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
Art
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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.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 138 pages, 22 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kajima Institute Publishing / Tokyo
$70.00 $35.00 - In stock -
SD (Space Design) no. 234, 1984, featuring in-depth special features on German industrial designers Dieter Rams (Braun, Vitsœ, et al.) and Ferdinand Alexander Porsche. Huge illustrated features surveying the designs and philosophies of both designers, along with other extensive illustrated features on MEMPHIS Milano, László Moholy-Nagy's "Vision in Motion", and much more...
“SD” (Space Design) was founded in Japan in 1965; a comprehensive monthly magazine on architecture, urban problems and fine arts which was unique in the world and quickly became a leading, highly-esteemed journal of international modern design. In-depth articles, photo documents, plans, reports and interviews, SD is one of the finest journals dedicated to new design (architecture, furniture, interior, environmental, industrial...), becoming a much sought-after archival resource.
Good copy.
1983, Japanese
Softcover, 138 pages, 22 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kajima Institute Publishing / Tokyo
$70.00 $35.00 - In stock -
SD (Space Design) no. 222, 1983, featuring in-depth special feature on Italian design (furniture, architecture, textile, graphic, industrial...) including MEMPHIS Milano, Michael Graves, Nathalie du Pasquier, Ettore Sottsass, Marco Zanini, Michele De Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, Alessandro Mendini, Matteo Thun, George Sowden, Marco Zanini, Marco Zanuso, Martine Bedin, Shiro Kuramata, etc., Achille Castiglioni, Olivetti, Hans von Krier, Vittorio Gregotti, Emilio Ambasz, Aldo Rossi, Isao Hosoe, Centro DA, Pietro Salmoiraghi, and much more...
“SD” (Space Design) was founded in Japan in 1965; a comprehensive monthly magazine on architecture, urban problems and fine arts which was unique in the world and quickly became a leading, highly-esteemed journal of international modern design. In-depth articles, photo documents, plans, reports and interviews, SD is one of the finest journals dedicated to new design (architecture, furniture, interior, environmental, industrial...), becoming a much sought-after archival resource.
Good copy.
1985, English / Japanese
Softcover, 138 pages, 22 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Kajima Institute Publishing / Tokyo
$70.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
SD no. 248, May 1985, featuring in-depth special features on Italian architect and co-founder of radical design collective Superstudio, ADOLFO NATALINI (1979—1983) and radical Japanese furniture designer TERUAKI OHOSHI, including surveys of works, fold-outs, plans, along with illustrated articles and gallery features on Michele de Lucchi, Zaha Hadid, Expo '87, and much more.
“SD” (Space Design) was founded in Japan in 1965; a comprehensive monthly magazine on architecture, urban problems and fine arts which was unique in the world and quickly became a leading, highly-esteemed journal of international modern design. In-depth articles, photo documents, plans, reports and interviews, SD is one of the finest journals dedicated to new design (architecture, furniture, interior, environmental, industrial...), becoming a much sought-after archival resource.
Good copy. One loose page in place.
2013, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. obi-strip), 230 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Street Editorial Office / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
Maison Martin Margiela was founded in Paris by Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens in 1988. The first Martin Margiela collection of ready-to-wear for women was presented in October 1988 for Spring/Summer 1989. Since then Maison Martin Margiela has presented two collections a year and has taken part in many exhibitions on its work around the world. STREET magazine was founded in Tokyo by Shoichi Aoki and Noriko Kojima in 1985. It has been published monthly ever since. Each issue features photographs of people, chosen for what they are wearing, by Shoichi Aoki, taken in the streets of the world's fashion capitals. In 1995 STREET approached Maison Martin Margiela inviting it to publish a special edition of STREET dedicated to its work. Maison Martin Margiela was solely responsible for the choice of images and layout and used mostly unpublished photographs from its archives to explore and illuminate its past collections and presentations. The Maison Martin Margiela STREET special, Volume 1 first appeared on news stands in japan in October 1995 and covered every Martin Margiela collection from Spring/Summer 1989 up to Autumn/Winter 1995-1996. The success of volume 1 sparked the continuation of the story with the publication of volume 2 in February 1999. Volume 2 covers all Martin Margiela collections for women up to Spring/Summer 1999 as well as the first presentation of 10, a wardrobe for men and 6, basic garments for women for Summer 1999 and Maison Martin Margiela's participation in three exhibitions held in Brussels, Florence and Rotterdam. Both volumes now long out-of-print and collectible, this 2013 book edition (also long out-of-print) combines volumes 1 & 2, beautifully reprinting the entirety of their contents.
