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.
2023, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$26.00 - In stock -
"Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic entwines elegant prose, blistering suspense, and art criticism, all shot through with a dark secret. Exploring creators as diverse as René Magritte, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, Dennis Cooper, Bruno Dumont, and Gary Indiana, Shipley claims his spot as a singular disciple of this genealogy of experimental art. Ann's voice will stay with you long after you exit her mind's haunted house. You won't even realize its cursed magic until it has already swallowed you whole."—Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
"Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn. The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray. The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past. Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence. So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise. If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider."—Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy
"This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love. Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin."—Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence
2023, English
Softcover, 132 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$24.00 - In stock -
"One of my favorite contemporary writers. Each of these vicious little stories is a perfect articulation of the madness of being a conscious entity. Elsby’s voice winds its way into your head and smashes about like a trapped heron."—B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space
"Elsby's easy tone and accessible prose conceals a complex malignant design. The naked mind speaks from an isolated place inside the cruelty of everyday power structures with flat affect, leaving the reader to sort out the relentless inequity, outrage, and pain. Bedlam is exactly the kind of brilliant and unapologetic trauma I crave."—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Convulsive
"In a series of scathing monologues, Bedlam is searching for an exit, craving for escape while stuck detailing the minutiae that keep us in place (the hairdos, the joggers, the dick pics, the doors, the death, the men...), as our new lives wait indefinitely—aging badly, somewhere in the near distance, before they’ve even begun." —Gary J. Shipley, author of Terminal Park
"Elsby taps into the worst parts of ourselves and presents them as mundane grotesquery. The cruel things people do to one another daily are presented in a chilling, matter of fact way alongside passages of interiority that terrify because one might see them as a mirror. That's the true, wicked power of Bedlam."—Anthony Dragonetti, author of Confidence Man
Charlene Elsby wrote Hexis, Psychros, Affect and Musos. Her essays have appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Bustle Books, and the LA Review of Books Philosophical Salon.
2024, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 10.5 x 14.9 cm
Published by
Fireflies Press / Berlin—Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
In the fifth title of the acclaimed Decadent Editions series, Christine Smallwood explores Chantal Akerman’s adaptation of Marcel Proust’s The Prisoner, the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time, in a text that moves elegantly between Akerman’s films, Proust’s novel, and Smallwood’s own life.In Chantal Akerman’s contemporary adaptation of Proust’s The Prisoner, a wealthy young man lives with his girlfriend in his Paris apartment. As obsession begets deceit inside the cage they call love, it becomes ever more difficult to distinguish captive from captor.
Christine Smallwood is the author of the novel The Life of the Mind and a regular contributor to publications such as The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, Bookforum and The New York Times Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2023 Anthony Veasna So Fiction Prize and a 2023 Silvers Grant.
2022, English
Softcover (two-book set), 200 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Fireflies Press / Berlin—Melbourne
$75.00 - In stock -
Published on the centenary year of Pasolini’s birth, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper is a dual edition that stages a dialogue between cinema today and Pasolini’s timeless films and words.
The two complementary volumes slide into one another, forming a unique set that evokes and celebrates Pasolini’s enduring influence. The smaller book features his epic autobiographical poem ‘Poet of the Ashes’, in a revised translation by esteemed poet Stephen Sartarelli; the larger book comprises original tributes by vital filmmakers from across the contemporary cinema landscape.
Twenty filmmakers shared personal reflections in the form of essays, poems, photographs, drawings and more: Catherine Breillat, Luise Donschen & Helena Wittmann, Jia Zhangke, Radu Jude, Payal Kapadia, Alexandre Koberidze, Dane Komljen, Mike Leigh, Mariano Llinás, Roberto Minervini, Valérie Massadian, Luc Moullet, Ben Rivers, Angela Schanelec, Ulrich Seidl, Basma al-Sharif, Deborah Stratman, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Gustavo Vinagre.
