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.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 500 pages, 23.5 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Lenz Press / Milan
$400.00 - In stock -
Sealed As New copy of the immediately out-of-print lavish and monumental 500 page collection of works and exhibitions of Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad from 2007–2021, accompanied by newly commissioned texts and a conversation between Ida Ekblad and Agnes Moraux. The most comprehensive book ever published on the artist.
In 500 pages with 398 illustrations, three essays and a conversation with the artist, this long-awaited first monograph on the work of Norwegian artist Ida Ekblad introduces her extensive oeuvre and documents her career from 2007 to 2021, focusing on her art and how she continually challenges it through her own exhibitions. With contributions by Daniel Baumann, Stian Grøgaard, Martha Kirszenbaum and Agnes Moraux.
Published following Ida Ekblad's exhibition FRA ÅRE TIL OVN at Kunsthalle Zürich in 2019.
Ida Ekblad (born 1980) is a Norwegian painter, sculptor, publisher, music producer, curator, and designer. She also writes. Her sources of inspiration include folk art, fashion, garbage, Samuel Beckett, youth culture, the natural forces of the elements, Gena Rowlands, traditional crafts, and so on. Everyday life is central to her work—as an imposition, but also conveying grace; as a voracious monster and a source of happiness; as a disaster and a glimmer of hope—for in Ekblad's view, everything is full of promise, including art.
Ida Ekblad studied at Central Saints Martins in London, the National Academy of Art in Oslo, and at the Mountain School of Arts in Los Angeles. She participated in the Venice Biennale (2011, 2017) as well as in numerous international group exhibitions. Ekblad has presented solo exhibitions at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2021); Kunsthalle Zürich (2019); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019); Kunstverein Braunschweig (2018); Kunsthaus Hamburg (2017); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2010); and Bergen Kunsthall (2010), among others.
Edited by Daniel Baumann.
Texts by Daniel Baumann, Stian Grøgaard, Martha Kirszeunbaum, Agnes Moraux.
Graphic design: Dan Solbach.
2012, English / Croatian
Softcover, 136 pages, 16.2 x 23.5 cm
Ed. of 600,
Published by
Galerija Zuccato / Poreč
$35.00 - Out of stock
Book published to accompany the exhibition "Bijeli radovi / White Works", at Galerija Zuccato, Poreč, in 2012, by Croatian conceptual artist Mladen Stilinović. Heavily illustrated throughout with his works and installations revolving around the history of his white works (absence, silence...), this catalogue also features texts by Branka Stipančić (including an interview with Stilinović), Mladenka Solman, József Mélyi, and a biography, and bibliography.
Published in an edition of 600 copies.
Mladen Stilinović (April 10, 1947 - July 18, 2016) was one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia and a founding member of the informal neo-avantgarde, Group of Six Artists (1975-1979), together with Vladimir Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović. He lived and worked in Zagreb, Croatia.
2024, English / German
Hardcover, 315 pages, 30 x 30.2 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
König Galerie / Berlin
$95.00 - In stock -
A pioneering figure of 1980s neo-expressionism and an important inspiration for the Neue Wilde painters, K.H. Hödicke, who die in February 2024, was best known for his variegated depictions of Berlin, where people, landscapes, and architecture take on an almost folkloric quality. This lavish over-sized hardcover catalogue comprises is profusely illustrated with paintings and sculptures produced between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, including works in which Hödicke portrays West Berlin during the division of Germany. Foreword by Timon Karl Kaleyta, text by Andrew Hunt, and an Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist. All text in English and German.