The first and still the best behind-the-scenes visual document of the world of Maison Martin Margiela, including the first 20 collections, events, exhibitions, studios, ephemera, garment details, and much more - very page magnificent. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with photographs by Martin Margiela, Paolo Roversi, Anders Edstrom, Mark Borthwick, Raf Coolen, Tatsuya Kitayama, Ronald Stoops, Barbara Katz, Roman Singer, Marina Faust, and many others.
Pristine copy, As New. Out-of-print.
1985, Japanese / English
Softcover, 166 pages, 20 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
National Museum of Modern Art / Kyoto
$150.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce, striking Japanese catalogue for a major international exhibition on Postmodern design held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1985. Presents 200 pieces of work by 48 designers and architects from Europe, America and Japan. Features the work of Aldo Rossi, Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Arata Isozaki, Ettore Sottsass, Frank Gehry, Fumihiko Maki, Mario Botta, Masanori Umeda, Matteo Thun, Michael Graves, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie Du Pasquier, Peter Shire, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi, Ron Arad, Daniel Weil, Shiro Kuramata...This book profiles many of these important designers through photographs, biographies and texts. Foreword by Michiaki Kawakita and Kenji Adachi. Introduction by Shinji Kohmoto and an essay on Italian radical and neo-radical design by Alessandro Mendini.
One of the finest and lesser-known volumes produced on postmodern design.
Very Good copy.
1978, English / Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 26 x 12 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The National Museum of Art / Osaka
$180.00 - In stock -
Incredibly rare Japanese publication from 1978, printed on the occasion of a major exhibition entitled "Design and Art of Modern Chairs", August 19—October 15, at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. This wonderful landscape-formatted book is profusely illustrated throughout (in colour and black and white) with the chairs of designers and artists including Gerrit Rietveld, Isamu Kenmochi, Olivier Mourgue, Pierre Paulin, Sadamasa Motonaga, Mario Ceroli, Marcel Breuer, Studio 65, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand, Jan Dranger, Johan Huldt, Robert Haussman, Kwok Hoi Chan, Steen Østergaard, George Nakashima, Mies van der Rohe, Poul Kjaerholm, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Pollock, Aarne Jacobsen, Warren Platner, Roger Tallon, Verner Panton, Earo Aarnio, Bruno Mathsson, Motomi Kawakami, Marco Zanuso, Richard Sapper, Gerd Lange, Vico Magistretti, Alver Aalto, Jonathan de Pas, Paolo Lomazzi, Donato d'Urbino, Giorgio Decursu, Sori Yanagi, Reiko Tanabe-Murai, Wolfgang Mueller-Deisig, Stacy Dukes, Ettore Sottsass, Charles Eames, Hans J. Wegner, Franco Albini, Gio Ponti, Kaare Klint, Enzo Mari, Takeshi Nii, Achille Castiglioni, Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, Tadashi Minohara, Gaetano Pesce, Yrjo Kukkapuro, Afra and Tobia Scarpa, Mario Bellini, Cini Boeri, Mario Marenco, Joe Colombo, Piero Gatti, Jonathan de Pas, Paolo Lomazzi, Donato d'Urbino, Ubald Klug, Gerrit Rietveld, Salvador Dali, Poltronova, Cassina, Taro Okamoto. Jiro Takamatsu, Susumu Koshimizu, Shiro Kuramata, Minoru Takeyama, Lucas Samaras, Kozo Mio, Arata Isozaki, Shigeo Fukuda, Takashi Sakaizawa, Constantin Brâncuși, Yoji Kuri, Yayoi Kusama, Vitra, Knoll, Kartell, Herman Miller, Arflex, BBB, Flexform, C&B Italia, Cassina, and many more. Each chair included is detailed with a blurb in Japanese, data/specs of year, designer/artist, manufacture and dimensions. Also includes an illustrated timeline tracing a chronological history of the chairs exhibited, along with a production index and forward texts in English and Japanese. Forms an indispensable index of important modern chair designs from the early 1930s—late 1970s.
