror and joy that is beauty in the poems themselves. . . . In Wieners the glamor is in the word-music itself."—Denise Levertov
"In his hands, poems are at once “wound,” “tomb,” and “bomb”—sites of injury, elegy, and threat."—Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker
"His poetry was unburdened and unbuoyed, free, breathless, reckless, and jarringly, frankly queer — wicking graceful elegance from grim exile."—Michael Andor Brodeur, Boston Globe
John Wieners (1934–2002) was a founding member of the "New American" poetry that flourished in America after the Second World War. Upon graduating from Boston College in 1954, Wieners enrolled in the final class of Black Mountain College. Following Black Mountain's closure in 1956, he founded the small magazine Measure (1957–1962) and embarked on a peripatetic life, participating in poetry communities in Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Buffalo throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, before settling at 44 Joy Street in Boston in 1972. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, three one-act plays, and numerous broadsides, pamphlets, uncollected poems, and journals. Robert Creeley described Wieners as "the greatest poet of emotion" of their time.
2010, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 13.3 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$38.00 - In stock -
Winner of the 2009 Gil Ott Book Award, this expanded edition of The Book of Frank features additional "Frank" poems and an essay by Eileen Myles.
Praised by poet Anne Waldman as a "voyeuresque surreal portrait," The Book of Frank is also, in the words of poet-critic Alan Gilbert, a "candid portrayal of human cruelty and its resultant fantasies of escape."
CAConrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. Their latest book is AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021). The Book of Frank is now available in nine different languages. Other titles include While Standing in Line for Death, ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tic for the Future Wilderness, and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics. They received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. With Robert Dewhurst and Joshua Beckman, they co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. In 2022 Augusto Cascales made a film of their play The Obituary Show. They recently had their first solo exhibition at Fluent Gallery in Santander, Spain, titled 13 Moons: Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam.
2012, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 20.4 x 26.7 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$38.00 - Out of stock
"He's a poet for our time like Ginsberg was for his." - Eileen Myles
"Conrad's work shows us that the body itself is the first source of alienation and estrangement from the self, and is thus the true subject of poetry. Only by engaging this body ... can we achieve transport." - Bookforum
What is the best Love you've ever had in this world? Be quiet while thinking about that Love. If someone comes along and starts talking, quietly shoo them away, you're busy, you're a poet with a penny in your mouth...Now get your pen and paper and write about POVERTY, write line after line about starvation and deprivation from the voice of one who has been Loved in this world.
CAConrad's (Soma)tic exercises desire to literally crack open existence as we know it. A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon is an essential how-to book for anyone interested in breaking through their perceived limitations to become a more politically and physically engaged writer. Incorporating unorthodox steps in the writing process, these twenty-seven exercises and their corresponding poems confirm Conrad's unwavering belief in poetry as a necessary practice for being.
CAConrad, a 2011 PEW Fellow in the Arts, is the author of five books of poetry, including The Book of Frank (Wave Books, 2010/Chax Press, 2009). He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
As New copy with small tear to bottom back cover and last page, bumped corner otherwise perfect. Discounted accordingly.
2022, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 16.5 x 22.8 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$38.00 - In stock -
Former United States Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith wrote in the New York Times, “CAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious.” The poems in AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration reach out from a (Soma)tic poetry ritual where CA flooded their body with the field recordings of recently extinct animals. Foundational here are the memories of loved ones who died of AIDS, the daily struggle of existing through the Corona Virus pandemic, and the effort to arrive at a new way of falling in love with the world as it is, not as it was.
"CAConrad always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their kind of queerness strikes me as nonpolarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of their exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence." —Eileen Myles
"At a time when I don't always know how to make sense of what's going on, CAConrad serves as a cleareyed seer."—Jillian Steinhauer, New York Times
2014, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 19.1 x 25.2 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$42.00 - Out of stock
This series of 23 new (Soma)tic poetry rituals and resulting poems by CAConrad create what we can refer to as an “extreme present” set to reveal the creative viability of everything around us. Poetry rituals such as riding escalators and showing photographs of himself to strangers asking, “Excuse me, have you seen this person?” In another he pollinates flowers for security cameras, exclaiming, “I’M A POLLINATOR, I’M A POLLINATOR!” One was written with a ghost, another by stargazing to build his own constellations. (Soma)tic rituals are a practice of unorthodox steps aimed at breaking us out of the quotidian and into a more political and physical spiritual consciousness of The New Wilderness.
2017, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 24.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Wave / Washington
$42.00 - Out of stock
Winner of the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry
"From these rituals come notes; from those notes come poems; and from those poems comes not just a view into his process, but an entrance into another present." Boston Globe
After his boyfriend Earth's murder, CAConrad was looking for a (Soma)tic poetry ritual to overcome his depression. This new book of eighteen rituals and their resulting poems contains that success, along with other political actions and exercises that testify to poetry's ability to reconnect us and help put an end to our alienation from the planet.
unfastened
in the backseat a
portion of the music is
mucus flying into stillness
at what point do we submit
to the authority of flowers
at what point after it enters
the mouth is it no longer in the
mouth but the throat the colon
making sumptuous death of the world
this is what crossing the line gains
no need to pretend we
are the people we
want to be in
the next life
bone under
tongue drives
taste of snow to metal
CAConrad is the author of ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon, and The Book of Frank, as well as several other books of poetry and essays. Most recently, he has co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners. A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.
