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.
1986, English
Softcover, 253 pages, 13.8 x 21.6 cm
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
minnes
$65.00 - In stock -
Reprint of the 1986 edition, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
A revolutionary work in philosophy and a book about cinema that identifies three principal types of image-movement using examples from the work of a diverse group of filmmakers including Griffith, Eisenstein, Cassavetes, and Altman.
The appearance of Cinema 1 is an exciting event for film study and one that well deserves serious attention and commentary.—Film Quarterly
1986, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 13.8 x 21.6 cm
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$65.00 - In stock -
Reprint of the 1986 edition, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam.
Brings to completion Deleuze’s work on the implications of the cinematographic image. In Cinema 2, Deleuze explains why, since World War II, time has come to dominate film. Among the filmmakers discussed are Rossellini, Fellini, Godard, Resnais, Pasolini, and many others.
2022, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 10.8 × 17.6 cm
Edition of 400,
Published by
Discipline / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Australian artist David Egan's (b. 1989) exploration of Colour Handling — Colour as Embodied Substance in Jutta Koether's Red Paintings; Colour as Portal in Rosie Isaac's Green Mirror; Colour as Time Machine in Tony Conrad's Yellow Movies; Colour as Dissemblance for Pain in Derek Jarman's Blue; Colour as Medium in Etel Adnan's Worldly Paintings.
Originally written as part of a practice based PhD in Fine Art, completed at Monash University Art, Design & Architecture in 2022, this popular paperback book edition has been edited by Helen Hughes and Amy Stuart, with an introduction by Tessa Laird, designed by Zenobia Ahmed, and published by Discipline in an edition of 400 copies. Features accompanying full-colour plates section.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 22 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thomas Y. Crowell Company / New York
$280.00 - Out of stock
Bruno Munari's one and only A Flower with Love, in the collectable 1973 first hardcover "square" edition, published in English by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. A Flower with Love is beloved Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari's personal ikebana design book. The best ikebana book in the West. Munari's humour and creative playfulness is overflowing in this beautifully illustrated volume, with photographic spreads accompanying Munari's texts and drawings, presenting his whimsical and inventive creations in the Japanese art of flower arrangement, such as arranging dandelions and herbs in wine glasses, the use of a potato as a floral pin frog. Flipping the measured restraint of traditional ikebana on its head and eliminating the elitism we might associate with expensive flower arrangements. There is no force in A Flower With Love. It’s a really gentle, colourful presentation of joy. "...what really matters is the love with which a little daisy, a lavender sprig or some moss are chosen, that one there in particular and not that other one." For the child and adult alike, like most of Munari's wonderful books, A Flower with Love gives us a renewed awareness of the beauty of the world around us.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
Very Good Copy, Good—VG dust jacket, with single chip to back-top of dj and small closed tears, preserved under mylar. Only mild wear/ageing.
2018, Japanese / Italian
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 380 pages, 25.7 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Museum of Modern Art / Kamakura
$89.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the incredible Japanese Bruno Munari Retrospective catalogue, published on the occasion of the largest ever survey exhibition of Bruno Munari's work, that travelled across Japan in 2018. At nearly 400 pages, this profusely colour-illustrated book begins with Munari's early futurist paintings and mobile sculptures and carries the reader through his entire career, generously showcasing throughout an impressive archive of his innovative and iconic graphic works in book and poster design, sculpture, illustration, interior/furniture design, games, art objects, his Xerografia, and much more. It's all here! A wonderful document of material. Texts in Japanese and Italian, with a full chronology, and extensive list of exhibited works. Stunning.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
2022, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$42.00 - In stock -
The most important prose-poem collection of the 20th century, available in a trade publication for the first time.
Max Jacob's role in French modernity was essential, and with this second volume of his work from Wakefield Press, it can now be fully and properly assessed. First published in 1917, The Dice Cup stands alongside Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, Rimbaud's Illuminations and Pierre Reverdy's Prose Poems as one of the most important and foundational books of prose poetry. Jacob has been identified as a "cubist poet," but this collection and its shifting style escape any such easy definition: dream accounts are rendered in playful prose that thumbs its nose at the fabular tradition of Baudelaire and Mallarmé and the Romantic disorder of Rimbaud, and subverts both poetic and narrative expectations in favor of dream logic, allusion, transformed autobiography and nonsensical parody. At once mystical and burlesque, the prose poems of Dice Cup are consciously constructed, yet as unstable and unfixed as both Jacob's personality and our own.
Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a French poet, painter, writer and critic. A key figure of bohemian Montmartre and the Cubist era, he rubbed shoulders with Apollinaire and Modigliani and was a lifelong friend to Picasso, Gris and Cocteau. Jacob converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1915. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he died in a deportation camp of pneumonia. Rosanna Warren's critically acclaimed biography of Jacob was published in 2020.
Translated by Ian Seed
2022, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 13.7 x 20.1 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$42.00 - Out of stock
Translated, with an introduction, by Alexander Dickow
When Max Jacob published The Central Laboratory in 1921, Cubism’s glory days had passed, the Parisian Dada movement had just officially come to an end, and the surrealist movement was yet to be born. The poetic scene in Paris was between definitions, and in that sense, Jacob’s work embodied the moment.
The Central Laboratory is distinctly modern yet utterly discordant with anything else that had been published before: a grab bag of popular genres, operettas, Breton folk song, nonsense poetry, nursery rhyme, cockeyed doggerel, pastiche, parody, and puns in which sound often trumps sense. In this collection, Jacob changes register on a dime, shifting from societal sarcasm to mystical sincerity, bearing allegiance to no school or form but his own. Employing the symbolist method of obscure reference, the cubist fracturing of perspective, Dadaist discontinuity, and a dream logic that was at stylistic antipodes with what surrealism would soon become, Jacob drew from almost twenty years of work to assemble an array of “stoppered phials” in this tongue-in-cheek laboratory, each one of them carefully mislabeled. It most clearly presents what Jacob described as his “art of disappointment”: the sabotage of readerly expectations in which doubt and disorientation serve as poetic principle, and the traditional jilted lover and jilted poet join forces to propagate a new form of jilted reader. Mixed signals, mysterious rationales, and mocked allegory formulate a camp sensibility, a “queering” of literary style that is as riddled with contradiction as Jacob himself had been in his lifetime.
The book remains, a century after its initial publication in French, utterly peculiar and for too long lost in the shadow of Jacob’s more famous poetical colleague, Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as the one cast by Jacob’s own earlier, more famous book of prose poems, The Dice Cup. Jacob himself said of The Central Laboratory: “it sums up twenty years and reflects twenty states of soul, often twenty styles either suffered or created by me.”
Max Jacob (1876–1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic. A key figure of the bohemian setting of Montmartre Paris and the legendary cubist era, he rubbed shoulders with such figures as Guillaume Apollinaire and Amadeo Modigliani, was a lifelong friend to Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Jean Cocteau, and an influence for a generation of young writers. After experiencing a mystic vision in his studio apartment in 1909, Jacob converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1915, with Picasso as godfather. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he subsequently died in a deportation camp from bronchial pneumonia.
2022, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 19.5 x 12.9 cm
Published by
Penguin Putnam / New York
$34.00 - In stock -
"One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written"—The New Yorker
The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South.
Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when "the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years." Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy.
1996, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Re-print,
Published by
Simon and Schuster / New York
$34.00 - In stock -
First published in 1976 by Atheneum Books, Feast of Snakes is one of American author Harry Crews' best known, and most provocative novels. An extraordinary, starkly powerful example of Southern Gothic literature or "Grit Lit" that many critics consider Crews' finest work.
From the acclaimed author of such novels as Blood and Grits and Childhood comes an original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia.
"a writhing of the darkness, an incessant boiling of something thick and slow-moving."
2022, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 15.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$49.00 - In stock -
Internationally recognized for his work in telepresence and bioart, Kac presents here, translated into English for the first time, experimental poems, performances and visual works realized in the context of the Porn Art Movement, a vanguard that emerged in 1980 under a military dictatorship in Brazil.
Porneia features a selection of works by Eduardo Kac realized in the context of the Porn Art Movement, a vanguard that emerged in 1980 under a military dictatorship in Brazil and which, for two intense years, straddled the line between relentless formal experimentation and the outlying demimonde where boundary-busting gender reinvention took place. Through performances, poetry and visual works, as well as through interventions in daily life, between 1980 and 1982 Kac carried out a radical body-based program that upturned the semiotics of normative pornography at the service of activism and imagination.
