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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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jill Matthews / Adelaide
$90.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare independent publication issued for International Women's Day in 1975, compiled by Australian social and feminist historian Jill Matthews (b. Adelaide 1949) — a crucial, harrowing and inspiring chronology of women's life in Australia since white settlement which expands into texts on Aboriginal Women, The Vote, Work, Education, closing with a directory of Women's Organisations across South Australia.
"In 1974, the United Nations declared that the whole of 1975 would be International Womens Year. This booklet arises from research carried out specifically for Intermational Womens Day—March 8, celebrated in South Australia by a march through the streets of Adelaide and various goings-on at the Festival Centre. The booklet aims to provide some factual information concerning the herstory/history of women in Australia since white settlement and to offer a few interpretations of these facts for discussion"—Jill Matthews
In 1984 Matthew's authored her rewritten PhD thesis as Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth Century Australia, published by Allen & Unwin. In her 1987 review, British historian Catherine Hall considered it to be an "essential starting point for British readers into the rapidly extending world of Australian feminist history".
Very Good copy, well preserved copy with light general wear and a few light drip marks to the cover.
2024, English
Softcover, 326 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
PM Press / Oakland
$45.00 - In stock -
With appeal to more than just punk history obsessives, Orstralia offers an unprecedented snapshot of an underacknowledged segment of Australian life and history.
Far from punk’s more modish North Atlantic core in the late 1970s, discontented youth in Australia were enacting similar musical and cultural reckonings. Yet in spite of the Australia's purported “laid-back” national demeanour, punks there were routinely met with insult, fist, or the police baton.
More subterranean than the national scandal that was punk back in “homeland” Britain, Australia’s own bands nonetheless came to be heralded internationally. Orstralia represents the first definitive account of the country’s initial years, from progenitors the Saints and Radio Birdman in the mid-70s, through the emergence of hardcore in the 1980s, to the stylistic diffusion that accompanied transition to the 1990s.
Based on over 130 interviews, Orstralia documents the most renowned to the most fleeting and obscure acts the nation produced. Included are equally engrossing and shocking personal narratives befitting such a passionate and intemperate cultural form, as well as punk’s placement within broader Australian society at the time.
“Australia has some claim to being a punk founder nation, most obviously through the influence of the Saints and Radio Birdman. In Orstralia, Tristan Clark explores the wider terrain to recover a vibrant prepunk, punk, and postpunk history that captures the vibrancy and excitement of a culture brimming with ingenuity and teenage verve. A brilliant book and essential reading for all those interested in punk's cultural past.”—Matthew Worley, author of No Future: Punk Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976–84
“If your knowledge of Australian punk grinds to a halt at the Saints, Radio Birdman, the Hard-Ons, and Vicious Circle, Orstralia is a deep dive into that country’s turbulent alternative underground of the late 1970s and ’80s, when rebellious youths clashed with the police (not to mention the church, the government, the media . . . authority in general), rival subcultures, their parents and even themselves. Proving that an oppressive police state is no match for subversive creativity in the long run, Australian punk evolved and thrived in the face of such adversity—very much its own beast given its isolation from London and New York—and this forensically researched tome is its story, written in such detail and with such fascinating insight, you can relive it all vicariously without having your nose broken and discover a treasure trove of passionate noise into the bargain. This is an important and entertaining piece of work.”—Ian Glasper, author of Burning Britain: The History of UK Punk 1980–1984 and The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980 to 1984
Tristan Clark is a Melbourne-based educator, musician, and writer. His involvement in punk has spanned over three decades and encompassed a near gamut of roles: band member, roadie, merch person, show organizer, Food Not Bombs volunteer, community radio DJ, as well as having written sporadically for local zines and other publications. He now routinely encounters the young students he spends his week working with at local DIY shows and is heartened by punk’s continued ability to self-reproduce.
2024, English
Softcover, 212 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Self Published / Melbourne
$30.00 - In stock -
Australia, the 1990s: Strictly Ballroom, Silverchair, Mabo, Port Arthur, economic rationalism, and Pauline Hanson.
Within its more concealed history, the opening of the decade saw punk in Australia experiencing a transitory lull. Populated mostly by the diehards and remnants of the 1980s, its sound and style were in danger of being subsumed, or at least diluted, by grunge and alternative music through a resurgent interest in guitar-driven bands. Able to maintain its own identity and networks against the challenge, as the decade progressed punk evolved into even more diffuse subgenres.
