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.
1975 / 1985, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Overlook Press / New York
$40.00 - In stock -
First 1975 US edition (1985 print) of Stephen Dwoskin's important critical history of international independent and underground film-making, its pioneers and masters, and their creations, from the 1920s to the present (late 1970s), assessing the movements importance to the current status of film as art and entertainment. Published by Overlook Press.
Underground' film is finally emerging in terms of the public consciousness as an important and enduring contribution to the world of celluloid, both as entertainment and as an art form. The author, Stephen Dwoskin, is a young American independent filmmaker with personal experience in an expert knowledge of a creative area barely studied until this time. He has created in FILM IS an invaluable record of the pioneering cinematic statements that are at once peripheral and central to film today on an international scale. It is both culturally and sociologically true today that an increasing number of the painters and the poets have become filmmakers. Un-pressured by big business, free cinema has become a personal, creative expression for many men and women who often work in obscurity with small means indeed. Dwoskin's work presents the early history of the independent film from its beginning in the twenties to its phenomenal outburst in the sixties, written by an involved, perceptive critic. Through his own work and his contributions to the juries of international festivals, Dwoskin has a wide-ranging knowledge of the independent film from the U.S. to Britain, Italy, Germany, and Austria. Over 700 films are discussed, many for the first time. Van der Beek, Refenstahl, Brakhage, Emshwiller, Ray and Jack Smith are only some of the experimental filmmakers mentioned in FILM IS, but Dwoskin refers forwards and backwards to the works of others, often better known— Bunuel, Cocteau, Fassbinder, Truffaut, Warhol. There is also a comprehensive index. FILM IS provides a unique and invaluable reference work for all those interested in the frontiers of film consciousness.
Stephen Dwoskin (1939—2012) was a major avant-garde filmmaker whose work was closely connected to the 'gaze theory' associated with Laura Mulvey; a significant disabled filmmaker – though he rejected being framed as such – and an activist for an alternative film culture, through such organizations as the London Film-Makers' Co-op and The Other Cinema. His films are held by the BFI and distributed by LUX. His archive is held at The University of Reading.
Very Good copy, light wear, ex-owner's name in inside front cover.
2016, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 27.8 x 21.4 cm
Published by
Seagull Books / London
$39.00 - In stock -
Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Edited with a Preface by Évelyne Grossman
A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his thought and his appeal, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic is rooted in the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed. Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948, these pieces trace Artaud’s struggle to escape a personal hell that extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he believed ran them.
The first eleven notebooks are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures, pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before Artaud’s death in 1948, changes course: it’s an extraordinary text on the loss of magic to the demonic—the piece that gives the book its title.
“Artaud matters,” wrote John Simon in the Saturday Review years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that remains true—perhaps more than ever.
"A gloriously reproduced edition . . . . There is something in this text that speaks to the creative process--especially to the degree to which so much of what the writer or artist commits to the page (or canvass) extends from a place beyond conscious attention, to be received actively but without specific intention."—Rough Ghosts
2024, English
Softcover, 416 pages, 21.6 x 13.8 cm
Published by
SPBH Editions / UK
$89.00 - In stock -
The cult periodical Little Joe, published as a limited-edition zine from 2010 to 2021, challenged the mainstream narrative of film history with a rebellious, queer perspective. Rather than reviewing new releases, it explored forgotten and overlooked films and celebrated a diverse spectrum of cinema – from obscure art films to porn to Hollywood classics – as worthy of critical debate. Stubbornly print-only, Little Joe was notoriously hard to find, privileging word-of-mouth distribution akin to the films it championed. This volume, compiled by editor-in-chief Sam Ashby, brings together the best of its previously elusive texts and proposes a new, alternative cinematic canon drawn from the fringes of taste and style, while paying homage to the original DIY Risograph aesthetic of the journal.
