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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
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.
2017, English / German
Softcover, 328 pages, 30 x 23.5 cm
Out of print title / as new
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$95.00 - In stock -
A monograph on Amelie von Wulffen is long overdue. For more than twenty years, the artist has developed a formal and stylistically wide-ranging work (collages, installation works, animation films, drawings, sculptures and painting), which is reflected in its content persistence. Amelie von Wulffen takes a clear account of the German (cultural) history in the precipitation of the private and personal, and argues as an invaluable chronicler of repression. The biting humor that permeates her work does not stop at a human low ground, though not always as directly as in her drawings and comics. The texts of this richly illustrated monograph examine Wulffen's contribution to the painting discourse, Psychoanalytic aspects and show the painter as a role model for a young generation of artists. Amelie von Wulffen, born in Breitenbrunn in 1966, lives and works in Berlin.
Texts by Manfred Hermes, Bernhart Schwenk, Amy Sillman
Edited by Isabel Podeschwa, Bernhart Schwenk, Joe Scotland, Amelie von Wulffen
2023, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 19.5 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Nieves / Zurich
$33.00 - In stock -
In this small volume, normally-inanimate objects are brought to life by Amelie von Wulffen's paint brush, moving throughout this strange, surreal universe as if they were real people. The result is a series of darkly funny paintings that shed light on our own mundane realities.
Since the 1990s, von Wulffen has created a sophisticated and unique oeuvre that enquires into the historic, economic, and social conditions of painting. Highly self-reflexive, von Wulffen’s practice expands to include the artist herself. She frequently appears in her own work in different guises, interweaving her family’s past with national history and existential questions about a specifically German cultural heritage. Von Wulffen’s works purposefully juxtapose aesthetic incongruities and combine different styles of painting from art history and amateur art to re-purpose their associative weight. In that respect, her work reads as a meta-reflection on the aesthetic incongruities of both post-war Germany as well as contemporary popular and political culture. This effect is compounded by the inclusion of references to decorative arts, furniture and architectural elements.
2022, English / German
Hardcover, 176 pages, 27.5 x 22.4 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Établissement d'en face / Brussels
$70.00 - In stock -
Since the artist’s comprehensive monograph was published in 2017, many new paintings and sculptures have been created. They address emotional and also psychoanalytical issues. At the core of the interest lies the relationship between autonomy and heritage, the unconscious and the conscious, the carrying along of trauma or guilt, as well as hidden longings, fantasies, or the disclosure of shame.
This book documents Amelie von Wulffen’s exhibitions at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York / Gió Marconi, Milan / KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin / Établissement d’en face, Brussels / Galerie Meyer Kainer, Wien between 2018 and 2022.
Texts by Helmut Draxler, Valérie Knoll, Tonio Kröner.
English and German text.
2021, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 26 x 19 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$50.00 - In stock -
This is an anthology of Berlin-based artist, Amelie von Wulffen’s collected comics from 2011 to 2020,
Amelie von Wulffen’s amazing comics—or ego-comics, as she calls them—gathered for the first time. Hilarious, nightmarish, vividly drawn tales from the daily life of a woman artist and her nightmare-like, surreal psycho-geographies, depicting social embarrassments, emotional crisis, encounters with history and art world codes, as well as fruity dramas, and sex dreams. They poignantly and parodically observe fears of failure, loneliness, competition, so-called good taste, and sexual affairs, while questioning a clear cut distinction between high and low, artistic genius and amateurism. From November (2011) to At the cool table (2013), all of contemporary affects, the good ones and the bad ones, are distilled in von Wulffen’s comics.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin in 2021.
1976/2006, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket, slipcase, obi), 82 pages, 31 x 25 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
2006 facsimile edition of this wonderful 1976 slip-cased hardcover monograph on German artist Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, considered one of the most important representatives of Art Brut or Outsider Art. Bound in red cloth and wrapped in illustrated original dust-jacket, this heavily illustrated book surveys Schröder-Sonnenstern's incredible paintings and drawings through beautiful colour and monochrome gravure reproductions, with alongside various texts, biography, bibliography and portrait of the artist. Published as volume 6 of the deluxe La Septième Face du Dé series by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in Japan in the 1970s, all later re-printed in the 2000s. All editions now out-of-print.
Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern was a draftsman, painter and poet-philosopher. Born in 1892 in East Prussia, one of thirteen children, all of whom apart from one other died shortly after birth. He was sent to a number of reform schools due to accusations of theft and violent behaviour and then, at the age of twenty-six, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to a sanatorium. His experiences as a child contributed to his lifelong hatred of authority. One year later he showed up in Berlin, where he occupied himself with occultism, divination and healing magnetism. He founded a sect and distributed its income in the form of bread rolls to poor children, earning him the title "Schrippenfürst of Schöneberg". He created the name Sonnenstern (English: Sun Star) for himself while working as a con-artist, posing as a Quack doctor in "natural health", calling himself Professor Dr. Eliot Gnass von Sonnenstern. This career path was cut off by the Nazis' interdiction of occult practices, and after being confined in psychiatric institutes and in a penal camp, Schröder-Sonnenstern reemerged in 1944, scavenging firewood in the bombed-out German capital. Only in his late fifties, in 1949, did he begin to draw, using coloured pencils to create allegorical grotesques stocked with a personal iconography. Although his art was rarely shown, he was championed in Surrealist and art brut circles; Jean Dubuffet and Hans Bellmer were among his admirers, and a few drawings were included in Marcel Duchamp and André Breton's 1959 "Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surréalisme" in Paris. The demand for his pictures by collectors and gallerists rose rapidly and he resorted to employing assistants to produce his work for him. His success was short-lived when he began to paint less and less and became the victim of counterfeiting cliques by his assistants, destroying his position in the art market. He became increasingly dependent on alcohol following the death, in 1964, of his long-time companion, Martha Möller whom he called Aunt Martha. He died almost forgotten and impoverished in 1982 in Berlin.
Fine copy.
1990, French
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre National Des Arts Plastiques / Paris
$220.00 - Out of stock
First beautiful hardcover edition of the comprehensive Pierre Klossowski catalogue raisonné published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition of his work held in Paris in 1990-1991 at CNAP. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with Klossowski's wonderful works, texts throughout by Catherine Grenier, Bernard Blistene, Claude Ritschard, Pascal Bonitzer, Marie-Dominique Wicker, Franco Cagnetta, André Masson, and Pierre Zucca (in French), a densely illustrated catalogue raisonné spanning his work dated 1952/53 through to 1990 (many not seen elsewhere), biography, exhibition history, and much more. Still the most in-depth book on Klossowski's oeuvre to date.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket with some tanning lines.
1965, French
Hardcover (clothbound), 244 pages, 18 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Jean-Jacques Pauvert / Paris
$55.00 - Out of stock
First 1965 clothbound edition of Érotique du Surréalisme, Robert Benayoun's study on the importance of the erotic in the surrealist arts, from L'Androgyne to The Sadist, Le Femme-Enfant to the Poetic Machine, surveying Symbolist and Art Brut precursors, and encompassing the multitude manifestations of eroticism across a broad array of visual and poetic works from the surrealist spectrum, even into the influence in film (a field Benayoun was known in). Reproducing poems and quotes throughout, this heavily illustrated volume reproduces many artworks in b/w and colour plates, including works and works by Max Walter Svanberg, Toyen, Hans Bellmer, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Heinrich Anton Müller, Marcel Duchamp, Jindřich Štyrský, Brancusi, Victor Brauner, Mimi Parent, Andre Masson, Louis Aragon, Yves Tanguy, Valentine Hugo, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Balthus, Rene Magritte, André Breton, Giorgio de Chirico, Henry Fuseli, Dali, Man Ray, Henri Rousseau, Picasso, Miro, Edvard Munch, William Blake, Hieronymus Bosch, Ingrid Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Konrad Klapheck, Francis Picabia, Óscar Domínguez, Jean Benoit, Paul Delvaux, Pierre Molinier, and many more.
Good—Very Good copy with light tanning to spine and general tanning/light wear.
1969, Czech / French
Softcover, 44 pages + 1 page colour insert, 17.5 cm x 24.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
National Gallery / Prague
$55.00 - In stock -
Scarce 1969 Czech Martial Raysse catalogue, published on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague in 1969. Illustrated throughout with examples of Raysse's sculptural assemblages, paintings, neons, and installations, alongside texts by Otto Hahn, Pierre Restany and Martial Raysse, biography, exhibition history, bibliography. All texts in French and Czech. Very lovely catalogue. Includes loose-leaf single colour plate, also.