To coincide with the NYC launch of the book on November 4, Fireflies Press has curated Love Meetings: Pasolini & Contemporary Cinema, a program of screenings at Metrograph, running through November.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 116 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Take Shobo / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
"Mr. Araki and the Six Women"
Scarce copy of this lesser known Araki title — Nobuyoshi Araki's "Obscene Photo Magazine" La-Chat Vol. 2 from 1995, packed cover-to-cover with glossy nude photography in colour and b/w. A gorgeous photo journal of 6 women with Araki's hand-written diary entries throughout.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1994, Japanese
Softcover, 44 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Photo-Planete / Japan
$150.00 - In stock -
First edition of Nobuyoshi Araki's Obscenities, published in 1994. Here Araki, a master of Japanese fetish photography, has continued to challenge sexual taboos with radical techniques. Instead of presenting his acutely revealing images of sexuality, for which he had come to face charges, Araki has chosen an expressive thumbing of the nose to Japanese censorship techniques by scratching away the "obscenities" of the negatives—and not only the obvious ones. Just as with the explicit erotic images collected here, photographs of banal everyday objects, flowers and cityscapes also become charged with delirious sexual potency at the hands of the censor. The images become oddly more arousing, as they are revealed and embellished further through the marks of Araki's hand, as well as the desire of his eye. The result is a very special book, and Araki's statement on the idea of “obscenity”.
"Photography reveals. To reveal is obscene. Photography conceals. To conceal is obscene. Taking photographs is obscene. To be photographed is obscene. Showing photographs is obscene. To look at photographs is obscene. Not showing photographs is obscene. To not be able to look at photographs is obscene. Obscene things do not exist. Obscene acts exist. Obscene photographs are acts. Obscene photographs are relations. Photographs are obscenities. Obscenities are beautiful."—Araki Nobuyoshi (book introduction)
Very Good copy.
1992, English / Japanese
Softcover, 182 pages, 23.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
Scarce major Japanese monograph on the work of prominent and influential Japanese-American sculptor artist, landscape architect, and furniture/lighting designer Isamu Noguchi, published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition "ISAMU NOGUCHI RETROSPECTIVE 1992", March 14 1992 -May 10 1992 / The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and May 26 1992 - July 5 1992 / The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.
This book documents a large many works spanning the 1920s-1980s, alongside text by Koji Takahashi, forming an important document and archive of Noguchi's life and work.
Isamu Noguchi (November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. One of the greatest 20th-century sculptors, Noguchi is known for his sculpture and public works, creating innovative parks, plazas, playgrounds, fountains, gardens, and stage sets as well as sculpture of stone, metal, wood, and clay, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold.
In 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is often considered to be the most influential body of modern furniture ever produced, including the iconic Noguchi table which remains in production today.
Very good copy.
2006, English / Japanese
Softcover, 146 pages, 24 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yokohama Museum of Art / Yokohama
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful Isamu Noguchi monograph published on the occasion of a major Japanese travelling survey exhibition entitled "Connecting the World Through Sculpture" in 2006. This oversized catalogue is profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Noguchi's sculptures, reliefs, models, furniture and landscape designs for parks and playgrounds. Includes many pages of his beautiful set designs for Martha Graham's School and Dance Company in New York in the 1940s. Introductory texts in Japanese and English, a chronology, bibliography and list of exhibited artworks.
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was a Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. He was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. His varied work was informed by his extensive travels over his lifetime. He worked across many different mediums, including sculptural gardening, set designs and architecture.
Very Good copy with some cover/spine wear.
1981, French
Offset lithographic printed poster
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Maeght / Paris
$250.00 - In stock -
Rare vintage Isamu Noguchi offset lithographic print poster. Printed in France on the occasion of the exhibition Isamu Noguchi : Granits, Basaltes, Obsidiennes at Galerie Maeght, Paris, 6 mai - 10 juillet 1981.
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was a Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. He was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. His varied work was informed by his extensive travels over his lifetime. He worked across many different mediums, including sculptural gardening, set designs and architecture.