This volume features essays, in-depth conversations, short stories and archival discoveries from a host of queer and allied writers, artists, filmmakers, and academics, including John Waters, Sarah Schulman, Douglas Crimp, William E. Jones, Erika Balsom, Jeremy Atherton Lin, John Greyson, Elizabeth Purchell, Liz Rosenfeld, Peter Strickland, Ira Sachs, Terence Davies, Shu Lea Cheang, Kevin Killian, Wayne Koestenbaum, Abdellah Taïa, Marlene McCarty, John Cameron Mitchell, Rosa von Praunheim, Stuart Comer, Ed Halter, Jenni Olson, A.L. Steiner, A.K. Burns, Desiree Akhavan, and Andrew Haigh.
1987 / 2000s, English
Softcover, 518 + 507 pages, 22.4 x 15.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$120.00 - In stock -
First edition, mid 2000s re-prints of Theweleit's 1987 classic two-volume Male Fantasies as complete set translated from the original German. Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History; Volume 2: Male Bodies: Psychoanalyzing the White Terror.
Klaus Theweleit's two-volume work Mannerphantasien, published in the late 1970s, has become a contemporary German classic. Male Fantasies dives into the sexual, psychological and sociopolitical foundation of National Socialism as it was manifested in the Weimar Republic, arguing that fascism is not a political or economic phenomenon, but a method to manufacture a specific reality. Unlike any study before it, Male Fantasies centers upon the fantasies that preoccupied a group of men who played a crucial role in the rise of Nazism — The German Freikorps, the precursors of the SA and SS. Theweleit draws upon the novels, letters, and autobiographies of these proto-fascists and their contemporaries. There he discovered how the repudiation of one's own body—and of femininity—became a psychic compulsion associating masculinity with hardness, self-denial, and destruction.
The first volume of Male Fantasies deals primarily with the image of women in the collective unconscious of the fascist warrior—visions reflecting hatred and fear, culminating in a series of liquid metaphors—red tide, lava, mud—that threaten to engulf the male ego. In Volume 2, Theweleit shifts his attention to the male self-image. We are shown how the body becomes a mechanism for eluding the dreaded liquid and the "feminine" emotions associated with it. Armored, organized by mental and physical procedures like the military drill, the male body is transformed into "a man of steel'.' As Theweleit shows, only in war does this body find redemption from constraint.
Theweleit writes in a non orthodox, highly personal and associative style, heavily illustrating his works with incredible cartoons, advertisements, engravings, and posters of the era.
"Theweleit's book asks some key questions for those of us interested in Men's Studies. [It] takes us inside the psyches of men who, in Theweleit's analysis, are not destroying and murdering out of sublimation, but because they want to." — Men's Studies Review
"Klaus Theweleit's book, like the first volume of his massive study, usefully employs psychoanalytic insights in conjunction with the social-historical analyses of Elias, Mary Douglas, Foucault, and others to investigate the formation and nature of the fascist psyche in 1920s Germany, exploring here the male self-image, envisaged as armored against the threat and intrusion of the feminine." — Contemporary Sociology
Klaus Theweleit (b. 1942) is a German sociologist and writer. In 1977–78 he published the two volumes of Male Fantasies, now recognized as a pre-eminent work on the body, war and fascism. In 1990 he published Orpheus (und) Eurydike, the first volume of The Book of Kings, an examination of Western art through male artists’ relationship with women.
As New copies both, 2000s re-prints of first Minnesota edition.
1989, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$45.00 - In stock -
1989 English language edition of Bataille's L'ABBÉ C, translated by Philip A. Facey and published by Marion Boyars.
Told in a series of first person accounts, L'ABBÉ C is a startling narrative of the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers, Charles and Robert. Charles is a modern libertine dedicated to vice and depravity; Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed 'L'Abbé'. As the story progresses, the suffocating atmosphere becomes increasingly permeated with illness, breakdown and eventual death. As in Blue of Noon and Story of the Eye, Bataille has succeeded in portraying the darkest and most profound aspects of human experience with amazing strength and dispassionate objectivity.