Martial Raysse (b. 1936) is a French artist and actor born in Golfe-Juan to a ceramicist family in Vallauris. He began to paint and write poetry at age 12 and in 1958, he exhibited some of his paintings with Jean Cocteau at Galerie Longchamp. Fascinated by the beauty of plastic, he plundered low-cost shops with plastic items and developed what became his "vision hygiene" concept; a vision that showcases consumer society. This work received attention and critical praise in 1961, and at a commercial gallery in Milan, his exhibition sold out 15 minutes before the opening. Raysse then traveled to the United States and naturally became involved with the pop art scene in New York City. In October 1960, Raysse, together with Arman, Yves Klein, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and the art critic and philosopher Pierre Restany founded the group Nouveaux Réalistes. The group was later joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle and Christo. This group of artists defined themselves as bearing in common a "new perspective approaches of reality". Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art and the artist in the context of a 20th-century consumer society by reasserting the humanistic ideals in the face of industrial expansion.
Very Good copy.
1965, English / Dutch / French
Softcover (cloth-bind), 34 pages, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$70.00 - In stock -
Rare 1965 Wim Crouwel-designed Stedelijk Museum catalogue for French Pop artist and Nouveau réalisme co-founder Martial Raysse's solo exhibition in late 1965. Heavily illustrated lavish catalogue with wonderful fluro green spot colour printing over b/w imagery of Raysse's iconic sculptural assemblages, paintings, neons, and installations, plus colour reproductions and fold-out pages, wrapped in fluro printed card covers with cloth binding. Texts by Otto Hahn and Pierre Restany, biography, exhibition history, bibliography. Texts in Dutch, English and French. Designed and typeset in Univers by Wim Crouwel and Anneke Huig of Total Design.
Martial Raysse (b. 1936) is a French artist and actor born in Golfe-Juan to a ceramicist family in Vallauris. He began to paint and write poetry at age 12 and in 1958, he exhibited some of his paintings with Jean Cocteau at Galerie Longchamp. Fascinated by the beauty of plastic, he plundered low-cost shops with plastic items and developed what became his "vision hygiene" concept; a vision that showcases consumer society. This work received attention and critical praise in 1961, and at a commercial gallery in Milan, his exhibition sold out 15 minutes before the opening. Raysse then traveled to the United States and naturally became involved with the pop art scene in New York City. In October 1960, Raysse, together with Arman, Yves Klein, François Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Daniel Spoerri, Jean Tinguely, Jacques Villeglé and the art critic and philosopher Pierre Restany founded the group Nouveaux Réalistes. The group was later joined by César, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle and Christo. This group of artists defined themselves as bearing in common a "new perspective approaches of reality". Their work was an attempt at reassessing the concept of art and the artist in the context of a 20th-century consumer society by reasserting the humanistic ideals in the face of industrial expansion.
Very Good copy, light wear.
1968, Dutch
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$70.00 - In stock -
Wonderful 1968 Stedelijk Museum catalogue designed by Wim Crouwel on the occasion of the important 1968 solo exhibition of the amazing "Horti-sculptures" by Dutch artist Ferdi (Ferdina Jansen Tajiri). Heavily illustrated throughout with her works, rarely seen since. Ferdi sadly passed away a year later, at the creative peak of her career.
Born in 1927 in Arnhem, the Netherlands, Ferdina Jansen met and became life partners with Japanese-American artist Shinkichi Tajiri. At Tajiri’s studio, in 1952, Ferdi learned metal-working and welding techniques using an acetylene torch; it was the welding technique she further perfected to create her welded jewelry inspired by the world of insects. In 1965 Ferdi travelled with her childeren, Shinkichi and his two assistants through the United States and Mexico in a VW van. The trip abroad had enormous impact on her art practice. She was fascinated by the exotic vegetation around her in Mexico and transformed her impressions into what became known as the "Horti-sculptures" that she developed in a brief span of three years from 1966—1969. The modest scale of her jewellery made way for enormously long or towering sculptures that literally took over the gallery space. The work of Ferdi became more monumental and bold in shape and character, and more explicit in its erotic eloquence. It lustily challenged the visitor, the viewer, to experience the work up close and not from a distance. Ferdi used nature as a sexual metaphor. With the titles the sexual symbolism of the sculptures was underlined. The titles who were also derived from the titles of pop songs and mind expanding drugs, the artist expressed the era's yearning for change and renewal. Her work was an ode to the female body; to eroticism and sexuality. Ferdi spent three years working on the series of works that have occupied a unique place in Dutch art history. Ferdi lived for her art, with her art and in her art. In 1968, a time when the art world was very male dominant, she had a solo exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, occupying a position alongside the work of female artists Yayoi Kusama, Carol Rama, and Eva Hesse. Ferdi sadly passed away a year later, at the creative peak of her career.