Near Fine copy.
1974, Japanese / English
Softcover, 96 pages, 32.5 × 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Interior Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Japan's finest magazine for interior design, architecture and home furnishings, edited by Moriyama Kazuhiko. JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN presented "a monthly comprehensive view of traditional, contemporary, and contemplated environmental designs and pure art forms both Japanese and foreign, through pictures and critical reviews. English captions and summaries of major articles are provided each issue." The in-depth analysis in which JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN committed to covering new international furniture, textile, product, environmental, and interior design developments and major events from the period (1950s-1980s), places it soundly alongside its Italian comrade Domus. Lavishly illustrated throughout with beautiful photography in colour and b/w, with comprehensive plans, drawings and elevations bringing many innovative and long lost architectural and industrial designs into sharp focus. A wealth of archival reference material in each issue for any enthusiast of modern and space age design.
no. 183 June 1974
CONTENTS :
FEATURE OF THE MONTH : CANVAS IN FURNITURE & ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN
1982, Japanese / English
Softcover, 96 pages, 32.5 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Interior Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Japan's finest magazine for interior design, architecture and home furnishings, edited by Moriyama Kazuhiko. JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN presented "a monthly comprehensive view of traditional, contemporary, and contemplated environmental designs and pure art forms both Japanese and foreign, through pictures and critical reviews. English captions and summaries of major articles are provided each issue." The in-depth analysis in which JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN committed to covering new international furniture, textile, product, environmental, and interior design developments and major events from the period (1950s-1980s), places it soundly alongside its Italian comrade Domus. Lavishly illustrated throughout with beautiful photography in colour and b/w, with comprehensive plans, drawings and elevations bringing many innovative and long lost architectural and industrial designs into sharp focus. A wealth of archival reference material in each issue for any enthusiast of modern and space age design.
Very rare, this issue includes a special feature on the furniture of Italy's Memphis design group. Fantastic full-colour spreads of photo documentation highlighting some of Memphis' most iconic and wild pieces by Ettore Sottsass, Matteo Thun, Michele de Lucchi, Andrea Branzi, Shiro Kuramata, etc. together with texts by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and Barbara Radice.
Also includes the design work of Takashi Sakaizawa, Lacquer furniture of Kawakami Motomi, furniture of Abe Hiroshisan, New lighting fixtures by Asahara Shigeaki, Awatsuji Expo: Indigo textile statement by Hiroyuki Shindo, Residential Design of Helsinki: Timo Pentira, Ikedayama housing design: Edward Suzuki Architects, and much more.
Good copy, general light magazine wear. A mark to cover.
1970, Japanese / English
Softcover, 96 pages, 32.5 × 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Interior Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
Japan's finest magazine for interior design, architecture and home furnishings, edited by Moriyama Kazuhiko. JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN presented "a monthly comprehensive view of traditional, contemporary, and contemplated environmental designs and pure art forms both Japanese and foreign, through pictures and critical reviews. English captions and summaries of major articles are provided each issue." The in-depth analysis in which JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN committed to covering new international furniture, textile, product, environmental, and interior design developments and major events from the period (1950s-1980s), places it soundly alongside its Italian comrade Domus. Lavishly illustrated throughout with beautiful photography in colour and b/w, with comprehensive plans, drawings and elevations bringing many innovative and long lost architectural and industrial designs into sharp focus. A wealth of archival reference material in each issue for any enthusiast of modern and space age design.