"Bataille speaks about man's condition, not his nature. Bataille has survived the death of God. In him, reality is conflict."—Jean-Paul Sartre
"Bataille is now recognized in France as one of the most challenging and original writers of our century. English translations of his work are long overdue, and one can only welcome the opportunity for English speaking readers to discover this major modern thinker."—Leo Bersani
"Essentially a psychological novel in which the emotions of the characters determine the movement of the story from beginning to end; explicit sex is absent. The style is crisp and this translation is quite remarkable... always faithful to the spirit."—New York Times Book Review
"The psychological intricacies display a graceful crisscrossing intensity."—Chicago Tribune
Georges Bataille was born in 1897 and died in 1962. He was a philosopher, novelist and critic whose startling and original ideas have influenced much modern literature and thought.
Cover design by Susi Mawani.
VG copy with light wear.
1987, Japanese
Softcover (w. wax dust jacket), 56 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Seibu Museum of Art / Tokyo
$140.00 $70.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of the 1987 exhibition cataloue OBJET — Deviant Materials, published on the occasion of the group exhibition at Seibu Museum of Art and curated by Tatehata Satoshi, exploring postwar sculptural art in Japan from around 1960 to the present day through the work of 21 artists, an attempt to provide an opportunity to see the expansion and transformation of the so-called object itself. Heavily illustrated throughout with worksm biographies adn statements from artists including Genpei Akasegawa, Kazunori Ono, Mokuma Kikubata, Ryo Kitatsuji, Yayoi Kusama, Tetsumi Kudo, Yumiko Kanno, Shuzo Takiguchi, Kyoji Takubo, Atsuko Tanaka, Satomi Tim, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Shiro Matsui, Tomio Miki, Kimiyo Mishima, Toyoji Miyazaki, Saburo Muraoka, Tatsumi Yoshino, Masunobu Yoshimura, Isamu Wakabayashi...
Good copy, some wear, light foxing.
2018, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 23 x 27.1 cm
Published by
The Renaissance Society / Chicago
$120.00 - In stock -
Over a fifty-year career, Robert Grosvenor has produced a body of work that is at once solidly physical and conceptual, muscular and fluid. Grosvenor frequently uses industrial materials and found objects as he experiments with texture and scale, resulting in sculptures that reveal a handmade quality and subtle vein of humor.
In 2017, the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of the sculptor's untitled work from 1989 to 1990. Re-contextualized within a spare architectural installation, this assemblage of materials and found objects eludes interpretation at the same time as it asserts its form and construction. Such nuances, combined with its ambiguous scale, evoke what critic John Yau has suggested is the labor of an "anonymous worker." Grosvenor has made significant contributions as a sculptor over the past fifty years, but relatively few books have been published about his work. This monograph documents the Renaissance Society show and also features new scholarship considering Grosvenor's work with a broad scope. The text includes contributions by Yves-Alain Bois, Bruce Hainley, Susan Howe, John Yau, and Renaissance Society executive director and chief curator Solveig Ovstebo.
2020, English
Hardcover, 120 pages, 19.3 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Karma / New York
Galerie Max Hetzler / Berlin
$110.00 - In stock -
Between art, engineering and architecture: recent works by Robert Grosvenor
This new hardcover monograph on Robert Grosvenor (born 1937)—known for his large-scale architectural sculptures—accompanied his third solo exhibition at Karma, New York, and concurrent exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, presenting recent works of sculpture alongside an essay by renowned curator and critic Bob Nickas.
Texts by Bob Nickas, Suzan Frecon, Rachel Kushner.
Robert Grosvenor (b. 1937, New York, NY) is an American sculptor and photographer known for his surreal captures of vernacular architecture and modernist retrofuturisms. Grosvenor’s monumental sculptures transform a bevy of mid-century technologies, structures, and cultural lores into simple, streamlined forms. These idiosyncratic forms challenge the sculptural conventions of weight, line, movement, and inertia. Grosvenor was included in the historic 1966 Primary Structures survey exhibition at the Jewish Museum, which famously introduced Minimalist art to a broader public. Although his work builds on the aesthetic program of Minimalism, Grosvenor playfully resists the cool austerity emblematic of the genre. Rather he explores the sensuousness of his materials and the nostalgic qualities of their color and design. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Karma, New York (2020); Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris (2020); Consortium Museum, Dijon (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019); Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2018); and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017), among others. Grosvenor’s work is represented in various public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and the Direction Régionale des Affaires Rennes.
