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.
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 176 pages, 31 x 24.1 cm
Published by
Skira / Milan
$95.00 - In stock -
Published on occasion of the exhibition Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy: Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool curated by Dr Victoria-Noel-Johnson, Marzina Marzetti (Director of the Helly Nahmad Gallery) in collaboration with Derek Des Islets and Matthew Foster, Helly Nahmad Gallery, New York, this hardcover catalogue explores the work of Kay Sage (American, 1898—1963) and Yves Tanguy (French-American, 1900—1955), two eminent Surrealist artists who married in 1940. Particular attention will be given to Sage's fascinating life and extraordinary work, which has long been obscured by her relationship with the better-known Tanguy, a key figure of French Surrealism. As such, the publication will analyse the various stages of Sage's life and career in Italy and Paris before returning to New York in 1939, parallel to Tanguy's own exceptional work of the late 1920s—early 1950s, with the aim of highlighting how their personal and professional trajectories affected their respective work and careers thereafter. Sage's dedication to promoting and safeguarding Tanguy's legacy following his premature death in 1955 will also be explored.
1979, Spanish
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 143 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ediciones Polígrafa / Barcelona
$65.00 - Out of stock
Jorge Camacho is born in 1934 in Havana (Cuba). In 1952, he abandons his law studies and begins painting, driven by an inner strength that still remains for him mysterious. In Mexico, in 1959, he meets the painter Jose Luis Cuevas, with whom he begins a long journey to the sources of pre-Columbian cultures (Teotihuacan, Olmec, Maya, Aztec) that defines a new direction in his painting. Camacho moves to Paris in 1959, where he finds his friend the sculptor Augustin Cardenas. His first solo...
1981, English
Die cut folded exhibition card, 18 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Nigel Greenwood Inc. / London
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare die-cut folded exhibition card produced by Marc Camille Chaimowicz on the occasion of the exhibition Macquettes… at Nigel Greenwood Inc, London, 10 December, 1981—30 January, 1982.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1981, English
Fold-out booklet, 20.4 x 22.6 cm (folded), 72 x 22.6 cm (unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$50.00 - In stock -
Rare 1981 fold-out booklet published to accompany Marc Camille Chaimowicz's performance of Partial Eclipse… at the Tate Gallery, London in September, 1981.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1983, English / French
Softcover (w. 2 fabric swatches tipped in), 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Comportement Environnement Performance / Lyon
$240.00 - In stock -
Rare artist's book and catalogue designed by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, 12 Décors Textiles, published in limited edition in 1983. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, reproducing the designs of 12 textile patterns created by the artist, including two hand-printed fabric sample swatches tipped in. Accompanied by text by Hubert Besacier in English and French.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Good copy, with general wear/age to edges/spine, moisture stain to bottom corner, at worst on front board, with associated page rippling. Some markings to covers.
1973, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 18.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
$35.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published on the occasion of the major exhibition "Recent Australian Art" held at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 October-18 November 1973, featuring new work (created between 1970-1973) by close to 50 Australian artists, including many of 'The Field' artists. Each exhibited artist is profiled with a photographic portrait, potted history and blck and white reproductions of their work. Includes a foreword by Peter Laverty, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and introduction by Frances McCarthy and Daniel Thomas.
Artists: Robert Hunter, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Dick Watkins, Robert Rooney, Aleks Danko, Ewa Pachuka, Ti Parks, John Firth-Smith, Robert Jacks, Tim Johnson, Robert Hunter, Victor K, Donald Laycock, Mike Parr, Peter Kennedy, Paul Partos, Nigel Lendon, Rollin Schlicht, Alberr Shomaly, Guy Frank Stuart, William Anderson, David Aspden, Jonas Balsaitis, Peter Booth, Robert Boynes, Mike Brown, Tim Burns, Gunter Christmann, William Delafield Cook, John Davis, Bill Clements, Tony Coleing, Ross Grounds, Dale Hickey, Ian Howard, Noel Hutchison, Tony Kirkman, Richard Larter, Donald Laycock, Tony McGillick, Alan Oldfield, John Peart, Peter Powditch, Ron Robert-Swann, Rollin Schlicht, Alberr Shomaly, Guy Stuart, Michael Taylor, Imants Tillers, Tony Tuckson.
Very Good copy, light cover wear and tanning.