In 1932, Aimé Maeght (1906-1981) opened the first Arte printing press in Cannes. He then met Pierre Bonnard, with whom he formed an unfailing friendship. The artist became his mentor and so strongly encouraged Aimé to devote himself to art printing that the latter decided to develop his activity and then founded his publishing house. In 1943, when the resistant artist Jean Moulin was arrested by the Gestapo, Aimé and Marguerite, his wife, were forced to take refuge in the hinterland in Vence where Henri Matisse lived, who became their friend. The Riviera become the refuge of artists and writers who fled the occupied zone. At the liberation, with the support of Bonnard and Matisse, Aimé left Cannes and created a gallery in Paris. The Galerie Maeght, inaugurated with the Henri Matisse exhibition in December 1945 in Paris, and quickly became the meeting place for artists and poets. From 1946, Bonnard, Braque, Matisse, Marchand, Rouault, Baya exhibited for the first time at the Parisian gallery. In July 1947 André Breton and Marcel Duchamp presented the exhibition Le Surréalisme at the gallery. The gallery grew to represent the work of Chagall, Mirò, Calder, Bram and Geer Van Velde, Ubac, Giacometti, Léger, Kelly, Steinberg, becoming one of the most important modern art galleries in the world.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 78 x 51.5 cm.
Very Good condition, unmarked, beautifully preserved.
1972, French
Harcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 28 x 21.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Eric Losfeld / Paris
$140.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol's Dessins Érotiques, published by Eric Losfeld in 1972. Beautifully illustrated throughout with Poumeyrol's incredible erotic drawings, "the techniques and ideas behind each of the finely drawn, lewd and Surrealist paintings of cult erotic French artist Jean-Marie Poumeyrol (b.1946) are explained by French Surrealist author and filmmaker Raymond Borde." In these, his early works, Jean-Marie Poumeyrol was recognized as a master of erotica, and often associated with the fantastic realism movement, combining hallucinogenic and macabre imagery in an unparalleled manner. Upon graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux he already had a four year old son to support, and so began his illustrious career as a teacher of mechanical draftsmanship, before his educational career was cut short by the system. Art teachers had to pass tests given by the board to determine if they were skilled enough to teach drawing. At the same time that Poumeyrol’s erotic works were first seeing print and sought out avidly by collectors, he failed his art teacher’s exam—being given an ‘F’ for nude drawing. Encouraged by this failure, he dedicated himself to painting and drawing full time, eventually creating a large body of erotica which have marked him ever since (along with Sibylle Ruppert) as one of France’s greatest artists in this domain.
Raymond Borde (1920-2004) is a French film critic, film maker and essayist, co-founder and curator of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. Associated with the surrealist movement and André Breton, he contributed to Positif and Premier Plan and published around twenty books.
Éric Losfeld (1922 - 1979) was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material and was as often sued as Jean-Jacques Pauvert. A publisher who despised profit, he boasted that he had been, throughout his life, "in debt like a mule". When the creditors and the prosecutors gave him a little respite, he who defined himself as a "free editor" had only one principle: to be faithful to his tastes and unfaithful to his disgusts. "The only literature that touches me," he proclaimed, " is literature written with passion, or rather passionate literature." Thus, for thirty years, Losfeld created, at Arcane Editions, Le Terrain Vague, and under his own name, an invaluable and often clandestine catalog of Babouvist and hallucinated principality, and where he gathered all his preferences. For surrealism, eroticism, anarchism, romanticism, fantasy, black humor, jazz and comics. The world according to Losfeld, was that of Artaud, Mandiargues, Druillet, Sade, Vian, Peret, Allais, Jarry, Gbe, Sternberg, Forneret, Bealu, Topor, Arrabal, Peellaert or Klossowski. He was the publisher of Emmanuelle (1967), surrealist magazines ("Bief") and cinematographic magazines ("Midi Minuit Fantastique" and "Positif"), and the Barbarella science fiction comic book created by Jean-Claude Forest, amongst many other titles. Losfeld's tombstone inscription reads, "Tout ce qu'il éditait avait le souffle de la liberté." ("Everything he edited had the breath of freedom.").
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket.