As the 2020 recipient of the Ezratti Family Prize for Sculpture, Grosvenor’s work will be featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in the spring of 2021.
1987, English
Softcover, 46 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MOCA / Brisbane
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue for the 1987 exhibition Minimal Art In Australia: A Contemplative Art, edited by curator and founder of Melbourne's legendary Pinacotheca Gallery, Bruce Pollard, and published by MOCA, Brisbane. Illustrated throughout with the work of exhibiting artists Peter Booth, Dale Hickey, Robert Hunter, Michael Johnson, Tony McGillick, Paul Partos, John Peart, Trevor Vickers, Dale Watkins, accompanied by biographies, an introduction by Pollard, plus reproduced notes for the Minimalism Exhibition at Ewing Gallery (1973) by Pollard and Minimal Art Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria (1976) by Jennifer Phipps, bibliography, plus additional text extracts by Doris L. Bell and Hal Foster.
Bruce Pollard (b. 1936), gallerist, established the Pinacotheca Gallery in a dark St Kilda bayside Edwardian mansion in 1967, and relocated it to an "austere, almost dungeon like" old hat factory in Richmond in 1970. Pinacotheca's avant-garde stance was paralleled only by Sydney's Inhibodress and Watters galleries, and was the only gallery in Victoria showing experimental work in the late 1960s and 1970s, exhibiting works by Art Language artists Ian Burn, Roger Cutforth and Mel Ramsden, Dale Hickey, Peter Booth, Dale Hickey, Robert Hunter and Robert Rooney. Pinacotheca's exhibitors were in the vanguard of Conceptualism; during The Field, the controversial NGV show of Australian conceptual abstraction, Pinacotheca concurrently advertised 'for viewing' 15 of The Field artists in its stockroom alongside a solo by Rollin Schlicht. Focussing on artists interested in post-object, conceptual and other non-traditional art forms, amongst the more than 300 artists who showed there included Rosalie Gascoigne, James Gleeson, Ti Parks, John Nixon, Bill Henson, Tim Johnson, Tony Tuckson, Paul Partos, Joseph Kosuth, Stelarc... Purposely, there was little documentation accompanying exhibitions.
Very Good copy with some light wear.
2024, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 23 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Editions Cox / US
$28.00 - In stock -
The writings in this book were published between the years 2011 and 2024. "Some Brief Notes on Reza Negarestani’s Intelligence & Spirit" was published in Triple Ampersand Journal in 2023. "HoTT: pseudoproblems, extensional propositions and intensional constructions" was published by Graham Vunderink Gallery in 2023. "Dimes is of the Essence: Gardeners of the creative" was published by Triple Ampersand Journal in 2022 and was collectively written by Eric Schmid, Connor Tomaka and Laszlo Horvath. "Minor Rationalism" was published in 2021 by Triple Ampersand Journal. "On Messianism: Theodor Adorno vs. Walter Benjamin" was published in 2011 by XYM under a different title in the publication "Home vs. Away". "Ontological Warfare: Subject as Universal Singularity vs. Object as Statist Particularity" was published by Distanz in Yngve Holen's artist monograph Trypophobia in 2016. "On Zoe Barcza" was published as the press release for her show at Bianca D'Alessandro in 2021. Notes on Lecture Notes was published in 2024 as a short book by Edition Eric Schmid. Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language was published in 2023 by Edition Eric Schmid. Epistemological Engineering was written by Eric Schmid, Connor Tomaka and Guido Gamboa in 2023 and published by Edition Eric Schmid.
1990, French
Softcover (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
$200.00 - In stock -
First 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.
1980, French
Offset printed, 54 x 39 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Columbia Pictures / USA
$80.00 - Out of stock
Original 1980 vintage film poster for John Cassavetes' Gloria, one of the greatest crime thrillers of all-time, starring Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, and John Adames. Written and directed by John Cassavetes, Gloria is an American thriller / pulp crime drama that follows a gangster's girlfriend (Gena Rowlands) who must slip the clutches of the mob with a young boy (John Adames) who is being hunted for information he may or may not have. One of the greatest gangster films ever made. Cited by Akira Kurosawa as one of his favourite films. Offset printed on fine warm white stock.