JAPAN INTERIOR DESIGN
No.138, September 1970
Very rare, this issue includes a huge cover feature on SUPERSTUDIO "DESIGNERS WHO PHILOSOPHIZE" which includes profiles on a series of Italian Bookstore, Night Club and Boutique designs by SUPERSTUDIO, "Enclosure of Serenity", Lighting Fixtures, Fumiturel "Luxor Series" from the Antique Furniture Fair, The Florence Architectural Exhibition "Trigon ’69", "The Continuous Monument" - A Project for Italian Pavilion at Expo’70, fold-out pages, interviews and much more.
Also includes "Easy Chair" by Tobia Scarpa; Furniture Design by l; Furniture Manufacturer of the World "Knoll International" U. S. A.; Bar―Wagon by Tadao Ando; Men’s Wear Shop "MARKET ONE EDWARD’S" interior design: Kuramata Design Associates; Two Floor-Lamp Designs by Nanda Vigo; Camera Attachments Designed by Joe C. Colombo; "Space Jack" Living Capsule for Leisure design & production: Team JEMCO; Theatrical Design for a Kabuki Play design: Kaoru Kanamori & Associates and much more.
2024, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 27 x 22 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$120.00 - In stock -
A unique journey with James Ensor through the history of still life in Belgium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Still life played an important role within the work of Belgian expressionist and symbolist painter James Ensor (1860–1949). The quality and significance of his intriguingly complex still lifes become clear when placed within the broader development of the genre in Belgium between 1830 and 1930.
The book offers an overview of the nineteenth-century Belgian academic tradition of decorative painting, with intriguing work by lesser-known painters such as Jean Robie, Hubert Bellis, Frans Mortelmans, and Henri De Braekeleer, as well as forgotten female artists such as Berthe Art and Alice Ronner. In the early twentieth century, artists such as Louis Thevenet continued to develop the genre of still life in a traditional manner, while innovators such as the late James Ensor, Léon Spilliaert, Marthe Donas, Walter Vaes, and Gustave Van de Woestyne created highly personal interpretations.
This book is published on the first exhibition ever entirely devoted to James Ensor's still lifes at Mu.ZEE (Ostend).
1977, French
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$120.00 - In stock -
Wonderful, very scarcely seen Tetsumi Kudo catalogue published on the occasion of parallel solo exhibitions held in early 1977 at Galerie Beaubourg ("cages, peintures à l'ordinateur") and Galerie Vallois ("cages, multiples") in Paris. Illustrated throughout in b/w, this catalogue gives a rare insight into the work of Kudo through various discussions and correspondence with Kudo, texts by Kudo, an interview with ... himself, all accompanied by the essay "The Resistance of Kudo and The Resistance to Kudo" by French art critic Alain Jouffroy. Texts in French.
"By his work, Kudo is part of the most clandestine current of the avant-garde of the XXth century, that which starts from Les Machines Célibataires of Marcel Duchamp and the Tableaux écaniques
of Picabia, ie. to a system of pistons and cogs, which today leads to Jean Tinguely and his anti-functional machines."
(badly translated from Alain Jouffroy's French.
Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1935 Kudo first gained notoriety in the Tokyo art scene of the late 50s. He began exhibiting his work at the Salon of Independents, Yomiuri and had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Blanche, Tokyo. He was awarded the Grand Prize and a travel grant to Paris through his painting participation in the 1962 Second International Young Artists Exhibition in Tokyo. Immigrating to Paris, he immediately started working in a range of media--objects, sculpture, installation, drawing and painting--and presenting numerous Happenings and performances. His first exhibition there was banned. Kudo's work and activities intersected with many important postwar artistic trends--including French Nouveau Realisme, Fluxus, Pop art, 60s anti-art tendencies and 80s Postmodernism. Throughout his life and career, Kudo remained particularly Japanese while his art and vision were consistently and uniquely transcultural, internationalist and cosmopolitan. His work made international appearances at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1972), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany, (1970), Venice Biennial (1976), and the Biennial São Paulo (1977, awarded a special mention) while also appearing frequently in museums and galleries throughout Japan and France, with a growing recognition in the Netherlands.