Now, twenty years after its relatively inauspicious birth in Australia, punk, in one of its multivarious forms, topped the national music charts. But though the decade brought if not respectability then a new saleability to punk, it was an era still prone to its tumult, tragedy, humour, and audacity. Through a further 70 interviews, Orstralia: A Punk History 1990-1999 continues the disclosure of its first volume, covering bands from the most obscure to those who reached the very apex of Australia's music industry.
Tristan Clark is a Melbourne-based educator, musician, and writer. His involvement in punk has spanned over three decades and encompassed a near gamut of roles: band member, roadie, merch person, show organizer, Food Not Bombs volunteer, community radio DJ, as well as having written sporadically for local zines and other publications. He now routinely encounters the young students he spends his week working with at local DIY shows and is heartened by punk’s continued ability to self-reproduce.
2024, English
Softcovers, 326 + 212 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
PM Press / Oakland
Self Published / Melbourne
$70.00 - In stock -
Both volumes of Tristan Clark's ORSTRALIA: A PUNK HISTORY, covering 1974—1989 & 1990—1999, offering an unprecedented snapshot of an underacknowledged segment of Australian life and history. See individual listings for more information on each volume.
Tristan Clark is a Melbourne-based educator, musician, and writer. His involvement in punk has spanned over three decades and encompassed a near gamut of roles: band member, roadie, merch person, show organizer, Food Not Bombs volunteer, community radio DJ, as well as having written sporadically for local zines and other publications. He now routinely encounters the young students he spends his week working with at local DIY shows and is heartened by punk’s continued ability to self-reproduce.
2007, English
Softcover, 294 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Carroll & Graf / New York
$59.00 - In stock -
Blood and Silver brings together the best stories from two erotic fiction classics—Melting Point and No Mercy—by world-renowned author and activist Patrick Califia. Blood and Silver is fiction without a safe word—smart, transgressive, and always hot.
"Califia's stories are intriguing, erotic, exhilarating, and unnerving."—The Bay Area Reporter
"Califia refuses to let power roles be ritualized into simple and safe erotic personae. Sex and desire are not simple and safe, she seems to say-and we must honor them anyway."—Dr. Carol Queen
"Not for the fainthearted."—Lambda Book Report
Patrick Califia is one of the most widely known writers of lesbian and S/M erotica. His books include Macho Sluts, Doing It for Daddy, Doc and Fluff, and Boy in the Middle, among more than twenty others. Califia lives in San Francisco.
2018, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 20.32 x 13.34 cm
Published by
Snuggly Books / UK
$30.00 - In stock -
During his lifetime the eccentric Count Eric Stenbock published a single collection of short stories, Studies of Death. These seven tales, at once feverish, morbid, and touching, are a key work of English decadence and the Yellow Nineties.
Stanislaus Eric Stenbock (1860–1895), Count of Bogesund, was born in the South West England to Lucy Sophia Frerichs, an English cotton heiress, and Count Erich Stenbock, who was of a distinguished Swedish noble family of the Baltic German House of nobility in Reval. He inherited his family’s estates in 1885 and returned to live in his manor house at Kolkbriefly for a period before returning to England. In his life he published three volumes of poetry and one collection of short stories, Studies of Death. He died as a result of alcoholism and opium addiction.
2007, English / French
Softcover, 206 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Black Widow Press / Boston
$52.00 - In stock -
Paul Eluard (1895-1952) is widely considered to be one of France's most important poets. This bilingual edition translates Eluard's Love, Poetry (L'amour la poesie, 1929) for the first time into English. This popular work cemented Eluard's reputation internationally as one of France's greatest 20th century poets. Never out of print in France, this is it's debut in the English language.
Paul Eluard (1895-1952) is widely considered to be one of France's most important poets. This bilingual edition translates Eluard's Love, Poetry (L'amour la poesie, 1929) for the first time into English. This popular work cemented Eluard's reputation internationally as one of France's greatest 20th century poets. Never out of print in France, this is it's debut in the English language.
Stuart Kendall is the editor and translator of works by Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard, and Maurice Blanchot. His articles and reviews in the fields of poetics and visual culture have been widely published. He resides in Lexington, KY.