Karl Horst Hödicke (1938–2024) was a contemporary German artist known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings. The artist’s broad brushstrokes and specific colour palette provide his works with a sense of seeing a place through memory – specifically Berlin with its ever-changing cityscape was a central motif in his work. Having moved to Berlin in 1957, Hödicke became one of the spokespeople for a small group of impetuous young lateral thinkers who wanted to revolutionise painting. No sooner had German post-war modernism rejoined the international artistic trend towards the abstract than they revolted against this new doctrine with a revival of figurative painting, which had been declared obsolete. Hödicke was subsequently a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism and New Figuration with Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorf, and A.R. Penck. He was one of the main protagonists and drivers of the New Savages or Junge Wilde movement in 1978, which arose in the German-speaking world in opposition to established minimal and conceptual strategies.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, only light cover wear/tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 29.8 x 24.8 cm
Published by
Silvana / Milan
Palais Lumière / Évian-les-Bains
$85.00 - Out of stock
Man Ray occupies a prominent place in the history of 20th-century art. A versatile artist, who lived mainly in Paris, he is best known as a photographer. Indeed, he was one of the first to use photography, not as a simple means of reproduction, but as a genuine creative medium, turning the technique into an art form. Some of his photographs, such as Le Violon d’Ingres (1924) and Noire et blanche (1926), have achieved iconic status.
Born in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) on 27 August 1890, Emmanuel Radnitsky, known as Man Ray (as in a ray of light), actively participated in the intellectual and artistic circles of New York. He discovered the European avant-gardes and befriended Marcel Duchamp who opened the doors of Dadaism to him and welcomed him to Paris in July 1921.
At the heart of Parisian artistic life, he participated in the innovative experiments of the Dadaists and Surrealists, met with painters, poets and intellectuals, and became famous for his portraits. He developed a career as a fashion photographer, notably for designers Paul Poiret and Elsa Schiaparelli. A tireless experimenter, he rediscovered the technique of “photograms” (abstract silhouettes of objects) that Tristan Tzara named “rayographs” and in 1929, with his new partner Lee Miller, developed the “solarization” technique. In 1940, after the fall of France, Man Ray left for the United States and met Juliet Browner, who became his wife and muse. He returned to Paris in 1951 and lived there until his death in 1976.
Man Ray is renowned for having revolutionized the art of photography, but he was also a painter, draughtsman, assembler of objects, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. It is this protean artist that we seek to discover or re-discover, through a true panorama of his works, which will enable us to comprehend Man Ray’s creative process and the importance of his art.
Edited by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach.
Texts by Robert Rocca, Pierre-Yves Butzbach, Serge Sanchez, Man Ray, Sylvie Gonzalez, Laurence Benaïm, Marie-Pierre Ribère, Jean-Michel Bouhours.
1990, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jakcet), 114 pages, 19 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cutie / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
Very rare 1990 Japanese pocket bible to Hysteric Glamour! This, the original HG book, adorned with the Hysterics original "banana" logo and published by Cutie magazine in Tokyo, documents the iconic Tokyo label's history of garments and accessories, season by season from the very beginning, FW 1984 — SS 1990, alongside "Hysterical & Historical Photographs" from their archive, new 1990 photoshoots (shot by Kiyoshi Tatsukawa, Shoichi Aoki, styled by Nobuhiko Kitamura, Osamu Wataya...), "Hysteric Mini" overview, "We Love Hysteric", a Hysteric guide to Japanese shops, interviews with collaborators, behind-the-scenes, etc. 1990s Harajuku flashback at it's finest.
Hysteric Glamour is a cult Japanese fashion label created by artist Nobuhiko Kitamura in 1984. With a suggestive Warhol-esque logo of a banana and two oranges, it is not surprising that the Hysterics aesthetic was heavy with themes around 1960s mass media mod and pop culture, as well as comic books, pornography, psychedelia, bondage, acid, glam... Like 1970s Fiorucci for 1990s Harajuku. They regularly featured the work of pop artists, illustrators, music icons and photographers with visuals adorning T-shirts, denim, jackets, accessories... They also published highly acclaimed photography books, staged exhibitions, and have become synonymous with Tokyo street wear.
Near Fine copy in NF dust jacket.
2024, English
Softcover, 35 pages, 21.5 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Blurring Books / USA
$38.00 - In stock -
In an abandoned storage unit in Philadelphia, a collector discovered more than 150 works on paper by a presumably self-taught artist. The works fall into distinct groups—pencil drawings that are often sexual jokes, explicit watercolor scenes, and drawings on mimeograph paper.