1981, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 33 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Bijan Aalam / Paris
Editions Natiris / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol — Peintures et Dessins, published by Éditions Baal-Natiris in association with the great Galerie Bijan Aalam, Paris, in 1981. Beautifully illustrated throughout with the visionary drawings and paintings of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol (b. 1941), this over-sized limited edition volume includes text by author Jean-François Reverzy and a conversation between the artist and author. Reverzy's text is fittingly entitled "The Haunting", introducing a remarkable period of Poumeyrol's work from 1973—1980 that matures from his early, complex, fantasy erotic work into his unique, finely-rendered depictions of scarred and haunted liminal spaces, ensnaring the viewer in his forensic scenes of obsession. Poumeyrol's dark architectural Wunderkammers are heavy with disturbance. What has happened, what is to come, what is desired, what is feared. Located out of time, yet littered with curios and trompe-l'œil portholes to many different time-places, Poumeyrol masters the familiar and gentle sensibility of mid-century European still-life/landscape painting with one-hand, whilst luring the viewer into an alien and unsettling pyscho-sexual dread with the other. Often associated with the fantastic realism movement, Poumeyrol combines hallucinogenic and macabre imagery in an unparalleled manner. Upon graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux he already had a four year old son to support, and so began his illustrious career as a teacher of mechanical draftsmanship, before his educational career was cut short by the system. Art teachers had to pass tests given by the board to determine if they were skilled enough to teach drawing. At the same time that Poumeyrol’s erotic works were first seeing print and sought out avidly by collectors, he failed his art teacher’s exam—being given an ‘F’ for nude drawing. Encouraged by this failure, he dedicated himself to painting and drawing full time, eventually creating a large body of erotica which have marked him ever since (along with German born Sibylle Ruppert) as one of France’s greatest artists in this domain.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1968, Japanese
Hardcover in hard slipcase, unpaginated, 19 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
Scarce hardcover, slipcased volume on the "Art of Eroticism", published only in Japan in 1968. An amazing history of humanity that collects erotic masterpieces from around the world. With illustrated slipcase by Japanese artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko, this book functions as a separate visual volume to Ove Brussendorf and Poul Henningsen's celebrated History of Eroticism, depicting sexual customs from ancient times to the present day with 700 illustrations reproduced on glossy stock.
Very Good copy with general age and some wear to slipcase. Book well-preserved!
1973, English
20 posters in illustrated folio, 25.7 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition Nobel / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Rare 1973 erotic photo poster edition, collecting full-colour and b/w photographic works by 7 photographers in the form of 20 glossy posters presented in an illustrated portfolio, published only in Japan for the Japanese market. Photographers include Siwer Ohlsson, Guido Mangold, Peter Raba, Daniel Barreau, Will McBride, Jean-Louis Michel, Karin Szekessy.
First, only edition. Complete with all posters still bound together in folio with publisher's hand-written Japanese translations from the English bios, mimeographed and inserted. General handling wear to folio due to size and thin nature, small closed tear/pinching to folio spine.
1979, Japanese
Softcover, 240 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Rare "Special Stock" compendium book by the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This special three issue collection combines Vol. 4 "Fantasy" + Vol. 6 "Eros" + Vol. 7 "Avant-Garde". Says it all really. Incredible in-depth, encyclopaedic features on Derek Bailey (full biography and discograohy), British avant-garde/free music/jazz/avant-rock/R.I.O./Canterbury (Bailey, Henry Cow, Daevid Allen/Gong, Lol Coxhill, Soft Machine, Company, Slapp Happy, Keith Tippett, National Health, Evan Parker, Art Bears, King Crimson, Hatfield and The North, Kew Rhone, National Health, Robert Wyatt, Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Incus Records, Ogun Records, etc.), R.I.O. expanded (Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, ZNR, The Residents, Albert Marcoeur, Stormy Six, Etron Fou Leloublan, Samla Mammas Manna, etc.), plus features and articles on Robert Fripp, Atoll, Annette Peacock, Italian Prog, Gloria Mundi, Peter Hammill, Ashra, Brian Eno, Tony Banks, Van Der Graaf, Genesis, Vangelis, Peter Gabriel, New Spanish Rock, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy.
1980, Japanese
Softcover, 112 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Rare early issue of the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. Fool's Mate Vol. 13 August 1980. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This issue "La Pop Metaphysique" with cover feature on the history of King Crimson (Part 1) with in-depth chronology, the history of German Rock Music part 1 (Amon Düül I and II, Gila, Kluster, Neu!, Harmonia, Conrad Schnizler, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Can, Sky Records, Roedelius, Moebius, etc), "Pop Music for all the Schizoid-Human & Schizoid-Ages" (Suicide, James Chance, Monochrome Set, etc.), Slapp Happy/Peter Blegvad/Kew Rhone/Amateur/Henry Cow/Faust, "The Real Story of National Health", "U.S.A. Free Music" (L.A.F.M.S., Trans Museq, Henry Kaiser, etc.), Georges Bataille, Gunjogacrayon, Metabolist, David Bowie, Etron Fou Leloublan, Mario Millo, PFM, Ralph Lundsten, Memoriance, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy. General wear/age.