1993, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vintage / UK
$20.00 - Out of stock
1993 Vintage edition. Barthes personal investigation into the meaning of photographs is a seminal work of critical theory of the twentieth century. Illustrated throughout.
Examining themes of presence and absence, these reflections on photography begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs – their content, their pull on the viewer, their intimacy. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind. He was grieving for his mother at the time of writing. Strikingly personal, yet one of the most important early academic works on photography, Camera Lucida remains essential reading for anyone interested in the power of images.
‘Effortlessly, as if in passing, his reflections on photography raise questions and doubts which will permanently affect the vision of the reader’—Guardian
Very Good copy light wear and tanning to paperstock.
2024, English
Hardcover, 304 pages, 22.86 x 19.05 cm
Published by
Sirius / London
$52.00 - In stock -
This beautiful hardback anthology brings together the seminal works of renowned occultist, Aleister Crowley, presented with a striking gold-embossed cover design and gilded page edges.
Aleister Crowley was a leading figure in 20th century occultism, whose spiritual practices blended mysticism, ceremonial magic and Eastern spiritual traditions. In a radical departure from traditional witchcraft, he created a new magical system which he dubbed "magick", with an emphasis personal transformation, spiritual development, and the exploration of the individual's potential.
This collection brings together his poetry, fiction, and spiritual philosophy through three of his most iconic works: Clouds Without Water; Moonchild; and The Book of the Law. Taken together, these works offer a window into Crowley's greatest literary achievements.
Presented in a luxurious hardback edition with gilded page-edges, patterned endpapers and ivory paper, this is the ultimate book for fans of the famous magickian's philosophy and the world of the occult.
The Mystic Archives are beautiful hardcover guides which reveal the hidden mysteries of esoteric arts, presented with foil-embossing, Wibalin binding and gilded page edges.
2024, English
Softcover, 106 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Incunabula / USA
Incunabula / US
$34.00 - Out of stock
The Dead Man, (originally published as Le Mort), is Georges Bataille's classic tale of devotion, depravity and damnation. It follows Marie, who, after witnessing the sudden death of her lover, wanders naked and grieving through the night streets of a French town, sinking ever deeper into depravity as she seeks to escape the agony of loss... The Solar Anus (L'anus Solaire) is a short surrealist text, written by Bataille in 1927. It deals with death, decay, disasters, impotence, ennui and excrement, and contains references to the sun - which brings life to the Earth, and death to those exposed to its unrestrained energies.
This edition contains R J Dent's brand-new modern English translation of both texts, and afterword by Bataille, and an introduction by R J Dent with Jack Sargeant. It is illustrated throughout with photographs by Alexandria Bryan.
1986, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Loompanics Unltd / Port Townsend
$35.00 - In stock -
"Bob Black is the high priest of nihilarity. His confessional has Duchamp's urinal bolted to its door. His ten commandments are a string of one liners. His faith is baldly heretical. It begins where the dictionary ends, not with the ZZZ of a snore but with the chaotic rumbling of a chortle that quickens the senses like an earthquake that sways a petrified forest. By virtue of his faults, Black derides the wheel without spokes, the mandala of zero, and demoralizes the mind forged hi-tectonics whose poison prescribes that one seismograph counterfeits all."—Ed Lawrence
First 1986 edition of Bob Black's first book, the anthology of essays, The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, self-published by Loompanics Unltd, Port Townsend. The ground-breaking and influential essay, The Abolition of Work, is an exposition of Black's "type 3 anarchism" – a blend of post-Situationist theory and individualist anarchism – focusing on a critique of the work ethic. Further essays deliver blows of authentic unfettered suicide-bomber madness to political and moral institutions of all kinds, and reviews Conan The Barbarian.
“Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you could care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed from work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.”
Although "The Abolition of Work" has most often been reprinted by anarchist publishers and Black is well known as an anarchist, the essay's argument is not explicitly anarchist. Black argues that the abolition of work is as important as the abolition of the state. The essay, which is based on a 1981 speech at the Gorilla Grotto in San Francisco, is informal and without academic references, but Black mentions some sources such as the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the unconventional Marxists Paul Lafargue and William Morris, anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman, and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Borshay Lee.
"The Abolition of Work" was a significant influence on writer Bruce Sterling, who at the time was a leading cyberpunk science fiction author and called it "one of the seminal underground documents of the 1980s". It has also appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, including translations into French, German, Italian, Dutch and Slovene.