1988, French
14 illustrated prints in illustrated cardboard folio, 30 loose leaf pages, 21.5 x 26.5 cm
Ed. of 150,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pour l’Art Contemporain / Bourbon-Lancy
$800.00 - In stock -
Exquisite and extremely rare artist's portfolio, Chemin de Croix (Stations of the Cross), 14 drawings made by Marc Camille Chaimowicz at the Leighton Artists Colony, Parish of St Mary’s, Banff, during Easter 1988. Published in an edition of 150 copies and printed in full colour on warm, heavy paper stock, housed in illustrated cardboard folio, printed in Dijon on the presses of l'imprimerie Dips on behalf of the artist and Le Coin du Miroir, Dijon A Priori, Lyon Pour l'art contemporain, Bourbon Lancy. The 14 drawing series was created to be exhibited in the church of Lesme in Saône-et-Loire at the request of the association Pour l’Art Contemporain, Bourbon-Lancy, from July 1988—July 1989.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Very Good copy, with light age and corner/edge wear. Prints beautifully preserved within. Small chipping/closed tear to soft folio corners.
2007, English
Hardcover (pressed cloth w. plastic sleeve), 218 pages, 21 x 26.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Zürich
$1000.00 - Out of stock
One of the great artist books of our time, Marc Camille Chaimowicz's The World of Interiors disappeared from existence immediately after its publication, becoming a book of legend.
Awarded "The Most Beautiful Swiss Book" in 2007, The World of Interiors was conceived and realized by Chaimowicz (b. post-war Paris) on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. In the guise of a perfectly reproduced copy of an issue of the famous World Of Interiors magazine, the artist conceived this publication as a reference monograph and a source catalogue, ranging from his first post-Pop scatter installations to works realized in the 1990s. Looking back over nearly 30 years of work, this issue of World Of Interiors is beautifully détourned by Chaimowicz through inserting and collaging his own work (drawings, designs, paintings, photographs of installations, sculptures, his own domestic interiors, furniture, objects), personal writings, clippings from other magazines, references to Cocteau, Proust, Flaubert, Grey, Genet, Giacometti, and texts by contributing writers throughout its glossy pages. Legend has it (and we have this from the best sources) that the publishers received a 'cease and desist' letter from World Of Interiors' publisher Conde Nast immediately after its release and the majority of the print-run was destroyed, making this a very scarce and sought after book. The perfect follow-up Chaimowicz book to his gorgeous "Café du Reve" from 1985.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present. His works are in the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum collections.
A fine example of a very collectable and special book, wrapped in original rose cloth hardcover, protected under mylar wrap..
2010, English / German / French
Folio of five looseleaf pattern sheets, a letter in facsimile, and catalogue, colour offset printed, 21.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Secession / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print and collectible artist’s portfolio by Marc Camille Chaimowicz with five pattern sheets, a letter from Chaimowicz in facsimile, and an illustrated catalogue with essay by Silvia Eiblmayr (German/English and French/English). Produced by the Secession in a limited edition and published in cooperation with Musée La Piscine, Roubaix.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Like New copy.
2022, English
Flexcover (clothbound), 248 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$72.00 - In stock -
Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Marc Camille Chaimowicz – Zig Zag and Many Ribbons… at MAMC Saint-Etienne in 2022—2023, this reference monograph revisits the conceptual and sensorial developments pursued by the artist since the 1970s.
Includes a ribbon drawn by the artist as an inserted bookmark. Edited by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Anna Clifford. Text by Marie Canet. Designed by Zak Kyes.
Born in the aftermath of World War II (in 1947 in Paris) of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.
Marie Canet is a French art critic, independent curator and professor of aesthetics at the Villa Arson (Nice).
1973, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 25 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Réalités - Hachette / Paris
$690.00 - In stock -
First and only printing of one of the heaviest hitters of interior design books ever, the enormous, lavishly illustrated "Decoration : Tradition et Renouveau" (Collection Connaissance des Arts) published in 1973. Without a doubt one of the most sought after interior design books and now extremely rare.