Very Good copy.
1971, Japanese
Rigid softcover (in slipcase), 64 pages, 30 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakugei Shorinsha / Tokyo
$400.00 - In stock -
Super rare and bookshop favourite early collection of artworks by ero-guro master Toshio Saeki (1945—2019), published in 1971 by Gakugeishorin. Stunning large-format softcover collection of exquisitely printed saturated full-bleed colour and b/w artworks on warm matte paper stock capturing this legendary underground artist at the height of his powers, housed in original publisher's cardboard slipcase. His third book collection featuring so many of his finest works. Postface by Hiraoka Masaaki in Japanese. A must!
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy. Very complete copy with slipcase and obi present. Some wear/marking to a VG slipcase.
2002, Japanese
Hardcover in slipcase w. illustrated paste-on, unpaginated, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seirin Kogeisha / Tokyo
$280.00 - In stock -
First, limited number-stamped edition of "The Earliest Works of Toshio Saeki" by the Japanese master of Ero guro, published by Seirin-Kogei-Sha in 2002 and long out-of-print. Before Saeki worked in his later palette of bright flat colours, he expressed the darker and more chaotic aspects of unbridled eroticism in stark black and white, with the occasional and dramatic splash of a single primary colour. In this lavishly illustrated book, Saeki's disturbing iconography reveals links to the past and simultaneously indicates the even more bizarre twists his work would take in the future. The Earliest Works also shows the early inspirations of Toshio Saeki, Tomi Ungerer's effect being a most clear one. Broken into three chapters: Earliest Works, Uncollected Works, and Unpublished Studies from 1969, the book also includes a chronological record and notes by Yuji Yamashita. An incredible book!
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Perfect fine hardcover copy housed in fine slipcase, beautifully preserved.
1989?, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 8 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mark Nowak / Minnesota
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare, undocumented copy of Mark Nowak's postal poetry zine, Furnitures: The Magazine of North American Ideophonics, self-published in the 1980's. This issue no. 12, from around 1989, features the experimental works of American poets Theodore Enslin, Diane Glancy, and Elaine Barkin, and Canadian composer/environmentalist R. Murray Schafer.
Mark Nowak is an American poet, as well as cultural critic, playwright and essayist, from Buffalo, New York.
Very Good copy with light wear, light previous fold. Fresh copy, not post-marked.
2024, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 19.8 x 13 cm
Published by
And Other Stories / UK
$42.00 - Out of stock
Inland is a work which gathers in emotional power as it moves across the grasslands of its narrator's imagination - from Szolnok County on the great plains of Hungary where a man writes in the library of his manor house, to the Institute of Prairie Studies in Tripp County, South Dakota, where the editor of the journal Hinterland receives his writing, to the narrator's own native district in Melbourne County, between Moonee Ponds and the Merri, where he recalls the constant displacements of his childhood. 'No thing in the world is one thing,' he declares; 'some places are many more than one place.' These overlapping worlds are bound by recurring motifs - fish pond, fig-tree, child-woman, the colours white, red and green - and by deep feelings of intimacy and betrayal, which are brought to full expression as the book moves to its close.