2022, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 13.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
Sad and funny and bitter and true, a novel about grief, discovering your own story, and trying to listen for those stories that are not yours to tell.
August 2014. Two friends, writers Damaris Caleemootoo and Oliver Pablo Herzberg, arrive in Edinburgh from London, the city that killed Daniel--his brother, her frenemy and loved by them both. Every day is different but the same. Trying to get to the library, they get distracted by bickering--will it rain or not and what should they do about their tanking bitcoin?--in the end failing to write or resist the sadness which follows them as they drift around the city.
On such a day they meet Diego, a poet. They learn that Diego's mother was from the Chagos Archipelago, that she and her community were forced to leave their ancestral islands by soldiers in 1973 to make way for a military base. They become obsessed with this notorious episode in British history and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people, and feel urged to write in solidarity. But how to share a story that is not theirs to tell?
Sad, funny and angry, this collaborative fiction builds on the true fact of another: a collaborative fiction created by the British and US governments to dispossess a people of their homeland.
2022, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 10.9 x 180 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$30.00 - Out of stock
Newly commissioned writing and artwork on the themes found in the work of Cecilia Vicuña, including ecofeminism, indigenous forms of knowledge, dissolution and extinction, and exile.
What happens between the knots? is the third book in the annual A Series of Open Questions published by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and Sternberg Press. Each book in the series includes newly commissioned writing as well a selection of perspectives, images, and references related to the Wattis's year-long research seasons dedicated to single artists. Each book takes the work of a single artist as its point of departure and spirals outward from there to create an expansive and carefully edited ecosystem of ideas and voices.
This third issue is informed by themes found in the work of Cecilia Vicuña, including ecofeminism, indigenous forms of knowledge, poetry and politics, dissolution and extinction, exile, dematerialization, regeneration, and environmental responsibility.
Contributors
Gloria Anzaldua, Elvira Espejo Ajca, Erika Balsom, María Berrios, Marisol de la Cadena, Lynne Cooke, Miho Dohi, Ricki Dwyer, Silvia Federici, Tonya Foster, Phillip Greenlief, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Brian Karl, Dionne Lee, Zoe Leonard, Rosemary Mayer, Koyoltzintli Miranda-Rivadeneira, Denise Newman, Thao Nguyen Phan, Frances Richard, Dylan Robinson, Abel Rodriguez, Oscar Santillan, Alessandra Troncone, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Ignacio Valero, Jacopo Cathrine Veikos, Cecilia Vicuña, Diego Villalobos, Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Carla Zaccagnini
1978, English
Softcover, 268 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
National Gallery of Art / Washington
$45.00 - In stock -
First edition of Edvard Munch : Symbols & Images, published by National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1978, on the occasion of a major American exhibition of Munch held at the National Gallery of Art, November 11, 1978—February 19, 1979, "providing viewers an opportunity to experience the full range of Munch's genius, both in painting and also in graphic work, in which he was one of the virtuosos of his age. The catalogue essays examine the emergence of Expressionism in northern Europe and explore the relationships that recent scholarship has shown to exist between Expressionism and the stylistic imperatives of Impressionism and the School of Paris. The catalog reexamines Munch as not only an artist who created a new tradition but also as an heir to existing 19th-century traditions. Many of the works included on loan from 20 collections had never before left Norway, where over 90 percent of Munch's art remains." — Publisher. Profusely illustrated throughout. Texts by Arne Eggum, Reinhold Heller, Trygve Nergaard, Ragna Thiis Stang, Gerd Woll, and more.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy, light wear to covers.
2004, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 28.4 x 24.7
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$30.00 - In stock -
First edition of this now scarce Edvard Munch catalogue published by National Gallery of Victoria on the occasion of the major exhibition, Edvard Munch : The Frieze of Life, 13 October 2004—12 January 2005. The first comprehensive exhibition of Edvard Munch’s art in Australia, the exhibition assembled more than 80 works from across the artist’s entire oeuvre – including paintings, prints, drawings, and watercolours. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and b/w including texts by Elizabeth Cross, Ted Gott, Gerd Woll, Knut Ormhaug, Marit Lange, Gerard Vaughan, Rose Stone, Gunnar Sorensen, Munch Museet and more, plus a chronology, exhibition list and bibliography.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy.