1980, Japanese
Softcover, 112 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Rare early issue of the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. Fool's Mate Vol. 14 November 1980. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This issue with cover feature on the history of King Crimson (Part 2) with in-depth chronology, the history of German Rock Music into German Intermedia, Dada, Neo-Dada, German Avant-Garde theatre, etc. (Amon Düül I and II, Bertolt Brecht, Guru Guru, Can, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Strauss, Agitation Free, Joseph Beuys, Ash Ra Temple, Popol Vuh), Kate Bush, Bert Jansch, Robert Wyatt, Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records (TG, Monte Cazazza, Leather Nun, S.P.K.), Fred Frith interview, plus the R.I.O. Festival in Reims, France, 1980 (This Heat, ZNR, Eskaton, Stormy Six, Samla Mammas Manna, Tim Hodgkinson, Etron Fou Leloublan, Marc Hollander, Ghédalia Tazartès, Maggie Nicols, etc.), INA-GRM discography (François Bayle, Jean Schwarz, Guy Reibel, Jean-Claude Risset, etc.), and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy. General wear/age.
1981, Japanese
Softcover, 112 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare early issue of the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. Fool's Mate Vol. 18 October 1981. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This incredible issue with cover feature on Fred Frith and Recommended Records, plus Vini Reilly/Durutti Column, The Flying Lizards, David Cunningham, Steve Beresford, Piano Records, Phew, David Toop, Michael Nyman, Aksak Maboul, Crammed Discs, Family Fodder, Video Aventures, Band Apart, Robert Wyatt, Lidsay Cooper, Tim Hodgkinson, Nord, Ken Lockie, Landscape, Alan Gowen, Electroacoustic music, medieval heresy and satanism, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy. General wear/age.
1981, Japanese
Softcover, 224 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fool's Mate / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
Rare "Special Stock" compendium book by the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.
This special collection combines Vol. 15 + S.S in January 1981. Features: Heldon and Magma, Rock in Belgium (COS, Aksak Maboul, Marc Hollander, Julverne, Esperanto, Wallace Collection, etc.), Rough Trade Records (The Raincoats, Swell Maps, This Heat, The Fall, Young Marble Giants, Liliput, etc.), EGG Records (Patrick Vian, Fracoise Breant, Ose, Michel Magne, Christian Vander, etc.), Ash Ra Temple, Prog in Italy (PFM, Area, New Trolls, Stormy Six, etc.), Gilgamesh, The Residents, Henry Cow discography, Nurse with Wound, P.D./P16.D4/Permutative Distorsion, L.Voag, Borbetomagus, YLEM Tapes, Negativland, alchemy and the occult, The Pop Group, Bauhaus, Japan, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Vangelis, Jon Anderson, Blondie, Mike Oldfield, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Softcover, 206 pages, 24 x 16 cm
Published by
Hexen Press / France
$67.00 - In stock -
Muses No More: Portraits of Occult Women is a meandering ghost train through the lives, work, politics and beliefs of both familiar and lesser known female occultists from the distant past to the 21st century. From the freedom fighting New Orleans Voudon Queen Marie Laveau to the witch-next-door personality of Sybil Leek, these biographical portraits bring light to women often sidelined in occult spaces and memory in favour of the (white, male) heavyweights such as Arthur E. Waite, Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner.
Readers will discover that there was much more to Pamela Colman Smith’s magical undertakings than her illustrations for the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck, and that Doreen Valiente, whilst valiantly fighting for the modernisation of Wicca, was an ardent follower of televised football.
Filled with fascinating historical trivia, there are deeper narratives at play in this compendium too - the struggle for women’s liberation, pleas for modernisation of religious movements, the reign of the patriarchy in many magical traditions, and the fight for civil rights.