Very Good copy.
1972, Dutch
Softcover, 32 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$140.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue produced on the occasion of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo's exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 25 Feb - 9 April 1972. "Pollution, Cultivation, New Ecology, Your Portrait", designed by Wim Crouwel (Total Design), features beautiful photo documentation of the artist's works of sculptural assemblage, his happenings, installations, etc. along with texts in Dutch, all wrapped in an original two-colour silk-screened card cover of drawings by Tetsumi Kudo. Scarce.
In his wide-ranging practice, Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo (1935–1990) promoted environmental awareness through found object assemblages, reminiscent of gardens, and cubes that seemed to contain vast inner worlds in states of metamorphosis. A staunch antimodernist, he freely sampled abject imagery, like feces, eyeballs, breasts, and penises, presented in combination with household objects, transistors, and early electronics, to criticize the rampant consumerism of the postwar recovery. Kudo, who was an early proponent of performance-based painting, was an important figure of Tokyo’s “Anti-Art” movement before relocating to Paris in 1962, where he gained recognition for the Happenings he staged and began making art in the vein of Nouveau Réalisme. His lasting legacy can be traced in such artists as Paul McCarthy and Takashi Murakami, who once called him “the father of us all.”
Very Good copy.
1968, Dutch
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$70.00 - In stock -
One of the rarest of the wonderful Wim Crouwel-designed Stedelijk Museum catalogues (SM Nr. 430), published on the occasion of the Een modebeeld exhibition, showcasing the work of 4 young Dutch avant-garde fashion-designers : Alice Edeling, Berry Brun, Maarten van Dreven, Jan Jansen. Beautifully spot colour printed (including metallics) on thick raw pink card stock, the special design of the book features a fashion doll on the cover which can be dressed with fashion designs from inside by the featured designers. Includes drawings, some portraits of designers involved, biographies and notes on each designer. This was the first presentation of shoes by iconic Amsterdam shoe designer Jan Jansen.
Very Good copy, light wear/light tanning.
1983, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 164 pages, 23.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Wayne State University / Detroit
$50.00 - In stock -
First 1983 hardcover edition.
The Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) is primarily known as an exponent of Expressionism in the visual arts, through his paintings and through his graphics. His role in the history of modern German drama has rarely been acknowledged, although he was the author of five plays, written over a period of fifty years. Murderer Hope of Women, The Burning Bush, Job, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Comenius are dramatic visual spectacles on themes recurrent in Kokoschka's paintings and graphic work.
Oskar Kokoschka: The Painter as Playwright focuses on the visual elements of the stage works, specifically on the use of color, light, and scenic imagery in their dramatic as well as their symbolic function. It pays close attention to the stylistically and thematically related pictorial works and takes account of Kokoschka's illustrations for each of his plays.
This is the first complete critical discussion of Kokoschka's dramas to appear in any language; it is also the first consideration of Kokoschka's work from an interdisciplinary perspective. Included are over fifty photographs, many of them in color. The text is based on much previously unpublished information, the result of the author's many hours of recorded interviews with Kokoschka and his extensive correspondence with Kokoschka's wife, Olda.
This study eloquently shows the paintings, graphics, and dramas of Oskar Kokoschka to be one "language of images" and identifies him as one of the foremost innovators of twentieth-century theater, the first German Expressionist dramatist.
Good—VG copy, general overall wear, small closed tear to jacket top-back.
1991, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and slipcase), 168 pages, 26 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
The incredible and rarely seen 1991 Japanese slipcased, hardcover edition of Jacques Henric's monographic volume on the great Pierre Klossowski. One of the most comprehensive books ever published on the artist, with beautiful large reproductions of artworks in colour and b/w heavily featured throughout, alongside Henric's text (here translated into Japanese from the original French) with a full catalogue of works and bibliography. First printing in original dust jacket, illustrated slipcase, beautifully printed in Italy and bound in Japan.
Jacques Henric (b. 1938) is a French literary critic, essayist and novelist.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Fine As New copy of book and dj, preserved in Good slipcase with some wear and bumps.