'The most ambitious, sustained, and powerful piece of writing Murnane has to date brought off. The underlying narrative is of the twelve-year-old boy and the girl from Bendigo Street, their friendship and their parting, and of the man's later attempts, Orpheus-like, to summon her back, or if not her, then her shade, from the realm of the dead and the forgotten. Woven into this narrative are a number of motifs whose common element is resurrection: the violated serf girl who returns as an angel of defiance; the lovers in Wuthering Heights united beyond the grave; the great recuperative vision experienced by Marcel in Time Regained; and verses from the Gospel of Matthew that foretell the second coming of Christ.'—JM Coetzee, New York Review of Books
'Murnane's unique body of work certainly merits the world's most prestigious literary prize, boasting an ability to convey the workings of human consciousness that is unlike anything else I've read. His deep, strange, mesmerising books - a dozen novels, numerous short stories and essays - seem less like discrete entities than one enormous work in which the author meditates over and over on various talismanic images and subjects.'—Jack Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph
'The sort of writing Murnane gives us - focused, precise - probably depends upon a life free from disruption: free to think and take time and put one word after another with as much care as possible ... It doesn't have what most novels do - plot, characters in the traditional sense, even a clear setting at times - and yet to read it with an eye on what's not there is to overlook what is. It plunges deep into the way our minds work, the connections between memories and images that make up what we call our selves. Indeed, reading Murnane's fiction, stripped of the usual elements, actually makes other novels seem thin by comparison.' John Self, Irish Times
2024, English
Softcover (staple bound w. obi), 24 pages, 17.5 x 13.7 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
World Food Books / Melbourne
$15.00 - Out of stock
Limited edition catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Miroslav Tichý, World Food Books, 16.5.24—13.6.24. Illustrated throughout with a selection of Tichý's photographs and drawings of women reproduced in b/w. Published in an edition of 50 copies, with obi-strip.
After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague (1945-48), Miroslav Tichý (1926-2011) withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia, Czech Republic. In the late 1950s he quit painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take take thousands of surreptitious photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. He later mounted them on hand-made frames, added finishing touches with pencil, and thus moved them from photography in the direction of drawing. The result are works of strikingly unusual formal qualities, which disregard the rules of conventional photography. They constitute a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of feminine beauty in a small town under the Czechoslovak Communist regime.
2023, Czech / English / German
Softcover, 256 pages, 24 x 33 cm
Published by
Edizioni Periferia / Lucerne
$175.00 - In stock -
Despite his art education, Czech painter and photographer Miroslav Tichý (1926–2011) was considered an outsider due to his unconventional approach to photography that revealed a voyeuristic fascination for the female body. His analogue photography shows traces and errors he deliberately sought out by building his own cameras and telephoto lenses. In the 1970s and ’80s, Tichý regularly took pictures of his television screen. Because he lived close to the Austrian border, he was able to circumvent the censorship of Eastern Bloc media and watch the more permissive films and late night shows from the West. Many of his seemingly surreptitious screenshots appear in this book.
2011, English / French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 248 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
Kant / Prague
$160.00 - In stock -
Like the Prague exhibition that provided the opportunity to publish it, this stunning, over-sized hardcover book is the 'explosive' result of the meeting between two personalities with a heretical reputation: the great photographer Miroslav Tichý and the former situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti. Both are better known internationally than they are in the Czech Republic. Their paths were destined to cross - simply for the originality and radical nature of their approach to life. Tichý's work inspired Sanguinetti to make critical and riveting insights into the art of our age. While his comments may fuel polemical debate, they cannot leave the reader indifferent. The photographs by Tichý that are being presented for the first time in this book and at the City Gallery Prague represent a strict selection that prioritises the eloquence of symbols that pervade Tichý's work and which are, according to Sanguinetti, the key to his art.
Lavishly illustrated in colour throughout with all texts in English and French.
Miroslav Tichy (1926-2011)
After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague (1945-48), Miroslav Tichy withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia, Czech Republic. In the late 1950s he quit painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. He later mounted them on hand-made frames, added finishing touches with pencil, and thus moved them from photography in the direction of drawing. The result are works of strikingly unusual formal qualities, which disregard the rules of conventional photography. They constitute a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of feminine beauty in a small town under the Czechoslovak Communist regime.
2008, English
Hardcover (w. obi-strip), 220 pages, 23 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this beautiful hardcover monograph on the work of Miroslav Tichý, published in 2008 by Walther König and quickly out of print. Profusely illustrated throughout with Tichý's works alongside informative background about the artist and his work by contributors Harald Szeemann, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Clint Burnham, Roman Buxbaum.