This heavy, prestigious, cloth-bound volume travels through some of the world's most incredible domestic interiors by the 20th century's top interior designers and decorators, including Francois Catroux, Serge Royaux, Gae Aulenti, Alberto Pinto, Maria Pergay, Charles Sevigny, Martine Dufour, Isabelle Hebey, Michel Boyer, David Mlinaric, Karl Lagerfeld, Quasar Khanh, Marc du Plantier, Yves Vidal, Jacques Grange, Valentino, Aldo Jacober, David Hicks, Piero Pinto, Henri Samuel, Nanda Vigo, John Stefanidis, Paolo Tommasi, and more, including the homes of major architects, fashion designers, art and antiquities collectors, celebrities, and interior designers themselves, showcasing objets d'art, historical artifacts, furniture and decor (from Mies van der Rohe, Lucio Fontana, Nicola L, Cesar, Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, Arman, Gae Aulenti, Marcel Breuer, Cy Twombly, Le Corbusier, François-Xavier Lalanne and Claude Lalanne, Quasar Khanh, Roger Tallon, Pierre Jeanneret, Enzo Mari, Pierre Paulin, Carla Venosta, Nanda Vigo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Marcel Breuer, Ruth Francken, Afra + Tobia Scarpa, Charles Eames, Joe Columbo, Verner Panton, Bruno Munari, Mario Bellini, Henri Michaux, Jean Fautrier, Tom Wesselman, Sonia Delaunay, Marimekko, Superstudio, Man Ray... just to name a few) adorning decorated interiors ranging from "Tradition" ("a formula that allows one to integrate older items, furniture and artwork in a contemporary context"); "le Renouveau" (contemporary interiors of the 1970's and "a section dedicated to design of the time offering a selection of the finest furniture, objects and accessories created by top designers"); and "l'Avant-garde" (displaying some of the most experimental, idiosyncratic, and forward-thinking interiors that bring together modern materiality, pop art and space design to create inspired interior living architectural spaces).
"How to reconcile antique furniture and contemporary structures? Can we adapt modern furniture within a traditionally inspired framework? This book, illustrated with beautiful photographs, mostly in color, reproducing the finest achievements of the great contemporary designers, responds to these questions."
Preface by Francis Spar. All texts in French. Hundreds of beautiful photographs in vivid colour and b/w. A must-have for the interior design lover.
Very good, beautifully preserved copy, strong binding, and seldom now seen with original dust jacket (also VG).
1970, German / French
Softcover, 118 pages, 21 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich / Zürich
$200.00 - In stock -
Rare, important exhibition catalogue designed by Walter Diethelm, published on the occasion of the exceptional exhibition Text Buchstabe Bild (Text, Letter, Image), held at the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft Helmhaus Zürich, July 11—August 23, 1970. Preface by Felix Andreas Baumann. "The point is to present this literature, which is located between writing and images, text and graphics and around the tertium comparationis of typography, to an audience that is probably not too familiar with the techniques and variants of “concrete literature”—from the preface. An incredible and varied anthology of the experimental, poetic, graphic interplay of text and image, profusely illustrated in b/w, accompanied by texts in German and French by Stéphane Mallarmé, F.T. Marinetti, Tristan Tzara, Oyvind Fahlström, El Lissitzky, André Breton, Eugen Gomringer, Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Jan Hamilton Finlay, Pierre Garnier, Max Bense, Reinhard Döhl, Carlfriedrich Claus, Seiichi Niikuni, Henri Chopin, Franz Mon, Jiri Kolár, and Bob Cobbing.
Artists included: Stéphane Mallarmé, Arno Holz, Christian Morgenstern, F.T. Marinetti, Carlo Carrà, Lacerba, Ardengo Soffici, Hugo Ball, Georges Braque, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Amédée Ozenfant, Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara, Raoul Hausmann, Fernand Léger, Richard Hülsenbeck, Vincente Huidobro, Francis Picabia, Jean Pougny, Kurt Schwitters, Paul Klee, Bruno Adler, Jean Epstein, Theo Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky, Jozef Peeters, Sonja Delaunay-Terk, Iliazd, Friedrich Kiesler, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Käthe Steinitz, Kurt Schwitters, Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, Henryk Berlewi, Farkas Molnár, Zenit, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkmann, Walter Gropius, John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Le Corbusier, and Georges Hugnet.
Very Good ex-NGV library copy, well preserved with only light wear and "National Gallery of Victoria" light stamp to block edge and lower back-cover. No internal stamping/marking.