2016, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
Part springtime journal ("why are there thorns?"), Works and Days meditates on the first wasps and chipmunks of the season, times' passage, grackle hearts, and dandelions, while also collecting dozens of poems considering the Catholic Church, Sir Thomas Browne, "Go Away" welcome mats, books, floods ("never of dollar money"), the invention of words, local politics, friendships, property development, dogs, and Hesiod. Every page delights. As the poet herself notes: "My name is Bernadette Mayer, sometimes / I am at the head of my class."
1999, English
Softcover, 380 pages, 15.3 x 23.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic / London
$45.00 - In stock -
Born in 1899, Alfred Hitchcock directed 57 films in a fifty year career that spanned the history of the moving image, from the silent era to stereo sound, black-and white to Technicolor, widescreen to television, and from Europe to Hollywood. His oeuvre has so comprehensively engaged the attentions of scholars of all critical persuasions that the study of his films is synonymous with the study of the art of cinema itself.
Alfred Hitchcock: Centenary Essays displays the range and breadth of Hitchcock scholarship and assesses the significance of his singular body of work. The book engages with Hitchcock's characteristic formal and aesthetic preoccupations, his relationship with modernism and politics and his engagement with romance and sexuality.
This volume of essays draws on the best of current Hitchcock criticism and opens up new directions for Hitchcock scholarship.
Fine—As New copy. First edition.
1995, English / Italian
Softcover, 16 pages, 25 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Castoli / Milan
$65.00 - In stock -
Very scarce catalogue from Milan published on the occasion of a two-person exhibition of works by Italian artists Lucio Fontana and Pino Pascali, held at Studio Castoli in 1995. Introductory text by Italian art critic Angela Vettese, with colour and b/w reproductions of works by each artist.
Very Good copy.
1969, Italian
Softcover, 84 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
De Luca Editori D'arte / Rome
$300.00 - Out of stock
Extremely rare catalogue of Pino Pascali to accompany the first retrospective exhibition of his work, organized by Palma Bucarelli, 7 months after the tragic death of the artist on 11 September 1968. Presented at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Roma, Valle Giulia 31 maggio - 27 giugno 1969, this accompanying catalogue is illustrated with 60 monochrome pages of Pascali's work and portraits of the artist himself, biography and full exhibition history, accompanied by text by curator and museum director Palma Bucarelli. A stunning and historical publication.
Pino Pascali (b. Bari, 1935—1968), in the late 1950s, whilst working as a set designer, graphic designer, scriptwriter, and creative writer for television advertising, met fellow Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis. In 1965, Pascali first exhibited his “fake sculptures,” a series of shaped-canvases that first appear to be solid sculptures but are actually paintings presenting abstract forms that suggest animals, plants and landscapes. During his brief activity as a sculptor at the height of Pop Art, Pascali, considered a key artist of the Arte Povera movement, produced no more than 149 works, many of which are true icons of twentieth-century Italian art. The day of his untimely death at the age of 32, following a tragic motorcycle accident on 11 September 1968, coincided with the moment of his greatest public recognition (his presentation at the Venice Biennale and the posthumous awarding of the Sculpture Grand Prix). His short, enigmatic career has served as an important, almost mythological, contribution to post-war European art.
Palma Bucarelli (1910—1998) was an Italian art historian, curator and administrator, mostly known for her tenure as director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (GNAM) in Rome from 1942—1975.
Very Good copy with some light handling wear/ageing.
1969, French
Softcover, 96 pages, 20.5 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Musée des Arts Decoratifs / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful, scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Ceroli Kounellis Marotta Pascali : 4 Artistes Italiens Plus Que Nature" at Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, in 1969.
"Four of the most representative artists of the last season of Italian art, four artists in full activity except, unfortunately, Pino Pascali, who died last year. Despite the brevity of his career, Pascali has given an international contribution to the artistic research of today. It is arbitrary to look for traits and points in common among these artists, even if they are more or less the same trend, so I preferred to draw separate portraits ... " (M. Calvesi, 1969)
Each artist has a profusely illustrated section dedicated to their work, each divided by printed wax title pages, introduced (in French) by Maurizio Calvesi, and closed with an exhibition history and list of works. Blakc and white photography throughout by Gianni Berengo Gardin, Ugo Mulas, Adele Macchi, Claudio Abate, Andrea Taverna, and silkscreened covers.
Included in ARTE POVERA 1966-1980. LIBRI E DOCUMENTI / BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS, the critical catalogue raisonné of artist's books from the Arte Povera movement 1966-1980, compiled by Giorgio Maffei.