Clues to the identity of the artist and the timeframe in which the works were made are embedded in the materials. The ledger paper and safety protocol forms that presumably he used as a support bear the letterhead of the well-known Philadelphia chemical manufacturing company Rohm & Haas, established in 1909. A partially affixed mailing label on the back of one of the drawings gives a Philadelphia address and indicates “foreman” as the addressee. The date 1955 is written on the back of another drawing. The clothing and hairstyles depicted seem to date from the 1940s and 1950s. A search in the company’s archives turns up a staff photograph from 1931 listing numerous foremen who might be the author of this erotic cache.
Almost certainly made for his own personal amusement and titillation, the Philadelphia Foreman’s erotic drawings are a rare and fascinating time capsule of American folk porn.
Introduction by Alison M. Gingeras
2024, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
National Portrait Gallery / London
$75.00 - Out of stock
Enticing, ethereal photographs from two visionaries who used portraiture as an exploration of the “dream space”. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works.
‘I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.’ – Francesca Woodman, 1980
Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) experienced vastly different ways of making and understanding images. Yet the two share more similarities than expected. Both artists had brief careers lasting less than 15 years; while neither enjoyed popularity and success during their lives, they have posthumously received widespread acclaim. Their portraits feature ethereal, experimental qualities that connect them soundly across time.
The beautifully illustrated catalog, accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, includes Woodman’s and Cameron’s best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The book begins with three feature essays that consider Cameron and Woodman simultaneously and moves on to 10 thematic sections interspersing works by the two artists. Portraits to Dream In makes new connections between the work of two innovative photographers who pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired images.
Edited by Magdalene Keaney. Contributions by Helen Ennis, Katarina Jerinic.
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–79) took up photography in the 1860s and was soon elected to both the Photographic Society of London and the Photographic Society of Scotland. She photographed her friends and family as well as notable figures of Victorian England, including Charles Darwin, Ellen Terry and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) worked in both the United States and Italy and made her first mature photograph at the age of 13. Her lifetime exhibitions include the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1976); Galleria Ugo Ferrante, Rome (1978); and the Alternative Museum, New York (1980). Her artist’s book, Some Disordered Interior Geometries, was published by Synapse Press in 1981.
2016, English
Hardcover, 232 pages, 23.1 x 17.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Moderna Museet / Malmö
$75.00 - Out of stock
On Being an Angel takes its title from a caption the artist inscribed on two of her photographs—self-portraits with her head thrust back and her chest thrust forward. Typical of Woodman’s work in the way they cast the female body as simultaneously physical and immaterial, these photographs and the evocative title they share are apt choices to encapsulate the work of an artist whose legacy has been unavoidably colored by her tragic personal biography and her death, at age 22, by suicide. In less than a decade, Woodman produced a fascinating body of work—in black and white and in color—exploring gender, representation, sexuality and the body through the photographing of her own body and those of her friends. Since her death, Woodman’s influence continues to grow: her work has been the subject of numerous in-depth studies and exhibitions in recent years, and her photographs have inspired artists all over the world. Published to accompany a travelling exhibition of Woodman’s work, Francesca Woodman: On Being an Angel offers a comprehensive overview of Woodman’s oeuvre, organized chronologically, with texts by Anna Tellgren, Anna-Karin Palm and the artist’s father, George Woodman.
Francesca Woodman (1958–81) was born in Denver, Colorado, to an artistic family and began experimenting with photography as a teenager. In 1975 she attended the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1979 she moved to New York to attempt to build a career in photography. Woodman’s working career was intense but brief, cut short by her death in 1981.
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bunkasha / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
First 1995 hardcover edition of "one, two, three", a gorgeous oversized hardcover collection of nude photography by master Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama of award-winning actress Saki Takaoka. Takaoka was born in Kanagawa in 1972 and has appeared in many films, TV dramas, commercials, and musicals. Composed of black-and-white and colour works, this book became a hot topic in society at the time of its publication and recorded an astounding circulation of approximately 470,000 copies, which is unthinkable today. The number of sales and topicality are certainly very high, but the beauty of the photographs, and above all, the beauty of Saki Takaoka, who does not wear a single thread, can be said to be a work of art from head to toe. The atmosphere of monochrome printing is also very wonderful. A stunning book with beautiful, modern, pared back typographic design.