1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages, 29.5 x 23.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Abbeville Press / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
First edition, second print from 1979 of this major hardcover monograph on the work of Edvard Munch, published by Abbeville Press, New York. extensively illustrated in lush colour and b/w throughout, Norwegian historian Ragna Thiis Stang studies in detail the life and art of one of the founders of modern expressionism, treating his preoccupation with the themes of love and death and the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and despair which they engender. Translated from Norwegian to English by Geoffrey Culverwell.
Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1993, Japanese
Softcover, 292 pages, 26 x 18.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Seirindo / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rarest special issue of cult underground manga periodical GARO, showcasing the work of legendary artist Suehiro Maruo (b. 1956), the master of ero-guro (erotic grotesque) manga. This May 1993 issue features cover artwork by Maruo, a gallery of Maruo's full-colour paintings, comic panels, a rare in-depth illustrated interview with the artist, and a photographic bibliography of his work (to date). Founded by Katsuichi Nagai in 1964 amidst a politically turbulent climate in Japan, GARO was a ground-breaking monthly anthology showcasing dark, experimental manga. Established in a period when manga only circulated through a kashi-hon book rental system, GARO was quickly recognised as Japan’s most notorious alternative manga source, where a new generation of artists ventured unhesitatingly into difficult existentialist, transgressive and difficult socio-political subject matter through gekiga (dramatic adult-themed comics) and ero-guro (the erotic grotesque). The editors of GARO allowed absolutely anything to be published, however ominous in tone or critical of the status quo, introducing the phenomenal work of many of manga history’s most distinguished names, including Shigeru Mizuki, Sampei Shirato, Yoshiharu Tsuge, Seeichi Hayashi, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Mimiyo Tomozawa, Michio Hisauchi, Maki Sasaki, Suehiro Maruo, Kiriko Nananan, Kotobuki Shiriagari, Oji Suzuki, King Terry... Though never commercially successful in its time, GARO is unanimously hailed as the hidden pillar of Japan’s manga industry—its illimitable nature sowing the seeds of contemporary manga and Japanese pop culture at large.
This issue also includes contributions by Michio Hisauchi, Oji Suzuki, Akio Jissoji, Mimiyo Tomozawa, Marie Abiko, Kotobuki Shiriagari, and so many more.
Good copy with light wear.
1992, English / German / French
Softcover, 176 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Taschen / Cologne
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the first major monograph compiled on American artist Jeff Koons, published by Taschen in 1992, edited by Angelika Muthesius. Lavishly illustrated in glossy full-colour surveying renowned early and iconic Koons works from 1979—1992, including The New (vacuums), Equilibrium (basketballs), Luxury and Degradation, Statuary (Rabbit, etc.), Banality (Michael Jackson and Bubbles, Pink Panther...), Puppy, and much more. There's so much work in this monograph beautifully reproduced in all its kitsch glory, however, what makes it particularly appealing is the fact of including the extensive uncensored series Made In Heaven (1990—91), featuring the artist himself and Ilona Staller, aka Cicciolina, the Hungarian-Italian former porn star, politician, singer and Koons' then-wife, in highly explicit sexual positions rendered in porcelain, glass, and hi-definition (explicit) glamour photography. Loathed by critics, many of the works were destroyed by Koons following his divorce, yet the series helped make Koons the household name he is today. Text in German, English and French by Angelika Muthesius, Jean-Christophe Amman and Anthony Haden-Guest, plus interview with Koons.
Jeffrey Lynn Koons (b. 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania.
Very Good copy.
1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 29.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Grosset & Dunlap / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
"I don't think Studio 54 is like pagan Rome. I think it's like junior high school." — Andy Warhol
First 1979 edition of Warhol's first book of photographs. Exposures is Warhol's collection of never before published photographs of the people of the Warhol-universe, celebrities captured in candid, revealing moments. With illuminating text by Warhol and Interview magazine editor, writer, and Warhol's "right-hand Factory man" Bob Colacello. Art directed by American photographer, artist, Many Ray apprentice and Warhol collaborator Christopher Makos.