After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Miroslav Tichý, born in 1926 in the former Czechoslovakia, withdrew to a life of isolation in his hometown of Kyjov. In the late 1950s, he stopped painting and, during his daily walks, began to take photographs of women with cameras he made by hand. He mounted his prints on handmade frames and added finishing touches in pencil, shifting from photography to drawing. Disregarding the rules of photography, for four decades Tichý created a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of female beauty.
A former neighbor, Roman Buxbaum, discovered Tichý's hidden work in the 1980s and has been documenting and collecting it ever since. In 2004, the esteemed international curator Harald Szeemann mounted the first solo exhibition of the nearly 80-year-old artist. That same year, Tichý was given the Rencontres d'Arles Photographie Discovery Award and the Kunsthaus Zurich organized a large retrospective. Solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) Frankfurt followed in 2008. Tichý does not see his exhibitions, for he no longer leaves his house. This beautifully produced, thorough volume collects the work — perfectly.
Very Good copy with light wear. With original illustrated publisher's obi-strip.
2010, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 328 pages, 33 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Steidl / Göttingen
$220.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful first edition of this long out-of-print over-sized hardcover catalogue on the work of Miroslav Tichý. Few stories in the history of photography are as astonishing and as compelling as that of the octogenarian Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý. With crude homemade cameras fashioned out of cardboard and duct tape, Tichý took several thousand pictures of the women of his Moravian hometown of Kyjov throughout the 1960s and '70s. These pictures of women going about their daily business are at once banal and extraordinary, transforming the ordinary moments of work and leisure into small epiphanies. Blurred and off-kilter, his photographs have a striking contemporaneity, resembling the early paintings of Gerhard Richter or the photographs of Sigmar Polke. Printed imperfectly and deliberately battered, they evince a surprising retrograde or even anti-modernist feeling, which, in the context of the Cold War atmosphere of provincial Czechoslovakia, just before and after the liberalizing moment of the Prague Spring (1968), undoubtedly constituted a kind of oblique political provocation, a nose-thumbing response to the progressive realist perfectionism of official Soviet culture.
This major catalogue accompanies an exhibition of the same title at the International Center of Photography organized by Chief Curator Brian Wallis. Critical evaluations by Brian Wallis, Roman Buxbaum, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and Richard Prince introduce more than 250 plates and illustrations.
Very Good copy.
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 26 x 28.6 cm
Published by
Letter16 Press / Miami
$95.00 - In stock -
New documentation of Joseph Beuys’ controversial performance piece.
Edited with foreword by Brett Sokol
May 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Joseph Beuys’ infamous piece of performance art staged in New York City: I Like America and America Likes Me. The premise—a man and a wild coyote locked together inside a room—helped build a cult following for Beuys that has made him alternately revered and reviled throughout the contemporary art world. Stephen Aiken’s (born 1948) photographs of this May 1974 "action" by Beuys—recently unearthed and previously unpublished—offer a fresh look at this seminal art happening. These striking images are supplemented with a set of previously unseen color photos taken by Aiken of Beuys at Greenwich Village’s New School in January 1974: verbally sparring onstage with fellow artist Hannah Wilke and jousting with a raucous audience that threatened to turn his lecture into a brawl.
2024, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 21.59 x 13.96 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 - Out of stock
Two never-before-published novels by Mina Loy, the celebrated modernist poet, artist, and feminist
Mina Loy (1882-1966) is an essential figure of the European and American modernist avant-garde. A groundbreaking writer of poetry, novels, essays, plays, and uncategorizable prose, she was also a fashion and lighting designer and an accomplished visual artist. As gallery agent for figures such as Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Giacometti, and Salvador Dali, she was a significant conduit for art that traversed the Atlantic. Loy has been best known for the poetry she published in the little magazines of the late teens and early twenties, most notably the long poem "Songs to Joannes" and the autobiographical verse-epic "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose."