Further essays remind us of a time of independent publishing enlightenment in the 1980's and 1990's, when the cream of post 1970s xerox mad-ranters and suicide-bombers of moral institutions
Very Good copy.
2024, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 17.8 x 12.8 cm
Published by
Snuggly Books / UK
$38.00 - In stock -
Rachilde was the pseudonym employed by Marguerite Eymery (1860—1953). Though remembered today primarily for her novels, which include the Decadent masterpiece Monsieur Vénus (1884), for which was prosecuted as pornography in Belgium, where it was initially published, resulting in a conviction and a sentence of two years’ imprisonment imposed in absentia. She was, however, also an exceptional writer of short fiction. The current volume, adeptly translated by Sue Boswell, brings together six of her short stories, none of which have previously appeared in English. This array of strange, Symbolist tales, sometimes brutal, always bizarre, strikes with a deep psychological power and deft artistry.
The work of a true genius, The Blood-Guzzler and Other Stories is an important addition to the writings of the Queen of Decadence available in English.
Rachilde was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (11 February 1860 – 4 April 1953). Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a symbolist author and the most prominent women in literature associated with the Decadent Movement of fin de siècle France.
A diverse and challenging author, Rachilde's most famous work includes the darkly erotic novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), La Marquise de Sade (1887), and La Jongleuse (1900). She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe ("Why I am not a Feminist"). Her work was noted for being frank, fantastical, and always with a suggestion of autobiography underlying questions of gender, sexuality, and identity.
She said of herself, "I always acted as an individual, not thinking to found a society or to upset the present one."
2000, English
Softcover, 205 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$42.00 - In stock -
Flanagan's last finished work, is an extraordinary chronicle of the final year of his life before his death from cystic fibrosis at the age of forty-three.
Los Angeles writer and artist Bob Flanagan created performances with Sheree Rose that shocked and inspired audiences. He combined text, video, and live performance to create a highly personal but universal exploration of childhood, sex, illness, and mortality. The Pain Journal, Flanagan's last finished work, is an extraordinary chronicle of the final year of his life before his death from cystic fibrosis at the age of forty-three.
2023, English
Softcover, 416 pages, 21.5 x 16.2 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$79.00 - Out of stock
An expansive collection of texts providing insight into the inner life, creativity, and practice of the innovative American artist Anne Truitt.
Edited by Alexandra Truitt
Foreword by Miguel de Baca
Spanning more than fifty years, this comprehensive volume collects the letters, journal entries, interviews, lectures, reviews, and remembrances of the groundbreaking twentieth-century artist Anne Truitt (1921–2004). Alexandra Truitt, the artist’s daughter and a leading expert on her work, has carefully selected these writings, most of which are previously unpublished, from the artist’s papers at Bryn Mawr College as well as private holdings.
Revelations about the artist’s life abound. Among Truitt’s earliest writings are excerpts from journals written more than a decade before her first artistic breakthrough, in which she establishes themes that would occupy her for decades. In later texts she shares uncommon insights into the practices of other artists and writers, both predecessors and peers. Like Truitt’s published journals, these writings offer a compelling narrative of her development as an artist and efforts to find her voice as a writer. They show that Truitt’s creative impulse to translate the inner workings of her mind into a symbolic language, so important to understanding her sculpture, predates her art.
1985 / 2001, English
Softcover, 148 pages, 11.4 x 17.2 cm
Published by
Autonomedia / New York
$29.00 - Out of stock
"A Blake Angel on Bad Acid" — Robert Anton Wilson
"Fascinating..." — William Burroughs
"Who is Hakim Bey? I love him!" — Timothy Leary
Back in print — the underground cult bestseller and first book by anarchist writer and poet Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson) published in 1991 by Autonomedia. Originally published in 1985 and circulated in the underground via small private and pirate editions, these texts were an inspiration for a generation of troublemakers and idealists. Both celebrated in the punk underground (where the original book has become a seminal text) and denounced in some anarchist circles, the book has proved itself as both influential and relevant to multiple generations of dreamers, agitators, and activists.