1984 / 1985, Japanese
Softcover (dust-jacket), 96 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Takeshobo Co. / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
Volume 1 and 2 (the only two ever made) of the amazing Japanese SFX Make-Up manuals/fan resources Special Make-Up in the Movie (1984) and Technique of Special Make-Up (1985), published in Tokyo at the height of the home video revolution of the 1980s. Edited by writer Yoshikazu Takeuchi (creator of Perfect Blue), these collectible and visually explosive publications survey some of the finest examples of make-up and prosthetic/mechanical effects in horror and science fiction film, each volume profusely illustrated with a visual history of special make-up in the movies including colour and b/w film stills and behind-the-scenes imagery from the productions of masters such as Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Ray Harryhausen, Dick Smith, Carlo Rambaldi, Rob Bottin, Chris Walas, and many more! What makes these publications extra special though is the tutorials with step-by-step visual guides to replicating your favourite special effects moments and making your own DIY monster make-up, full-face masks, monster suits, prosthetics and mechanics, from latex casting, wiring and application right through to scripting, modelling, shooting and editing your own complete SFX movie scenes with behind the scenes illustrated guides to every step. Lots of great production and studio images and each edition closing with a reference library of journals on the subjects covered - a real treasure for any gore/horror/monster/sci-fi movie production fan.
1995, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$100.00 - Out of stock
Published in Japan in 1995, BOTTOM UP (Super Low Angle Fetish Photo) by photographer Takayuki Nakamura is cover to cover full-colour 90's glamour perv/garment fetishism at its finest. The title says it all, this glossy fetish volume is for upskirts fans, and Nakamura and stylist Toshiko Sugino have made it their art form. Young Japanese female models in various 1990's fashions and costume—from 60s gogo revival to school girl, stewardess to preppy, with every variety of heel and boot, stocking and sock, or not—walk (or sit) all over you. You are the floor, you are the chair. Nakamura's ingenious glass ground photography makes possible the impossible. Undocumented and little known outside the fleeting appreciation of 1990's tokyo adult book vendors, Nakamura's books are really something special and very rare to come by. For fans of Namio Harukawa, the neon exhibitionism of Pink Star Editions and the peeping lens of Ikko Kagari.
Very Good copy.
2023, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 160 pages, 19 x 15.1 cm
Published by
Atelier Third / Tokyo
$70.00 - Out of stock
The book collection of the rarely seen cruel paintings by the little known Showa era Japanese artists Shizuhiro Usui and Takashi Shiba, drawn only for one client and kept secret, accompanied by Kazunori Kanze's torture illustrations. “Here, the cruelty of human beings tormenting human beings is not glorified at all, and is depicted bare.”—Asaji Muroi. Active in the 1950s and 1960s, Shizuhiro Usui was a mysterious painter with little known about him, while Takashi Shiba was active in this period in groups such as "Kitan Club". Kazunori Kanze was active in SM magazines mainly in the 1970s. This expanded 2023 edition of Concealed Cruel Illustrations, includes 24 new pages of previously unpublished artworks, and additional colour pages. The extreme of pain aesthetics! Works collected here are preserved in Japan's only library specializing in SM and fetishism (membership only), located in Iidabashi, Tokyo.
2024, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 128 pages, 25.5 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Atelier Third / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Brand new artbook collection of treasured blame paintings and drawings from Seiu Ito, "the father of modern kinbaku", published in bi-lingual English and Japanese. A kidnapping, a show off... This is an art book where you can fully enjoy the beauty of fear and ecstasy, depicted with lyricism by a rare torture artist who was active in the first half of the 20th century. Profusely illustrated, this volume contains many unpublished sketches and drawings that show the freshness of the brushstrokes and the trial and error that has gone into capturing the body and facial expressions. Includes private artworks from the "Abnormal Museum", Japan's only membership-only library specializing in SM and fetishism. Located in Iidabashi, Tokyo, this museum collects and preserves valuable materials.
Seiu Ito (1891—1960) Seiu Ito, also romanised as Seiyu Itoh, was a Japanese painter, recognised today as "the father of modern kinbaku". Ito's life was the subject of director Noboru Tanaka's 1977 Nikkatsu Roman porno film Beauty's Exotic Dance: Torture!, the final entry in his "Showa Era trilogy". Ito uses his skilful technique to draw realistic torture pictures, and as a master of these paintings, he has many fans and has written masterpieces such as "The Story of Blame." On the other hand, he not only left behind many masterpieces of ghost paintings, but also loved the street customs of Edo and wrote books about Edo customs.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shincho Sha / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1994 edition of Hair by Kishin Shinoyama, his glossy full-colour photo collection of elegant nudes where the focal point is women's pubic hair, the forbidden fruit of Japanese censorship laws.