Featuring two never-before-published manuscripts of Loy's autobiographical prose-The Child and the Parent and Islands in the Air-this remarkable book expands Loy's rich oeuvre. Interlinked texts written over twenty years, from the 1930s to the 1950s, these fascinating works narrate the feminist struggle of the creative spirit as it comes into consciousness and encounters indoctrinating social norms. The works are accompanied by an introduction and afterword by Karla Kelsey that frame Loy as a poet, prose writer, businesswoman, and visual artist and discuss the texts, their stylistic innovations, and their unique interconnectedness.
"At once philosophical and lyrical, these novels are a revelation. Their rediscovery confirms Loy as one of the major feminist writers of her time, and a dazzling, neglected novelist of the modernist period."—Alys Moody, author of The Art of Hunger
"Mina Loy's writings were animated by a desire to articulate the interior of consciousness through the register of the senses. She understood perception to attach to both the known and unknown, the material world seen often as a veil across an infinite mystery. The familiar dualities of mind and matter, time and space, good and evil, find themselves, in Loy's rich lexicon and dazzling sentences, under the most prescient and dissolving scrutiny. At once personally intimate and philosophically astute, Loy's prose has the mesmerizing singularity and wit of her acclaimed poetry. As intoxicating as an essential oil, these unpublished works are a rare and welcome gift to our arid times. 'The blaze exploded in me. I was riddled with splinters of delight.'"-Ann Lauterbach, author of Door
2024, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 22 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$59.00 - Out of stock
Sigríður Björnsdóttir met 22-year-old Dieter Roth in Copenhagen in 1952. A year later, Roth joined her in Reykjavík, and in 1957 they married. 50 years later, Björnsdóttir recounts their meeting, the ups and downs of their marriage, their life with their children and their eventual separation. 'Dieter Roth in My Life' is an honest and personal account of a period in Björnsdóttir’s life, shared with a man she describes as the love of her life who went on to become a successful and highly influential artist. Beyond her own artistic activities, Björnsdóttir describes her collaborative and experimental work with Roth, their encounters with friends and peers within the tightly woven Icelandic creative community and the beginnings of Roth’s multifaceted practice. Sigríður Björnsdóttir is an art therapist and artist living in Reykjavík. She graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1952 and went on to become a pioneer in art therapy, practicing in Iceland and lecturing worldwide.
2024, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20.19 x 13.59 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$32.00 - In stock -
First published posthumously in 1966, Trouble in the Swaths was written for a small audience of family and friends during the Nazi Occupation of Paris, but it presented little evidence of those dark years. It is a flippant, at times outrageous parody of genre fiction laced through with bursts of Sadean violence, absurdist slapstick, and excessive wordplay in which Vian makes his fictionalized debut under such anagrammed monikers as the Baron Visi and the detective Brisavion.
Preceding Ian Fleming’s novels by several years, Trouble in the Swaths nonetheless anticipates and ridicules such spy thrillers and their sexism, casual murders, plot twists, and technological gadgetry. The plot quickly shifts from mock realist novel to comic-book escapade as our two young dandy heroes, Count Adelphin de Beaumashin and Sérafinio Alvaraide, quickly abandon the Baroness Pyssenlied’s party to set off on a quest for a missing artifact. The adventure involves bombs and machine guns, planes and parachutes, trapdoors and underground caverns, a secret manuscript that endeavors to absorb the novel, and, at the center of it all, the core of the narrative maelstrom: the forked barbarin.
Translated, with an introduction, by Terry Bradford.
Boris Vian (1920–1959) was a French polymath who in his short life managed to inhabit the roles of writer, poet, playwright, musician, singer/songwriter, translator, music critic, actor, inventor, and engineer. He died of a cardiac arrest at the age of 39 after authoring ten novels, several volumes of short stories, plays, operas, articles, and nearly 500 songs. Vian is remembered as one of the reigning spirits of the postwar Parisian Latin quarter, a friend to everyone from Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Queneau, and Miles Davis, playing trumpet with Claude Abadie and Claude Luter, and an influence on such future kindred spirits as Serge Gainsbourg.