Thoroughly well-researched and written with the flair of an impassioned queer, feminist occultist, Muses No More tells the centuries-spanning stories of women who threw off their aprons in favour of the search for greater esoteric knowledge.
The book concludes with tried and tested personal practices and rituals, respectfully designed in honour of these wondrous women, so that we might channel their power and knowledge and pursue the mysteries of the vast unknown.
1966, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 214 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Something Else Press / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover English edition, published in 1966 by Something Else Press, New York, of "An Anecdoted Topography of Chance", arguably the most important and entertaining "Artist's Book" of the post-war period. A unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the FLUXUS and Nouveau Realisme movements, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Emmett Williams, and Roland Topor.
What is the Topography? Hard to explain an idea so simple yet so brilliantly executed. Following a rambling conversation with his dear friend Robert Filliou, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories, anecdotes; not only from the original author, but from his friends as well: a beguiling creation was born. Many of the principal participants of FLUXUS make an appearance (and texts by Higgins, Jouffroy, Kaprow, Restany, and Tinguely are included, among others). It is a novel of digressions in the manner of Tristram Shandy or Robbe-Grillet; it's a game, a poem, an encyclopaedia, a cabinet of wonders: a celebration of friendship and creativity.
The Topography personifies (and pre-dates) the whole FLUXUS spirit and constitutes one of the strangest and most compelling insights into the artist's life. From out of the banal detritus of the everyday a virtual autobiography emerges: of four perceptive, witty and eloquent members of the human species.
Translated from the French and further anecdoted by poet Emmett Williams.
First 1966 hardcover edition in Very Good condition, with Good dust jacket, some wear and tear to edges, light fading to spine, preserved in mylar wrap.
Couldn't be more highly recommended.
2023, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$35.00 - Out of stock
Clark Coolidge’s book-length meditation on a crystal–long considered a masterpiece of American avant-garde poetry–returns in a new edition.
“No other poet ever has so exquisitely, and sometimes also turbulently, written sheer sonic wonder into poetry.”–Lyn Hejinian, author of My Life and My Life in the Nineties
In the summer of 1982, Clark Coolidge received an unexpected gift of a crystal; small, clear, entirely unexceptional, the crystal nonetheless provoked the poet into writing what has long been considered his masterpiece, The Crystal Text (1986). A durational poem composed over the course of 10 months, in daybook-like entries of varying length, The Crystal Text is multifaceted and elusive, constantly interrogating itself. Is it a meditation on its titular object like Keats’s “Urn” or a radical investigation of the limits of language as a signifying system? Is the poet channeling the crystal to access its message or is the crystal channeling the poet, drawing language from him to fill its colorless emptiness? Is it dictation or improvisation? Is the poem a record of its own crystalline growth or does it capture the process of consciousness itself?
The Crystal Text refuses to resolve the questions it raises but rather inhabits its various possibilities simultaneously, resulting in one of the major works of late 20th century American avant-garde poetry. This new edition includes a preface by poet and scholar Peter Gizzi and an afterword in which Coolidge discusses the text with poet Jason Morris and City Lights editor Garrett Caples.
Associated with the New York School and subsequently inspiring the Language Poets, Coolidge remains one of the most singular and original American poets of our time.
Preface by Peter Gizzi
Afterword by Jason Morris
Afterword by Garrett Caples
2024, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$32.00 - In stock -
Foreword by René Daumal
Translated by Terry Bradford
When published in 1928, Vulturnus represented a new direction in Léon-Paul Fargue’s writing: a shift from the lyrical post-Symbolist melancholy of his early poetry to something more grandiose, dynamic, and cosmic. A long prose poem, for lack of a better term, but one that weaves together philosophical dialogue, metaphysical meditation, and mournful reminiscence delivered in a language that spirals into scientific terminology and Rabelaisian neologism.
Jolted into a nightmare aboard a long-distance train journey, the author finds himself alone yet not alone, his mind pinned like an insect, as he sets off on a journey that takes him from his hometown to other existences, accompanied by the fanfare of the planets and two companions—Pierre Pellegrin and Joseph Aussudre—who guide him as Virgil did Dante, though not through hell, but to a sketched-out terrestrial paradise in quest of a moment of eternity: a syphilis of the ether, “one foot godward, two steps brute.”