Very Good copy of clothbound 1st edition with Good dust jacket with wear and some chipping to spine/extremities.
1988, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 98 pages, 30 x 30.5 cm
Signed.,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bundgeishunju / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Beautiful, rare, signed first edition of this great photobook by Japanese photographer Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949), the first in his acclaimed collections that also includes Father (1990) and Couples (1992) following Hashiguchi’s same method of portraiture. "Seventeen's Map" is an intelligent sociological typology consisting of documentary black and white portraits of Japanese seventeen-year-olds in the late 1980s. Introductory text in Japanese and English by the photographer.
"From March 1987 to January 1988, I travelled almost the whole of Japan, up north to the Rebun Island in Hokkaido, and down south to the Yona- kuni Island in Okinawa. This is a collection of the pictures of the 17-year olds I met during my travels. As long as they were 17-year olds at the moment when I met them and pressed the shutter of my camera, I did not care who my models were. In return for letting me photograph them, I decided not to pick and choose, but to put them all into this book."—Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi
In addition to its value as an archaeological record, Hashiguchi's point of view always captures the social landscape behind it. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, Hashiguchi produces a unique overview of Japanese society with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity.
This special copy boldly signed by the photographer and dated (1988) on loose-leaf endpaper stock in silver metallic marker.
Texts in English and Japanese. Cited in Parr / Badger Volume 2.
Very Good copy with tanning to otherwise VG dust jacket.
1990, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 120 pages (approx), 30 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bundgeishunju / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
Beautiful first hardcover edition of this great photo book by Japanese photographer Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949), the second in his acclaimed collections that also includes Seventeen's Map (1988) and Couples (1992) following Hashiguchi’s striking method of portraiture. "Father" is a moving sociological typology consisting of documentary black and white portraits of Japanese Fathers taken across Japan at the end of the 1980s. Text in Japanese and English by the photographer. In addition to its value as an archaeological record, Hashiguchi's point of view always captures the social landscape behind it. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, Hashiguchi produces a unique overview of Japanese society with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity.
"The present volume "Father" represents the second in my series. At least since beginning work on "Seventeen" I have come to notice that while mothers in Japan are often talked about by their children, fathers seem to be spoken of very little. And although Japan continues to be called a "male-centered" society, the males referred to in that expression tend to be the men of organizations and companies, not men as individuals. In addition, while one can see many depictions of ordinary wives in the pages of magazines and in other media, descriptions of fathers are strangely absent. As a result, while Japan continues to be viewed as a "man's society," solitary fathers, or individual men in their working prime, are virtually estranged from social consciousness. Value judgements aside, within Japan's current social structure, there exists an image of the father as a dedicated "working warrior," but it seems rebellion begins before we really get to know the existence of our fathers, and we lose the opportunity of confronting them genuinely as individual human beings. At the same time, I am also impressed with the feeling that fathers themselves do not speak their own minds, but bury their real feelings deep within as the years mount.
And this fact holds true not only with respect to relationships within the family, but with regard to the society as a whole. In that respect, I cannot help thinking that the faiure to por tray the genuine human image of those people living the most crucial roles within Japan's social structure is a minus for those of all generations. And it is from these kinds of thoughts that this collection, "Father" began"—Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi
Texts in English and Japanese.
Very Good—Near Finein VG dust jacket and obi.
1992, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 108 pages, 30 x 30.5 mm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bundgeishunju / Tokyo
$190.00 - In stock -
Beautiful first edition of this great photobook by Japanese photographer Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949). Starting in June 1990 on Iriomote Island, Okinawa, and ended in Tokyo in September 1992, Couple is Hashiguchi’s series of 103 portraits of couples living in Japanese at the beginning of the 1990s. Following on from his previous acclaimed collections, 17-year-old map (1988) and Father (1990), Couples follows Hashiguchi’s same method of portraiture. In addition to its value as an archaeological record, Hashiguchi's point of view always captures the social landscape behind it. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, Hashiguchi produces a unique overview of Japanese society with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity.