Dimensions : 54 x 39 cm
(Not a reproduction, original Columbia Pictures issue for theatre release)
Very Good copy, with light wear, standard folds and small pin-holes.
1985, French
Hardcover, 22.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Plon / France
$90.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of Les femmes de Kiraz, published by Plon in France in 1985. Lovely collection of illustrated cartoons from the 1970s-early 1980s in colour and black and white from the great Kiraz. All of his characteristic Les Parisiennes girls.
Edmond Kiraz, born Kirazian (1923 – 2020) was an Egyptian-born French-Armenian cartoonist and illustrator. Kiraz began his career as a political cartoonist at 17 (without artistic training) in Egypt, before emigrating to post-World War II Paris. In 1950 he created the comic strip Line. As time passed, Kiraz developed a distinctive and humorous pictorial style of representing women that he called Les Parisiennes. His cartoons are often not only humorous but slightly naughty or erotic, and since 1970 he contributed regularly to Playboy magazine, garnering his Les Parisiennes an avid fanbase in Europe.
Very Good copy.
1979, English
Softcover, 294 pages + fold-out, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Richard Roberts / San Anselmo
$600.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare, privately published first 1979 edition, first printing of this important study of the tarot. Tarot Revelations is an analysis of the mysterious philosophy in the ancient cards that became modern playing cards. Citing Dante, C.G.Jung, and early Gnostics and alchemists, Campbell and Roberts reveal a path that has spiritual meaning for everyone. Writing in collaboration with Richard Roberts, Joseph Campbell stated, "We have come to revelations of a grandiose poetic vision of Universal Man that has been for centuries the inspiration of saints and sinners, sages and fools, in kaleidoscopic transformations." According to Richard Roberts, "In the 22 cards comprising the Major Arcana, we have a genuine document of the soul's initiation into higher consciousness. As such the Major Arcana may be interpreted as a Western Book of the Dead."
Introduction by Colin Wilson: "For two centuries now, the human spirit has been in revolt against the world of the Gradgrinds, and their obsession with "facts, hard facts." The Romanticism of the 19th century was one long shout of defiance. The Romantics exaggerated the problem out of weakness and a sense of vulnerability. And people like Dick Roberts and Joseph Campbell are restoring it to perspective, and bringing about a reconciliation that is based on insight and strength. If they succeed, the intellectual perspective of the 21st century could be more exciting than anything we can imagine.—Colin Wilson
Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who focused primarily on comparative mythology and religion. His concept of monomyth, in which all mythic narratives are variations on the same story, is far-reaching, and George Lucas has noted the influence of Campbell's work on the Star Wars saga. He and tarot scholar Richard Roberts collaborated on this work, praised by Theodore Rozak as "the most serious study of the Tarot I have seen" (front wrapper).
Illustrations throuhgout the text, folding colour plate of the Major Arcana at rear.
Very Good—NF likely unread copy with no spine creasing, light wear to corner extremities, price sticker remnants to lower back cover. Beautifully preserved copy of this very first rare edition. More common, though now also rare, editions were issued in 1982 and 1987 under "Vernal Equinox" imprint.
2023, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Art Paper Editions / Ghent
$110.00 - In stock -
For more than three decades Richard Kern has sought to unravel and illuminate the complex and often darker sides of human nature. Kern makes the psychological space between the sitter, photographer and audience his subject. With his dry, matter of fact approach, he underlines the absurdity of truth and objectivity in photography while playing with our reliance upon taxonomies around sexual representation.
This publications contains more than 200 polaroids taken by Kern between 1980 and 2005 while shooting.