1970, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Bischoffberger / Zürich
$35.00 - Out of stock
1970 catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition of Swiss artist Willy Müller-Brittnau (1938—2003) at the Galerie d'art Moderne, Basel; Editions Bischoffberger, Zürich; Galerie Riehentor, Basel, exhibiting the striking hard-edge/colour field works of Müller-Brittnau spanning 1964—1970, boldly illustrated throughout in full-colour. Like many Swiss artists of the period, Willy Müller-Brittnau started out as a graphic designer. First influenced by American action painting in 1958, he went on to develop a geometric pictorial language and made outstanding contributions to colour field painting and signal art in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to painting, drawing and prints, he created numerous site-specific, sculptural works and developed colour schemes for buildings. Includes portraits of the artist and biography.
Good—Very Good copy with light pinching to spine/light cover/corner wear.
1958, Dutch
Softcover (staple-bound), 26 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare early Jackson Pollock catalogue published by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (SM Catalogue nr 189) in 1958, designed by the legendary Willem Sandberg. Profusely illustrated in b/w with Pollock's artworks, including a colour centrefold, printed across various paper stocks, accompanied by biography, exhibition history, catalogue and text by Sam Hunter (translated into Dutch).
Very Good copy but ex-National Gallery of Victoria library copy, therefore two stamps to cover, plus staple holes to top right of cover, otherwise VG throughout.
1983 + 1985, English / Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 18 + 28 pages (w. fold-out), 25 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gatodo Gallery / Japan
$150.00 - Out of stock
Very rare set of two handsome Japanese catalogues on the work of American artist John McLaughlin, published in 1983 and 1985. The first volume is "John McLaughlin: Paintings 1951-1966", documenting an exhibition at Gatodo Gallery in Japan in 1983. It includes texts by the artist, portrait, biography, bibliography, a checklist of works exhibited, and 8 superb tipped-in colour plates. The second is "John McLaughlin : Late Work", documenting an exhibition at Gatodo Gallery in Japan in 1985. It includes texts by the artist, portrait, biography, bibliography, a checklist of works exhibited, and 5 superb tipped-in colour plates, including fold-out panel and exhibition view. Text in both Japanese and English.
John Dwyer McLaughlin (1898 – 1976) was a highly pivotal and significant American abstract painter. Based primarily in California, he was a pioneer in minimalism and hard-edge painting.
Good—Very Good condition, both volumes clean and very good throughout internally, only with small sticker peel to cover of vol. I, and some small markings to covers of vol. II.
1967, English
Hardcover, 342 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf
$220.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1967 European hardcover edition of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, published by the legendary edition hansjörg meyer. The book's editor, Emmett Williams, "as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance." An Anthology of Concrete Poetry was the first anthology on the international movement of Concrete poetry, published subsequently by the legendary Something Else Press in 1967 in America. The movement itself began in the early 1950s, in Germany–through Eugen Gomringer, who borrowed the term “concrete” from the art of his mentor, Max Bill–and in Brazil, through the Noigandres group, which included the de Campos brothers and Decio Pignatari. Over the course of the 1960s it exploded across Europe, America and Japan, as other protagonists of the movement emerged, such as Dieter Roth, Öyvind Fahlström, Ernst Jandl, bpNichol, Mary Ellen Solt, Jackson Mac Low, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Kitasono Katue. By the late 1960s, poet Jonathan Williams could proclaim: “If there is such a thing as a worldwide movement in the art of poetry, Concrete is it.” The work of the 77 writers collected in this anthology varies greatly in its aims and forms, but all can be said to emphasize the visual dimension of language, manipulating individual letters and minimal semantic units to produce poems that are for contemplating as much as for reading. Emmett Williams, the book’s editor, added explanatory commentary for the poems and biographies of their authors, making this volume–long out of print–the definitive anthology of this movement, which has so influenced artists and writers of subsequent generations.
Writers and artists included: Friedrich Achleitner, Alain Arias-Misson, H. C. Artmann, Ronaldo Azeredo, Stephen Bann, Carlo Belloli, Max Bense, Edgard Braga, Claus Bremer, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Paul de Vree, Reinhard Döhl, Torsten Ekbom, Öyvind Fahlström, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Larry Freifeld, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Matthias Goeritz, Eugen Gomringer, Ludwig Gosewitz, Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal, José Lino Grünewald, Brion Gysin, Al Hansen, Václav Havel, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Åke Hodell, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ernst Jandl, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Hiro Kamimura, Kitasono Katue, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Jackson Mac Low, Hansjörg Mayer, Cavan McCarthy, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan, Maurizio Nannucci, bp Nichol, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Seiichi Niikuni, Ladislav Novák, Yuksel Pazarkaya, Décio Pignatari, Vlademir Dias Pino, Luiz Angelo Pinto, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Diter Rot, Gerhard Rühm, Aram Saroyan, John J. Sharkey, Edward Lucie Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Adriano Spatola, Daniel Spoerri, Vagn Steen, Andre Thomkins, Enrique Uribe Valdivielso, Franz Van Der Linde, Franco Verdi, Emmett Williams, Jonathan Williams, Pedro Xisto and Fujitomi Yasuo.