Texts in English and Japanese.
Very Good copy.
1996/1997, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 224 pages, 30 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Media Factory / Tokyo
$130.00 - In stock -
First edition, 1997 (2nd) printing of this wonderful photo book by Japanese photographer Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949), another in his acclaimed collections that also includes Seventeen's Map (1988), Father (1990) and Couples (1992) following Hashiguchi’s striking method of portraiture. "Work" is an extensive sociological typology consisting of documentary black and white portraits of Japanese people in their working environments across Japan spanning 1991—1995, from bartenders to pyrotechnicians, deep sea divers to mortuary cosmetologists, mostly shot as full-length portraits, paired with sociological data and interviews. Hashiguchi often choses two subjects from the same workplace based on age — one being older and the other younger — and the questions asked to each subject range from the length of career, current/starting salary to what the subject had for breakfast and dreams for from the future. Texts in both Japanese and English. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, Hashiguchi produces a unique overview of Japanese society with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity. One of his finest.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and average obi (creases and tears).
1997, Japanes / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 107 pages, 30.7 x 30.7 cm cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Media Factory / Tokyo
$130.00 - In stock -
First 1997 edition of this wonderful photo book by Japanese photographer Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi (b. born in Kagoshima in 1949), another in his acclaimed collections that also includes Seventeen's Map (1988), Father (1990) and Couples (1992) following Hashiguchi’s striking method of portraiture. "Dream" is a moving sociological typology consisting of documentary black and white portraits of Japanese people in their older years across Japan, mostly shot as full-length portraits, paired with sociological data and interviews. Texts in both Japanese and English. Working as a sociological ethnographer with a survey approach, Hashiguchi produces a unique overview of Japanese society with a sense of considerable sociocultural diversity in light of stereotypic reductions of Japan as a homogeneous entity.
This volume represents the most recent in a continuing series of photographic collections which I began with the purpose of coming to a better knowledge of Japan and the Japanese people. Previous collections included Seventeen's Map in 1988, followed by Father in 1990, Couple in 1992, and Work 1991-1995 in 1996. To compile each of these volumes, I traveled throughout Japan, making a record of the broad spectrum of people living in each region, while also recording the times I myself live in, and its scenes. This fifth volume in that series I have called Dream (Yume). When I was a child, I thought that when I reached twenty I would be an adult, and when that happened, something would change making life a bit easier to live. When I actually turned twenty, however, my body and consciousness seemed to be ruled by some heaviness that was yet different from that of my teens, and once again I thought: things will somehow work out when I become thirty. Somewhere past my mid-thirties, I finally realized something, namely, that the process of life is actually unending. When I had that realization, I began to think of the meaning and weight of those increasing years. Becoming older is generally voiced in negative terms within Japanese society, and each time I heard that, I would shake my head, thinking, "it just can't be true."—Joji "Geroge" Hashiguchi
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and good obi (creases and tears).
1971, German
Hardcover, 92 pages, 20.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Softpress / Frankfurt
$70.00 - Out of stock
"Alle reden vom Sex – Wir zeigen ihn" ("Everyone talks about Sex — We show it")
First edition of this 1971 photo book of hippie sex from the German underground press. Housed in illustrated gloss hardcover, Softlove is filled with full-bleed lush explicit colour photography, from couple to orgy, in a bubble room to a mirrored infinity room, all printed on thick paper stock in saturated 1970's colour.
Good copy with light edge wear to printed boards.
1970, German
Hardcover, 104 pages, 20.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Softpress / Frankfurt
$50.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this 1970 photo book of hippie sex from the German underground press. Housed in illustrated gloss hardcover, Sommerlove is filled with full-bleed lush explicit colour photography of an outdoor gathering without inhibition, all printed on thick paper stock in saturated 1970's colour. Sex in the sun!
Good copy with light edge wear to printed boards and a tape repaired split to the top of spine.
2013, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 23.2 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$500.00 - In stock -
Very collectible first hardcover edition of the first book of photography by Henrik Purienne, published in 2013 and immediately out-of-print.