Edition of 1000
1995, English
Softcover, 29.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Purr Books / London
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Richard Kern's classic "New York Girls" released in 1995, defining a time, a place, and the raw aesthetic of the artist Richard Kern (b. 1954). Kern was a leading figure in the 1980s Cinema of Transgression, director of the iconic films You Killed Me First, Fingered and Submit to Me Now; producer of Sonic Youth’s “Death Valley ’69” and Marilyn Manson’s Lunchbox music videos; and a pioneering zine publisher responsible for The Heroin Addict and The Valium Addict. After kicking his own heroin habit, Kern turned to still photography, shooting girls in his downtown, punk-inflected New York social circle. Regarded as one of the best female nude photo-books of the 1990's, Kern's New York girls were naked, bold, tattooed, pierced, and casually posed in minimal sets, mostly just Richard’s ratty slum apartment. They were young, but not innocent, fully complicit in the bondage, gunplay, and infamous candle insertions. "Dedicated to the models." With an introduction by Lydia Lunch, interview with Richard Kern by Kim Gordon, text by Kern, and filmography.
John Waters said of one of Kern's notorious scum-bag Super-8 movies: "Finger is the ultimate date movie for psychos. It's the best hillbilly-punk-art-porno movie in the world and I always show it to people very late at night to make them happy."
Very Good copy, light wear.
2002, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 96 pages, 17 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Books / Paris
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
First and only edition of Purple Stars, a collection of portraits and fashion photographs of the stars of Purple magazine during those early definitive years of 90's anti-fashion and the establishment of one of the most important fashion magazines of our generation. Edited by Makoto Ohrui, Elein Fleiss and Oliver Zahm and published in Japan in 2002 by Purple Books & Fiction Inc, Purple Stars features the photography of Mark Borthwick, Juergen Teller, Camille Vivier, Wolfgang Tillmans, Laetitia Benat, Anders Edström, Takashi Homma, Jack Pierson, Anuschka Blommers & Niels Schumm, Richard Prince, Giasco Bertoli, Alex Antitch, Patterson Beckwith, Terry Richardson, Henry Roy, Vanina Sorrenti, Chikashi Suzuki, Mauricio Guillen, Marcelo Krasilcic, Serge Leblon, Armin Linke... with photographs of Hélène Fillières, Catherine Deneuve, Jutta Koether, Lou Doillon, Kim Gordon, Harmony Korine, Alex Bag, Kate Moss, Rita Ackermann, Colin de Land, Chloë Sevigny, Brad Pitt, Charlotte Rampling, Ludivine Sagnier, Camille Vivier, Cerith Wyn Evens, Yoshimi, Yukinori Maeda, Alexandra Bircken, Lizzie Bougatsos, Maurizio Cattelan, Susan Cianciolo, Elein Fleiss, Marieke Stolk, and many more.
A now very scarce compendium of some of the most iconic photographic images direct from the early pages of Purple.
Very Good copy, lacking glassine dust wrapper.
1998, English / French
Softcover, 380 pages, 15.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$390.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of the first issue of Purple. Edited by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, with Jeff Rian, this wonderful issue features work and words by: Maison Martin Margiela, Zoe Leonard, Mark Borthwick, Jutta Koether, Lee Ranaldo, Dike Blair, Thurston Moore, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mitchell Algus, Rudolf Stingel, Wolfgang Tillmans, Maurizio Cattalan, David Robbins, Antek Walzcak, Karl Holmqvist, Calvin Klein, Takashi Homma, Veronique Branquinho, Laetitia Benat, Jeff Rian, Y's, Anders Edstrom, Tobjorn Rodland, Doug Aitken, Comme des Garcons, Nathaniel Goldberg, Helmut Lang, Susan Cianciolo, Terry Richardson, Takashi Noguchi, Camille Vivier, Katja Rahlwes, Junya Watanabe, Hussein Chalayan, Kostas Murkudis, Viviane Sassen, and many many more....
In 1992 Olivier Zahm and his partner Elein Fleiss printed the first issue of Purple Prose, a Parisian literary art zine that over the years has evolved into Purple Fashion Magazine. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications like les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple.
Very Good copy, some light edge/cover wear, single spine crease, binding still great.