"Emmett Williams, as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance. However it is far too soon to regard any anthology of Concrete Poetry as being definitive since the movement is extremely active and major new works have yet to appear in this most interesting of current poetry movements." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.
Very Good copy with some light edge wear to thick covers, general light age/tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20 x 14 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$34.00 - In stock -
Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur.
This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, how to dream, how to decode a crowded consciousness, how to find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, and how to sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He'd jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he'd incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Therefore each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events and peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, and other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger and Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don't rhyme; and though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas' lobes. Koestenbaum's poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, and open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Imagine: the training wheels have been removed from poetry's bicycle, and the wheeling flâneur is finally allowed a word pie equal to fantasy's appetite. Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you're stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.
2024, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.
In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel Adnan traces with depth and emotion the founding experiences of her artistic approach, between poetry and painting. From her youth in Lebanon, her American years in New York and California, to her late recognition at Documenta in 2012 and her life in France, the conversation covers philosophy, painting, poetry and aesthetics, as well Adnan's views on history and politics in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. These transcripts usher the experiences and observations of Adnan's long and rich life into an intimate and spontaneous conversation with a dear friend―a window on the “universe” of her imagination.
1990, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21.6 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Feral House / Los Angeles
$40.00 - Out of stock
"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard
Two thousand years have passed since the death of Christ and the world is going mad. Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?
APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.
First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.—burb from this expanded and revised 1990 edition.
Good copy with general wear/"kinkiness".
1992, English
Softcover, 173 pages, 24 x 15 cm
Published by
Dalkey Archive Press / US
$32.00 - Out of stock
English edition of this 1933 classic surrealist novel by René Crevel (1900-1935), a bisexual communist dadaist who suffered a traumatic religious upbringing and suffered from tuberculosis. Crevel is considered to be one of the most important writers of surrealist fiction, a true genius of the movement. Translated by Thomas Buckley, this edition includes Ezra Pound's well-known essay on Crevel as a foreword, and an introduction by Edouard Roditi.
Imagine, if you can, Freud and Proust sitting down for a chat with Zippy the Pinhead and the marquis de Sade. Then, just when things are starting to get a bit silly, in walks Karl Marx with a dead serious face to deliver a vitriolic diatribe. After he has finished his speech, Jacques Lacan enters and slips a couch under the narrator, who begins psychoanalyzing himself and his text. Zippy soon prevails, however, and the narrative has turned into a political allegory with characters out of Felix the Cat: a surrealist, graphic (historiographic, geographic, pornographic) version of The Romance of the Rose. Rene Crevel's 1933 novel Putting My Foot in It (Les Pieds dans le plat) has long been considered a classic of the surrealist period, but has never been translated into English until now. Loosely structured around a luncheon attended by thirteen guests, the novel is a surrealistic critique of the intellectual corruption of post-World War I France, especially the capitalist bourgeoisie and its supporter, the Catholic Church. The novel begins with an account of the family of the major character, known as the "Prince of Journalists." This bizarre family - the grandparents a soldier and a sodomized woman, the parents an orphaned epileptic and a hunchback - is matched by Crevel's bizarre syntax and vocabulary: nouns that initially appear legitimate, intact, and respectable, soon decompose into obscene epithets, making other nouns, both common and proper, suspect. The story continues in this way to deconstruct itself on many levels - literary, semantic, psychological, ideological - until the final chapter, when the luncheon degenerates in a way reminiscent of a Bunuel film and all of the novel'scharacters appear in a dirty movie entitled The Geography Lesson, a final metaphor for the corruption of European society between the world wars.
2021, English
Hardcover, 244 pages,16.5 x 13 cm
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$38.00 - In stock -
Expanded 50th anniversary edition of the City Lights classic of eco-feminist-Zen Beat poetry, featuring fifteen new poems. Simultaneously released with Diane di Prima's Spring and Autumn Annals on the one-year anniversary of her passing.