"Voyeuristic, sun-drenched, and natural, the photographs of fashion photographer Henrik Purienne convey a sexuality that's as nostalgic as it is au courant, at once tender and sultry." Fronted by friend and model Sonja van den Heever, his first book presents a hand-selection of over 200 pages of photographs. Shot mostly in his trademark grainy 35mm film, Purienne's soft-hued and ingeniously lit images often include scratches and other imperfections that belie the sophistication of his technique, evoking the joys of life and the natural beauty of his subject "[...] with unmade faces, hair unruly and clothing, if any, unfussy [...]" in her truest form. Featured across the pages of Lui, Purple, Playboy, and Vogue, and in campaigns for Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton, "Purienne's images afford us immeasurable scope for desire. [...] We can see and feel the heat through his images."—Tess Martin, Krass Journal No.1
Very Good copy, interior As New, cover with bumping to top of spine and light bump to top corner, none affecting interior pages as heavy boards are overhung.
2021, English
Hardcover, 104 pages, 16.8 x 24.2 cm
Published by
JBE / Paris
$55.00 - In stock -
A revelatory, long-overdue survey of the bold and explicit feminist painting of Betty Tompkins, from the late 1960s to the present.
This first monographic work on the New York – based feminist painter Betty Tompkins (born 1945) presents around 50 paintings and drawings made during her career. Tompkins is best known for her large-format Fuck Paintings , a series launched in 1969 depicting close-up sex, the source images of which are taken from pornographic magazines. The series is famous for having been censored many times. In this and other series, such as the Cunt Paintings and Pussy Paintings , Tompkins uses a cold and restricted palette of black, white and gray for the pornographic images that she appropriates. Stylistically close to photorealism, the images are cropped and produced with an airbrush on pastel backgrounds. Sometimes the artist covers up the image with misogynistic texts.
Although her paintings were rarely shown, due to their explicit content, Tompkins has influenced a younger generation. She has not ceased to question persistently since the 1970s what determines the codes of representation of female bodies. This work thus takes on a new dimension within the framework of the recent #MeToo movement.
In this essential volume, collages and drawings reveal Tompkins' work processes, highlighting her grid work, a major form of minimalism and formalism. Among the works on paper, the 2014 Photo Drawings series is unveiled here for the first time.
2019, English
Hardcover (debossed cloth), 236 pages, 21.7 x 27.3 cm
Published by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New York
Yale University Press / New Haven
$99.00 - Out of stock
A fascinating reassessment of the work of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century, emphasizing his Argentine background and interdisciplinary approach to both art and life
A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. This volume takes a fresh look at the renowned artist whose simultaneous innovations in painting, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, as well as his spatial explorations, pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts.
Evaluating Fontana’s interest in synthesis and moving beyond his famous slashed canvases, this book reveals Fontana to be one of the first installation artists. Essays by international experts address his work from both an Italian and Argentine perspective, providing numerous insights into Fontana’s expansive practice. Archival images of environments, public commissions, installations, and now-destroyed pieces accompany lavish illustrations covering his production from 1930 to the late 1960s, establishing a new approach to an artist who responded to the political, cultural, and technological thresholds that defined the mid-20th century.
Edited by Iria Candela; With essays by Emily Braun, Enrico Crispolti, Andrea Giunta, Pia Gottschaller, and Anthony White
Iria Candela is Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 287 pages, 24 x 31.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Skira / Milan
Rizzoli / New York
MOCA / Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art / Chicago
$200.00 - Out of stock
First and only edition of this incredible out-of-print book, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962 is the first book (and exhibition) to focus on one of the most significant transnational developments in contemporary abstract painting: the artist’s literal assault on the picture plane. Responding to the physical and psychological destruction wrought by World War II—especially the existential crisis resulting from the atomic bomb—artists ripped, cut, burned, and affixed objects to the canvas in lieu of paint. Destroy the Picture emphasizes this internationally shared artistic sensibility in the context of devastating global change and dynamic artistic dialogues, offering an innovative and expansive view of art making in the postwar period.