2000, English
Softcover, 500 pages, 21.5 x 15.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$160.00 - Out of stock
Purple 6 Winter '00 '01 : fashion, prose, special fiction, interior
A rare early issue of the iconic Purple magazine, edited by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, this wonderful early edition features work by: Richard Prince, Susan Cianciolo, Bless, Cris Moor, Lutz, Maison Martin Margiela, Hermés, Giasco Bertoli, Junya Watanabe, Comme des Garçons, Lars Botten, Bernhard Willhelm, Hussein Chalayan, Camille Vivier, Cosmic Wonder, Fendi, Terry Richardson, Anders Edstrom, Balenciaga, Vanina Sorrenti, Helmut Lang, Banu Cennetoglu, Veronique Branquinho, Chikashi Suzuki, Marc Jacobs, Ann-Sofie Back, Lodge Kerrigan, Mark Borthwick, Olivier Zahm, Jeff Rian, Bernard Joisten, Bruce Benderson, Andy Stillpass, Bennett Simspon, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Pete Taylor, Jason Simon, Pablo Leon De La Barra, Panu Aree, Tim Griffin, Dayton Taylor, Dike Blair, Gareth James, Michael Drake, Antek Walczak, Guillaume Nez, Tom Betterton, John Kelsey, Cheryl Donegan, Mark Fishman, Ole Scheeren, Sarah Gavlak, Alix Lambert, Tan Lin, Sharon Mesmer, Sharon Mesmer, Peter Josephs, Benjamin Weismann, Jordan Davis, Fred El Bekkay, Michael Danner, Giasco Bertoli, Andreas Larsson, James Gooding, Alex Antitch, Elein Fleiss, Henry Roy, Rami Maymon, Torbjorn Rodland, Marcello Simeoni, Delphine Roque, Michael Danner, Stefan Ruiz, and many many more. Art directed by Christophe Brunnquell.
In 1992 Olivier Zahm and his partner Elein Fleiss printed the first issue of Purple Prose, a Parisian literary art zine that over the years has evolved into Purple Fashion Magazine and Purple. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications like les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple.
Very Good copy.
1998, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. obi inserted), 210 pages, 21 x 27.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Synergy Inc. / Tokyo
$600.00 - Out of stock
"Synthetic Voices", the great, long out-of-print photo-book of Mark Borthwick, published in Japan in 1998. The heart of 1990s fashion photography, "Synthetic Voices" was conceived more as an artists photo scrapbook and the most perfect collection of Mark's iconic work throughout the 1990's for Margiela, Purple, Self Service, Interview, Vogue Italia, etc., alongside his personal photography work, and texts. Chloë Sevigny, Hélène Fillières, Maison Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan, Comme des Garçons, Paul McCarthy, Patti Smith, Kate Moss, Chloe Sevigny, Rita Ackerman, Kim Gordon, Sinead O'connor, and more, all here. An amazing photographer who captured and inspired an important period in (un)fashion photography with his playful and poetic, now iconic, images.
Designed by Mark Borthwock and Hideki Nakajima
Introduction by Jeff Rian and Olivier Zahm
Guest edited by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm (Purple prose)
Published by Synergy Inc., Tokyo.
Very Good copy. Includes obi.
1989, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 170 pages, 24.5 cm x 30.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Filipacchi / Paris
$490.00 - Out of stock
The great, now iconic, and very rare, Kacere book. Published in Paris in 1989 by Filipacchi, this fantastic, comprehensive hardcover monograph on painter John Kacere lavishly reproduces his famous photorealist paintings of women across 170 pages, as well reproducing his female photo studies and drawings, an illustrated biography, bibliography, examples of his early abstraction, portraits and more. Accompanying texts in French by Paul Brach, Preface by Jean Louis Ferrier. The essential book on Kacere, known for his paintings of the female body, particularly midsections, clothed in lingerie, all collected right here. 150 of paintings reproduced in colour!
John C. Kacere (1920–1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
Very Good copy of the first edition, dust jacket protected under archival mylar, in VG condition with light sunning to spine.
1994, English
Softcover, 50 pages, 20.5 x 15cm
Signed, numbered edition,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$590.00 - In stock -
First signed edition of this lovely, rare book on Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton (1917—1979). Published in a limited edition of 250 numbered copies signed by Richard Moir (this copy no. 61), Kings Cross Witch collects the Moir's personal memories of Norton, "the not so public person", whom he knew in her last elusive years (1969—1979). Illustrated throughout Norton’s paintings and several photographs.