"This is a book of photographs and profiles of his friends by Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol's friends are the stars of rock, fashion, film, society, sports, politics. "My idea of a good picture, " writes Warhol, "is one that's in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It's being in the right place at the wrong time." Only Andy Warhol could be in so many right places at so many wrong times, and only Andy Warhol could bring together these 360 "good pictures," presenting a unique view of contemporary celebrity life by the most contemporary celebrity of all. Here are Mick, Bianca, and Jade Jagger, Truman Capote, Paulette Goddard, Jacqueline Onassis, Liza Minnelli, Salvador Dali, Halston, Diana Vreeland.... Here they are at work and at play, in public and in private, caught at moments when only Andy Warhol as friend and fellow star, could catch them."
Very Good copy, in VG dust jacket, now protected under mylar wrap.
New York: Andy Warhol Books / Grosset & Dunlap, 1979. Folio, original cloth, original dust jacket. Book with abrasion on blank corner of front index leaf (apparently from a harshly erased price), otherwise fine; dust jacket with only a tiny bit of edgewear. A beautiful copy, rare signed and in such good condition.
1978, German
Softcover, 96 pages (with many fold-outs), 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rogner & Bernhard / Münich
$90.00 - Out of stock
First German edition of Christopher Makos' "Schicker Schund" (or "White Trash") from 1978. Born in Massachusetts in 1948, Makos spent his boyhood in California and before moving to Paris to study architecture and, eventually, to apprentice with artist, Man Ray. Since 1966 he has worked at developing a unique style of boldly graphic photo—journalism. In "Schicker Schund", Makos displays his seeming dis-regard for human and social values, describing a strange (and often sordid) terrain, inhabited by the prophets of an ambisexual generation tolling a future of catatonia. Makos himself has said, regarding the nature of his art, that “the camera is a knife. And photography is an act of violence.” Amongst his victims are William Burroughs, Richard Hell, Devine, David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Zandra Rhodes, Mick Jagger, Man Ray, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams and many others.
Very Good copy.
2022, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
Published by
DelMonico Books / US
Brooklyn Museum / Brooklyn
$120.00 - In stock -
The first comprehensive book on the surreal, queer and humorous photographic art of Jimmy DeSana, a central figure in New York's art and music scenes of the 1970s and '80s.
This is the first overview of the work of Jimmy DeSana, a pioneering yet underrecognized figure in New York's downtown art, music and film scenes during the 1970s and 1980s. The book situates DeSana's work and life within the countercultural and queer contexts in the American South as well as New York, through his involvement in mail art, punk and No Wave music and film, and artist collectives and publications.
DeSana's first major project was 101 Nudes, made in Atlanta during the city's gay liberation movement. After moving to New York in 1973, DeSana became immersed in queer networks, collaborating with General Idea and Ray Johnson on zines and mail art, and documenting the genderqueer street performances of Stephen Varble.
By the mid-1970s, DeSana was a fixture in New York's No Wave music and film scenes, serving as portraitist for much of the period's central figures and producing album covers for Talking Heads, James Chance and others. His book Submission, made with William S. Burroughs, humorously staged scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. DeSana was also an early adopter of color photography, creating his best-known series, Suburban, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This body of work explores relationships between gender, sexuality and consumer capitalism in often humorous, surreal ways. After DeSana became sick as a result of contracting HIV, he turned to abstraction, using experimental photographic techniques to continue to push against photographic norms.
Edited by Drew Sawyer.
Preface by Anne Pasternak.
Epilogue by Laurie Simmons.
1979, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scat / New York
$400.00 - Out of stock
"My dear, it’s all so Christian and medieval and gloomy. Precisely. Jimmy DeSana, your intrepid photographer, has witnessed and preserved for posterity the unspeakable rights of these benighted natives, rites as clearly derived from Christianity as a black mass" — William Burroughs, 1979
Very rare first edition of Submission, Jimmy DeSana's incredible seminal, self-published photo book, created in collaboration with William S. Burroughs and published by Scat, 1979. Jimmy DeSana (1949—1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art, New Wave, and queer scenes of the 1970s and 1980s. With an introduction by William S. Burroughs, this beautiful artist’s book explores the ambiguous nature of the BDSM subculture, humorously staging scenes out of a S&M manual that explored the body as object and the performance of desire. An iconic document of DeSana's fetishistic photographs, described as "anti-art" for their experimental approach to capturing staged images of the human body contorted, manipulated and in motion, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit" to the "purely symbolic". DeSana's imagery captured the defining avant-garde spirit of that moment in New York's underground.