This first English translation finally introduces an essential yet underrecognized twentieth-century voice and includes an essay on the text by René Daumal, who declares that “Vulturnus suffocates me with its obviousness … I see behind Fargue the great frame of Doctor Faustroll.”
“Vulturnus is an astonishing book.”—Paul Valéry
“A rollicking interplanetary poem.”—Eugene Jolas
Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947) was the archetypal poet of Paris, with ties to everyone from Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie to Colette and Maurice Ravel. His work was admired by Rilke, Joyce, and Walter Benjamin. Though his work spanned and was sometimes associated with various literary movements, a bridge of sorts from symbolism to surrealism (though he was opposed to the latter), he kept to his own path throughout his life: a night wanderer who turned his perambulations through Paris into a unique poetry and prose.
“The greatest living poet in France.”—Walter Benjamin
“One of our greatest poets.”—Rainer Maria Rilke
“Fargue taught us to sublimate the life of everyday and make the highest poetry out of it.”—Max Jacob
2023, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$40.00 - In stock -
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Bern in 2020–2021. A cultural examination of the enigmatically iconic figure of the Dandy, both in history and as a figure for the future.
With Kai Althoff, Lutz Bacher, Kévin Blinderman / Pierre-Alexandre Mateos / Charles Teyssou, Marcel Broodthaers, Ursula Böckler, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Hanne Darboven, Stephan Dillemuth, Victoire Douniama, Lukas Duwenhögger, Cerith Wyn Evans, Sylvie Fleury, Andrea Fraser, Sophie Gogl, Gogo Graham, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, David Hammons, Birgit Jürgenssen, K Foundation, John Kelsey, Michael Krebber, Miriam Laura Leonardi, David Lieske, Mathieu Malouf, Ulrike Ottinger, Mathias Poledna, Raymond Roussel, Heji Shin, Reena Spaulings, Sturtevant, Bernadette Van-Huy, James McNeill Whistler, Virginia Woolf.
Designed by HIT.
1983 / 1995, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 176 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seirindo / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
First 1983 edition, 1995 print of Japanese ero guro (erotic grotesque) horror manga master Suehiro Maruo's DDT, a classic collection of artworks and short transgressive manga stories by Maruo (b. 1956) from the early 1980s, arguably the author's most creative period. Packed with sex, violence, gore, and maggots... "These short stories allow Maruo to give free rein to his imagination: funny and absurd, always full of references - notably to surrealism and German expressionism -, they deal with rape, murder and incest. And despite the horror and morbidity, a certain romanticism emerges, each board being able to be contemplated as a work of art in its own right. Between voyeurism and curiosity about the fate of the characters, we enter as if trapped in the fascinating world of Maruo. A work not to be put into everyone's hands."
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket. General light wear.
Suehiro Maruo (b. 1956) is a Japanese manga artist, illustrator, and painter. Maruo's nightmarish manga fall into the Japanese category of "erotic grotesque" ("ero-guro"). Though relatively few of Maruo's manga have been published outside Japan, his work enjoys an international cult following. A high school drop-out in 1972, Maruo moved to Tokyo and began working for a bookbinder. At 17, he made his first manga submission to Weekly Shōnen Jump, but it was considered by the editors to be too graphic and was rejected. Maruo temporarily removed himself from manga until November 1980 when he made his official debut as a manga artist in Ribon no Kishi at the age of 24. It was at this stage that the young artist was finally able to pursue his artistic vision without such stringent restrictions over his work’s visual content. Two years later, his first stand-alone anthology, Barairo no Kaibutsu (Rose Colored Monster) was published. Maruo was a frequent contributor to the underground manga magazine Garo and also produced illustrations for concert posters; CD jackets; magazines; novels; and various other media, including his collaboration with composer John Zorn's band Naked City. The illustrations throughout several of his works show grotesquely dark imagery, strange sexual acts / rituals, as well as sexual-violence towards minors. It is referred to as contemporary "bloody prints" muzan-e (a subset of Japanese ukiyo-e depicting violence or other atrocities.) Maruo himself featured in a 1988 book on the subject with fellow artist Kazuichi Hanawa entitled Bloody Ukiyo-e, presenting their own contemporary works alongside the traditional prints of Yoshitoshi and Yoshiiku.