Essays that redefine the psychogeographical nooks of autonomy. Recipes for poetic terror, anarcho-black magic, post-situ psychotropic surgery, denunciations of spiritual addictions to vapid infotainment cults — this is the bastard classic, the watermark impressed upon our minds. Where conscience informs praxis, and action infects consciousness, T.A.Z. is beginning to worm its way into above-ground culture. This book offers inspired blasts of writing, from slogans to historical essays, on the need to insert revolutionary happiness into everyday life through poetic action, and celebrating the radical optimism present in outlaw cultures. It should appeal to alternative thinkers and punks everywhere, as it celebrates liberation, love and poetic living.
This new edition contains the full text of "Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism", the complete "Communiques of the Association for Ontological Anarchy", and the new long essay "The Temporary Autonomous Zone", and a new preface by the author.
Very Good copy with some light wear.
2015, English
Softcover, 72 pafes, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
Stanford University Press / Palo Alto
$29.00 - In stock -
Our competitive, service-oriented societies are taking a toll on the late-modern individual. Rather than improving life, multitasking, "user-friendly" technology, and the culture of convenience are producing disorders that range from depression to attention deficit disorder to borderline personality disorder. Byung-Chul Han interprets the spreading malaise as an inability to manage negative experiences in an age characterized by excessive positivity and the universal availability of people and goods. Stress and exhaustion are not just personal experiences, but social and historical phenomena as well. Denouncing a world in which every against-the-grain response can lead to further disempowerment, he draws on literature, philosophy, and the social and natural sciences to explore the stakes of sacrificing intermittent intellectual reflection for constant neural connection.
2024, French / English
Softcover, 256 pages, 13.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Shelter Press / France
$40.00 - In stock -
The voice is everywhere, infiltrating everything, making civilisation, marking out territories with infinite borders, spreading from the farthest reaches to the most intimate spaces. It can be neither reduced nor summarised. And accordingly, when taken as a theme, the voice is inexhaustible, even when seen in the light of its very particular relation with the sonic or the musical, as is the case in most of the texts collected in this volume. There is no point therefore in trying to circumscribe or amalgamate the multiple avatars of the voice. We must rather try to apprehend what the voice can do, to envisage its landscape, its potential effects.
Authors: Francois J. Bonnet, John Giorno, David Grubbs, Yannick Guedon, Lee Gamble, Sarah Hennies, Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, Stine Janvin, Joan La Barbara, Youmna Saba, Akira Sakata, Pierre Schaeffer, Peter Szendy, Ghedalia Tazartes
1991, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 128 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful photo-book chronology of the world of Shūji Terayama (1935—1983) and his experimental theatre troupe Tenjō Sajiki (with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, Fumiko Takagi, ...), a major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene of the 1960s and 70s. Terayama's activities encompass a who's-who of the Japanese avant-garde arts and literature of the time. This book visually documents it all; the filmography, performances, installations, happenings, exhibitions, posters, publications, and all else that resonated from Japan’s most revered and provocative avant-garde film-maker and his collaborators. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of illustrations in colour, duo and b/w with Japanese commentary, biographies and chronology. A wonderful, visually mind-blowing reference for anyone interested in the work of Terayama, Tenjō Sajiki, Surrealist performance, or Japanese avant-garde underground (Angura) theatre.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. In 1967 Terayama founded Tenjō Sajiki with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi, a Japanese experimental theater troupe. A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
Very Good—Near Fine
1986, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$55.00 - Out of stock
First 1986 edition of Derek Jarman's Caravaggio. This film photo book documents the complete Caravaggio script by Derek Jarman with his commentaries throughout, accompanied by over 100 photographs by Gerald Incandela, as well as reference imagery. Caravaggio is a 1986 British drama film directed by Jarman, a fictionalized re-telling of the life of Baroque painter, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. "Funded by the British Film Institute and produced by film theorist Colin MacCabe, Caravaggio became Jarman's most famous film to date, and marked the beginning of a new phase in his filmmaking career: from then onwards, all his films would be partly funded by television companies. Caravaggio also saw Jarman work with actress Tilda Swinton for the first time. Overt depictions of homosexual love, narrative ambiguity, and the live representations of Caravaggio's most famous paintings are all prominent features in the film.
Very Good copy.