Very Good with light wear to covers and edges.
2022, English
Softcover, 142 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$42.00 - Out of stock
Martin Bladh returns to AS with Braquemard: The Clavicle of Gilles de Rais, a deranged grimoire etched in blood.
Exquisitely designed by Karolina Urbainiak, with illustrations executed in the author's blood, Braquemard is printed in full colour throughout and concerns the murderous exploits of the child-killing French nobleman Gilles de Rais.
Not for the faint of heart, Bladh's latest work is an unforgettable journey to the dark heart of depravity.
"I have roots in that French soil which is fed by the powdered bones of the children and youths buggered, massacred and burned by Gilles de Rais."—Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal
Martin Bladh is a Swedish writer, artist and musician, leader of the post-industrial band IRM, the musical avant-garde unit Skin Area and co-founder of publisher Infinity Land Press.
2022, English
Softcover, 190 pages,
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$38.00 - Out of stock
An hallucinatory SF novel painted in overloaded electronic prose and absolute poetic mayhem. Imagine William S. Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade contemplating the end of the world from a flophouse on 42nd Street. A bruising love letter to language and lysergic lycanthropy. AS SF is here.
Seismic shocks throughout the bigger cities of Earth. A plane crash in San Francisco. Sexology as detailed by American nymphomaniacs. Drugs manufactured from Hindu guidelines. Outdoor furniture burning on the lawns of Indianapolis. I take a deep breath. My filthy hand full of numerous ideas. They administer the medical treatments to Madhab. His skin smells burnt ... he is stabbed by unknown substances ... all rubber shuffling upon him. Tropical fruit eaten around campfires. Coyotes constructed from human bones. Carnal worlds involving shampoo and soiled beds. We strangle in the stairwells at night. We strangle in hotel rooms and on patios ... beneath bed sheets or brown paper. We invite the hotel staff to join us. The brutal lunge of a foam head. Soda bubbles as the blood drools. Index finger in the red mist. Dark-haired soldier with an unidentifiable accent. Madhab wears dark glasses and hangs out with big drug users. Madhab thinks that obedience is an adrenaline rush. He likes tugging off relief workers and U.N. peacekeepers in the toilet facilities. When I was fifteen I use to give back massages on East 14th Street. I’d lick the oil smells from Madhab’s underarms. Memories of the cool night air at the open swimming pavilion. The red lacquer corner pillars by the change rooms. Madhab gets me back to the hotel room. White shirt tight against his chest. I burn up. He opens his mouth. Moss and plaque. Dry toothpaste on lip. Dangerous gang members flood tribal areas. SWAT team in Kandahar. The gorgeous mountains of Afghanistan. Toadlike fingers over the strategic footholds. Negative forces infiltrate Madhab’s psychic energy. Machine guns against the dark blue sky. White stabs of lightning. The electrical world. Kidnappings and suicide bombings. Super-computers cancelling gene therapy programs. It is an early morning in Manhattan ...
Illustrated by Steven Purtill.
2022, English
Hardcover, 214 pages, 22.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$55.00 - In stock -
A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent. Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children.
Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech. Unaware of her parents’ true whereabouts – or whether in fact they are even alive – Tamara struggles to make herself understood and to survive in this alien environment where chaos reigns and brutality – or sheer indifference – unfortunately appears to be the norm.
A sinister cast of characters duly appears, including the glamorous but corrupt Director, her overbearingly sadistic partner the Doctor, not to mention the Father – a perverse cleric with a penchant for cruelty – amongst other unsavoury and remorseless individuals, all enforcing a strict hierarchy between the adults and the children (and thus the perpetrators and the victims of institutionalised violence).
Meanwhile, a number of different voices or alters jostle for psychic dominance over Tamara’s internal narrative; through various temporal shifts, rotations and leaps in chronological perspective our heroine’s journey – both geographical and psychological – is described in a disintegrating arc of obscure recollections, fragmented diary entries and increasingly obscene erotic fantasies.
Conversely, these kaleidoscopic projections, delirious daydreams and compulsive diatribes gradually accumulate to articulate a traumatised inner topography that mirrors the devasted and desolate external landscape of a perpetual war zone….