As artists from war-torn countries like Italy and Japan—including Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Kazuo Shiraga, and Shozo Shimamoto—channeled their ruined surroundings into artistic form; artists throughout the world—such as Yves Klein and Niki de Saint Phalle in France, John Latham in the United Kingdom, Robert Rauschenberg and Lee Bontecou in the United States, Otto Müehl in Austria, and Manolo Millares in Spain, among others—pursued similar approaches and strategies. Destroy the Picture presents an opportunity to reconsider the profound repercussions of this remarkably coherent approach in painting, from artists’ early experiments with translating gestures into materials to their emphasis on a rupture between two and three dimensions, as well as the expansion of the painting medium to incorporate performance, assemblage, and time-based strategies. In many cases, the exhibition places the work of now-established artists back into the radical context in which it originally emerged.
Organised by Paul Schimmel, former Chief Curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the exhibition and this remarkable accompanying hardcover catalogue mark the first time that these strategies have been considered together as a coherent mode of artistic production, expanding the scholarship on this critical moment in history. Alongside major essays by Paul Schimmel, Nicholas Cullinan, Astrid Handa-Gagnard, Shoichi Hirai, Sarah-Neel Smith, and Robert Storr, Destroy the Picture is heavily illustrated throughout with works dating 1949 and 1962 by artists from eight countries, including Lee Bontecou, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Salvatore Scarpitta, Kazuo Shiraga, Gérard Deschamps, François Dufrêne, Jean Fautrier, Adolf Frohner, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, John Latham, Gustav Metzger, Otto Müehl, Manolo Millares, Saburo Murakami, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Shozo Shimamoto, Antoni Tàpies, Chiyu Uemae, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, and Michio Yoshihara.
Very Good—Near Fine copy in Very Good—Near Fine dust-jacket.
1992, English
Softcover, 359 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by
Quartet Books / London
$69.00 - Out of stock
Forgotten during the Stalin years, Stanislaw Witkiewicz (1885-1939) was rediscovered in his native Poland only after the liberalization of 1956, when his works came to play a major role in freeing the arts from socialist realism. This collection, the first anthology in English, presents Witkiewicz in the full range of his creative and intellectual activities. The Witkiewicz Reader includes excerpts from three novels; four complete plays; letters to Malinowski; and selections from aesthetic, social, and philosophical essays detailing Witkiewicz's theory of Pure Form, his metaphysical system, and his apocalyptic view of the fate of civilization.
Edited, translated and with an introduction by Daniel Gerould
1969, English
Softcover, 287 pages, 20.96 x 13.97 cm
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$42.00 - In stock -
"The most blackly humorous and disenchanted voice in all of French literature."—London Review of Books
Céline's third novel, first published in 1944 but dealing with events taking place during the First World War, Guignol's Band follows the narrator's meanderings through London after he has been demobilized due to a war injury. The result is a frank, uncompromising, yet grotesquely funny portrayal of the English capital's seedy underworld, peopled by prostitutes, pimps and schemers.
Often considered to be Céline's funniest work, Guignol's Band showcases its author's idiosyncratic style at its finest, frantically blending slang, invective, onomatopoeia with literary language, and bridging the gap between gritty realism and absurd mysticism.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) was one of the most controversial writers of the twentieth century, a writer who mixed realism with imaginative fantasy, and like his contemporary Henry Miller, an iconoclast who shocked and frightened many of his readers.
"It could be said that without Celine there would have been no Henry Miller, no Jack Kerouac, no Charles Bukowski, no Beat poets."—John Banville
2006, English
Softcover, 464 pages, 20.3 x 14 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$34.00 - In stock -
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) was a French writer and doctor whose novels are antiheroic visions of human suffering. Accused of collaboration with the Nazis, Céline fled France in 1944 first to Germany and then to Denmark. Condemned by default (1950) in France to one year of imprisonment and declared a national disgrace, Céline returned to France after his pardon in 1951, where he continued to write until his death. His classic books include Journey to the End of the Night, Death on the Installment Plan, London Bridge, North, Rigadoon, Conversations with Professor Y, Castle to Castle, and Normance.