1987, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
The 1987 "Noise" issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Silvestar Club, published and edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave...). Features Zoviet France, H.N.A.S., Nurse with Wound, SPK, Etant Donnes, P16.D4, M.B. / Maurizio Bianchi, Sema / Robert Haigh, Coil, Whitehouse, Current 93, Chris & Cosey, Monte Cazazza, Throbbing Gristle, Genesis P-Orridge, Organum, Nocturnal Emissions, Tamia, Ramleh, Club Moral, Esplendor Geometico, Lustmord, Mnemonists, Die Tödliche Doris, The Hafler Trio, Cranioclast, Cabaret Voltaire, Zos-Kia, Test Department, Diamanda Galas, Z'ev, Danielle Dax, and much more. Articles on iconic live performances by Wire and Dome, plus essays by music critic, editor (Rock Magazine, Ego, et al) and Vanity label owner Yuzuru Agi; noise artist Merzbow's Masami Akita; experimental musician Keiji Haino; noise artist Toshiji Mikawa; experimental programmer Ryoichiro Debuchi; plus Tokyo Grand Guignol Theater group artists Norimizu Ameya and Kyusaku Shimada; theatre director Koharu Kisaragi; computer graphics artist for films Haruhiko Shono; visual artist Seiko Mikami; music critic Kuniharu Akiyama... ! Discographies, performance documentation, related artworks, record sleeves, flyers, and much more, printed across multiple raw paper stocks. A must! A perfect pre-cursor (and certainly as good as) Masami Akita's Noise War book of 1992. Texts in Japanese.
Very Good—Fine copy.
1996, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Don't judge a book by it's cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the second volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This second volume, "Deathtpia in Suburbia", has the feature theme of Horror! Bizarre! Bizarre! Cruelty! and is packed to the absolute brim with "corpses, freaks, spectacles, murders, suicides, autopsies, rapes, sickness, pain, accident, war, religious rituals, violence, forensics, foetuses. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Suehiro Maruo (ero guro manga artist), Teruo Ishii (ero guro film director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, hara-kiri, murder, rape, slaughterhouse, forensic books, international underground magazines, Photobook of World Diseases, City of Sodom, corpses on the internet, Underground Baby Contest, Atlas of Dermatology, complete guide to Freaks movies, the Garbage Pail Kids, religious ceremonies, animal deformities, Interview with "The King of Cult" ero guro film director Teruo Ishii, bizarro sex, acrotomophila, artist Joel Peter Witkin's world, interview with Masaaki Aoyama, interview with corpse photographer Kotaro Kobayashi (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Billy, etc.), photography of George Dureau, interview with fetish film director and producer Kaoru Adachi, interview with experimental film director Shozin Fukui (Metal Days, Gerorisuto, Caterpillar, 964 Pinocchio, Rubber's Lover...), article on "Serial Killers & Record Junkies" by Toshihiko Hironaka (of Boris, Balzac, Hellbent fame), and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm.
Includes "gorgeous" 24-page high-quality corpse photo booklet feature and cover art by Trevor Brown.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi-strip), 256 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Core Magazine / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Don't judge a book by it's cover — you've been warned! Straight out of the young nihilist 90s, the third volume of the very short-lived and absolutely demented Seikimatsu Club (End of the Century Club), published in Tokyo between 1996—2000 for a total of only five volumes. This third volume, "The World You Don't Know", has the feature theme of exposing "a reality erased from everyday life", which sums it up... packed to the absolute brim with "freaks, corpses, bestiality, autopsies, fetal executions, lynchings, traffic accidents, plane crashes, amputee, heteromorphic animals, freak shows, corpse museums, shemales, etc. A shocking document that eliminates all fiction (all genuine)!"
With contributors to this issue including Masami Akita (Merzbow), Masaaki Aoyama (author), Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (corpse photographer), Hideshi Hino (horror manga artist / Guinea Pig director), Kotaro Kobayashi (Too Negative editor-in-chief), Trevor Brown (artist), you should know what you are getting yourself into.