Rosaleen Miriam Norton (1917—1979), who used the name of "Thorn", was an Australian artist and occultist, in the latter capacity adhering to a form of pantheistic / Neopagan Witchcraft largely devoted to the Greek god Pan. She lived much of her later life in the bohemian area of Kings Cross, Sydney, leading her to be termed the "Witch of Kings Cross" in some of the tabloids, and from where she led her own coven of witches. Her paintings, which have been compared to those of British occult artist Austin Osman Spare, often depicted images of supernatural entities such as pagan gods and demons, sometimes involved in sexual acts. These caused particular controversy in Australia during the 1940s and '50s, when the country "was both socially and politically conservative" with Christianity as the dominant faith and at a time when the government "promoted a harsh stance on censorship." For this reason the authorities dealt with her work harshly, with the police removing some of her work from exhibitions, confiscating books that contained her images, and attempting to prosecute her for public obscenity on a number of occasions. According to her later biographer, Nevill Drury, "Norton's esoteric beliefs, cosmology and visionary art are all closely intertwined – and reflect her unique approach to the magical universe." She was inspired by "the 'night' side of magic", emphasising darkness and studying the qlippoth, alongside forms of sex magic which she had learned from the writings of English occultist Aleister Crowley.
Very Good—NF copy. Light tanning to spine edge.
1985, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 300 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Quartet Books / London
$120.00 - Out of stock
First 1985 hardcover edition of the first fundamental and comprehensive study of Hans Bellmer (1902—1975), the most provocative representative of Surrealism, authored by Peter Webb with Robert Short and published by Quartet in London. English edition. Heavily illustrated throughout with many rare images, in colour and b/w, many photographs and artworks, with bibliography, catalogue and references.
"Surrealism was one of the most exciting and influential of twentieth century art movements and much has been written about it since its great flowering in the 1930s. The lives and work of its leading figures (Ernst, Magritte, Dali and Miró) have been extensively researched, but Hans Bellmer, perhaps the most controversial and misunderstood of all the surrealists, has until now remained a mystery. Peter Webb, who interviewed Bellmer shortly before his death, has spent two years unravelling the story of this photographer, sculptor, painter, engraver and writer, and his book provides the first opportunity to evaluate Bellmer's considerable artistic achievement."—book jacket blurb
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
2003, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Bird in The Mouth Press / Wollongong
$100.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of the only book of poetry published during the tragically short life of young Australian poet Benjamin Frater (1979—2007) (also known as The Catholic Yak), self-published in Wollongong in 2003. Benjamin Frater grew up in Western Sydney, and attended the University of Wollongong. Frater died at 28, after many years suffering from schizophrenia.
Bughouse Meat is a chapbook anthology of Frater's collected poetry works, a series of burning explorations of confession and exorcism, automatic writing and the schizophrenic vernacular, the language of experiences under psychiatric care (in “the bughouse”) in a state of internal chaos – “Magog and Gog and Moloch inside / Megiddo is the body, the body is Megiddo” – producing a poetry which “is still considered / ‘untherapeutic’”.
“Here are the primary forms of a visionary poetics for the new millennium, reflexive and exuberantly funny. Admirers of Ben Frater's popular readings around the South Coast will know that he has absorbed the traditions of Blake and Ginsberg in developing his own unique and humorous voice. His experience is knowingly and self-consciously filtered through literary precursors, such as the final works of Artaud. The phonetic experiments of Velimir Khlebnikov and the Russian Futurists are also in here, the wild zaum energy of their self-sufficient word. The result, however, is not a dry demonstration of the play of signifiers, but writing that is genuine and lively”—John Hawke
“With the exception of the great Francis Webb it is not in an Australian poet's job description that they be rhapsodic, surreal and visionary. Well this is where Ben came in and even went one better...."—Alan Wearne
With cover art by August Natterer (1868—1933), a German outsider artist who also suffered from schizophrenia.
Fine copy with signed dedication from Benjamin Frater on first title page to collaborating Australian based composers Catherine Schieve and Warren Burt — "thanks for the illumination".