Kishin Shinoyama was born in Tokyo in 1940. He began shooting award-winning advertising photography while still a student at Nihon University. After several years with the advertising agency Light Publicity, Shinoyama began working as an independent photographer in 1968. In the decades since, he has taken portraits of some of the most recognized people of our time, including Yukio Mishima, Momoe Yamaguchi, Rie Miyazawa, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In his Gekisha and Shinorama series, Shinoyama has used the latest technologies to create new modes of expression. His recent digital multimedia project digi KISHIN brings a new perspective to both photography and cinema He has dedicated his practice to exploring intimacy and the human body, as well as documenting his home place of Tokyo. His sensual photographs often depict the body within the architecture of the city or conversely, the inherent sculptural qualities of the naked human form.
Near Fine copy with good obi strip.
2023, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 19 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Hirmer / Münich
$190.00 - In stock -
Immediately out-of-print.
For the first time, the Lebanese-American writer and artist Etel Adnan is being honoured with a comprehensive retrospective in Germany. This volume presents her fascinating work from all creative phases and media. Politically, poetically and metaphysically - Adnan's texts and pictures reflect the lively exchange between the Arab and the Western world.
Etel Adnan (1925-2021) spent her life between Lebanon, France and California. She has long been famous as a writer; now this volume presents her impressive artistic personality in the combined exploration of her texts, paintings, tapestries and leporellos. Her biography between the cultures and her feminism play a part, as does her relationship to calligraphy and to American and Arab literature. The publication is a tribute to a cosmopolitan artist, to whom painting represented the love of the world.
As New copy.
1994, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 20 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
Rare first hardcover edition of the stunning 1994 photo book by American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator, archivist and Warhol's Factory associate, Gerard Malanga (b. 1943). Gorgeous collection of Malanga's black and white female nudes and semi nudes, published only once in this volume produced exclusively in Japan, conceived, edited and designed by the one-and-only Makoto Orui of Fiction Inc. and Purple fame. Stunning reproductions on gloss stock.
From the artist's statement: "I discovered early on that girls love to be photographed nude because the pictures they see reveal to them the extent of what they previously were unable to see in discovering their true likeness. A photograph of their naked body is the power to possess that which is transitory. So I'm asking these girls, women really, to examine the image they see mirrored back as photographs. These pictures, then, extend the significance of those private moments in time."—G. Malanga
Near Fine copy in Near Fine dust jacket with Very Good wax obi.
1998, English / French
Softcover, 64 pages, 21 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
En Vues / Paris
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this scarce collection of poet and Warhol associate Gerard Malanga, compiling his poetry, nude photos, and portraits of luminaries (Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Mick Jagger, Dali, William Burroughs...). All texts in English and French.
Gerard Joseph Malanga (b. 1943) is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator and archivist. Malanga was the chief assistant for artist Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s, with whom he founded the magazine Interview in 1969. Malanga was also featured in several of Warhol’s films, collaborated with Warhol on his “Screen Tests” project, and was a member of Warhol’s cross-genre undertaking, “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable”, working with The Velvet Underground. Malanga began writing poetry as a teenager, and has published numerous books of poetry, including chic death (1971), Mythologies of the Heart (1996), No Respect: New And Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2001), and Cool & Other Poems (2019). Malanga's photography spans over four decades and encompasses portraits, nudes and the urban documentation of "New York's Changing Scene".
Very Good copy.
1982 / 1998, English
Softcover, 444 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Texas Press / Texas
$25.00 - In stock -
1982 English edition, 1998 print.
These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)—known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevsky—as a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology. Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.
Very Good copy.
1996, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cornell University Press / New York
$50.00 - In stock -
This book is the first to consider the presence of history and the question of historical practice in Walter Benjamin's work. Benjamin, the critic and philosopher of history, was also the practitioner, the authors contend, and it is in the practice of historical writing that the materialist aspect of his thought is most evident.
Some of the essays analyze Benjamin's writings in cultural history and the philosophy of history. Others connect his historical and theoretical practices to issues in contemporary feminism and post-colonial studies, and to cultural contexts including the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong. In different ways, the authors all find in Benjamin's specific notion of historical materialism a dialectic between textual and cultural analysis which can reinvigorate the relation between literary and historical studies.
"The essays offer an important range of views from an international array of historians and literary and cultural critics. These essays investigate Benjamin's engagement with the 'materiality of the past and the epistemology and ethics of its recuperation' the world made available 'in language but also beyond language.'."—Len Findlay, The Structuralist, 1997/1998
Very Good copy.