Following the trajection of fellow Japanese abnormal subculture magazines such as Kotaro Kobayashi's notorious Too Negative, Ultra Negative, ORG, etc., and in the spirit of a new wave of 90's nihilist publishing around the world (Answer Me!, Killing Times, Fuck!, AMOK, Feral House, etc.) End of the Century Club stares directly into the dark recesses of humanity and presents its viewers with the uncompromising extremes of our global culture. The real stuff. Where Too Negative presents itself as a glossy colour photo/art magazine, End of the Century Club is almost like a Whole Earth Catalog to the authentic macabre. With articles, interviews, reports, catalogues and hundreds of images spanning all manner of medical/autopsy/corpse photography, death journalism, serial killers, formalihide babies, war/shock accident/crime scenes, human intersection, murder art show, lobster boy, 3D stereo photography hall of horrors, donkey fucker (please no!), strange diseases of the world, amputee lovers, siamese twins, deformed children, amazing Photo Press historical stories, animal deformities, huge Hideshi Hino art gallery, book guide and interview, ALARMA! photo gallery, Trevor Brown art gallery, corpse photography, columns and features on and by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki (Death, Hardcore Works, Too Negative, Ultra Negative, Billy, etc.), Father Yod (YaHoWha 13) record guide, Medical Atlas by Naruhiko Tanaka, lots of noise record reviews by Masami Akita (Merzbow) inc. Smell & Quim, M.B., Lustmord, Ramleh, Genocide Organ, Richard Ramirez, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Whitehouse, Extreme Hair Stench, Genital Masticator, Traci Lords Loves Noise, Morder, etc., interview with artist Wes Benscoter (heavy metal illustrator for Slayer, Mortician, Kreator, Deceased, Cattle Decapitation, etc) on the occasion of his NG Gallery body painting show, complete Freak book library, and all sorts of other curios from the mondo, bizarro realm. Lots of full colour gore.
Not for the fain-hearted. You'll feel like a shower after.
Very Good copy with dust jacket and obi.
2013, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 23 x 22 cm
Out of print title / as new
Published by
PictureBox / Brooklyn
Corbett vs. Dempsey / Chicago
$140.00 - In stock -
In 1972, the legendary musician, composer and mystic Sun Ra (1914-1993) was hard at work scripting and acting in the now classic documentary on his life and work, Space is the Place, as well as publishing his second book of poetry. The book of poems (now extremely rare) was designed and edited by Ra's manager, who asked one of Ra's band members in the Arkestra--the drummer and percussionist Ayé Aton--to contribute images to accompany Ra's poems. The final publication contained three photographs of Aton's indoor, space-themed murals. Published here for the first time, a once-lost trove of photographs dating from 1972, a pivotal year for Sun Ra. Half of the photos in this book are of the interior murals made by Ayé Aton — spectacularly beautiful in their 1970s supersaturated color. From the same period, a cache of never-published photographs taken on location in Oakland for the film Space is the Place, features Ra in full regalia, wearing beautiful Egyptian costumes borrowed from a local masonic temple. These spectacular photographs — unseen artifacts from a now remote time — offer us a special and often entertaining behind-the-scenes glimpse of a much-missed musical visionary.
Published by PictureBox, Inc. and Corbett vs. Dempsey.
Includes an introduction by Glenn Ligon and an essay by John Corbett
Edited by John Corbett
1990, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Giancarlo Politi Editore / Milan
$65.00 - Out of stock
Long out-of-print English edition monographic survey of legendary Italian designer Alessandro Mendini, published by Giancarlo Politi Editore in Milano in 1990. Profusely illustrated throughout with examples of Mendini's incredible practice alongside texts in English. Among distinguished contemporary designers, Alessandro Mendini is perhaps most deserving of the overused title of Renaissance man. Painter, writer, architect, theorist, designer: His work in all these fields has influenced generations of other artists and craftsmen and delighted even those who don't know his name but have entered his spaces (like his stores for Alessi and Swatch), sipped from his espresso cups, and rested in his chairs. Through his work as a founder of Studio Alchimia in 1979 and editor of the magazines Casabella, Modo, and domus, Mendini has fought the strictures of modernism and championed the expressive value of decoration, which is the foundation for the development of his designs. This book offers a window into Mendini's working methods by presenting his iconic designs, sketches, and texts.
"Published on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, this catalogue gives an overview of the 40-year career of the provocative Italian designer and architect Alessandro Mendini, encompassing objects, furniture, interior decorations, paintings, installations and works of architecture. Mendini's iconic 1978 "Proust Armchair," an eighteenth-century style armchair embellished with Pointillist flecks of contrasting colors, celebrates the potential of high kitsch and is now considered a crucial precursor to postmodern furniture. Known for design collaborations with companies such as Alessi, Philips, Swarovski and Swatch, Mendini has made the use of exuberant color one of his signature extravagances. In Mendini's world, bright chips, blocks and whorls of color play across furniture, wristwatches, "objets d'art" and even entire buildings." — publisher's blurb
Very Good copy. Very scarce in the English edition.