By turns a handbook of countercultural living, a manual for street protest, and a feminist broadside against the repressive state apparatus, Revolutionary Letters is a modern classic, as relevant today as it was at its inception, 50 years ago.
During the tumult of 1968, Beat poet Diane di Prima began writing her "letters," poems filled with a potent blend of utopian anarchism and Zen-tinged ecological awareness that were circulated via underground newspapers and stapled pamphlets. In 1971, Lawrence Ferlinghetti published the first collection of these poems in his iconic Pocket Poets Series, and di Prima would go on to publish four subsequent editions, expanding the collection each time. During the last years of her life, di Prima got to work on the final iteration of this lifelong project, collecting all of her previously published "letters" and adding the new work, poems written from 2007 up to the time of her death in October 2020. Published in a board-bound edition that proudly features the original edition's cover art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Praise for Revolutionary Letters, 50th Anniversary Edition:
"There is a generosity and affection in Revolutionary Letters that I find myself returning to, always, when I'm at my most cynical and feeling lost for any understanding of what a better world might look like. When I need to be grounded and re-centered in my understanding of community care as a living, breathing, full-time mission. And, quite simply, when I need to be reminded of how language can begin on the page, and echo far beyond."-Hanif Abdurraqib
"What's astonishing about Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters is how these poems are adamantly useful. A manual of insurgent instruction, these poems tell you how to mitigate tear gas and sleep deprivation, eat a healthy diet, and overthrow the state. This book is ever more urgent in our moment, as a resurgent left faces down the apocalypse. Revolutionary Letters is a time machine towards a better future."-Ken Chen
"With this new and expanded edition we are offered a window onto a master poet redefining revolution over her lifetime. Di Prima continues to interrogate the ways in which we have been taught to live, love, eat, write, fight and take control. How can we make the most of this book and its wisdom? It's not enough to simply read it or even to write our own Revolutionary Letters. These poems are not realized until we are called upon to act."-Cedar Sigo
"How do 'we' keep fighting? There is no one way, but sometimes you think about lines in Diane di Prima's Revolutionary Letters. Di Prima's 'letters' feel like they were written to the all of you that always is somewhere coming together. And here you thought this classic couldn't get any better."-Wendy Trevino
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
Never to be missed, the first 1993 over-sized hardcover edition of Araki's unbeatable Erotos photo book, our favourite of his books. In this work, controversial and legendary Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki makes a radical departure from his usual portraits and cityscapes. A exquisitely printed collection of arrestingly primal close-ups of parts of the body as well as various objects—pipes, fruit, wet sidewalks, flowers, snails—Erotos delves deep into the erotic subconscious. Reproduced in gorgeous glossy duotone full-page bleed, bound in heavy gloss red, foiled hardcovers. A stunning book! Highly recommended.
Nobuyoshi Araki is a prolific Japanese photographer who has produced thousands of photographs over the course of his career. He became famous for “Un Voyage Sentimental” (1971), a series of photos depicting both banal and deeply intimate scenes of his wife and lifelong muse, essayist Aoki Yoko (whom the artist credits for making him a photographer), during their honeymoon. To date the 75 year old has produced 450 photo books and counting. With a repertoire that knows no boundaries, Araki's diaristic style of photography has captured the world around him (his cat Chiro, the people and landscapes of Japan and his travels, flowers, family), though it is Araki’s intensely sexual imagery that has elicited particular controversy and fascination throughout his career. Similarly to Helmut Newton, Araki has often addressed subversive themes — such as bondage in the Japanese style Kinbaku — in his provocative depictions of female nudes. He typically works in black-and-white photography, and his hallmark style is deliberately casual. “Rather than shooting something that looks like a professional photograph, I want my work to feel intimate, like someone in the subject’s inner circle shot them,” he says. Pushing against the world of commercialised photography, he is celebrated for his history of self-publishing and distributing his work, beginning with his Xerox Photo Albums of 1970. Amongst many others, Araki has collaborated with American photographer Nan Goldin and Icelandic musician Björk.
Very Good copy in Very Good dust jacket with small amount of wear and tear.
2024, English
Softcover, 252 pages, 11 x 17 cm
Published by
Index Journal / Melbourne
$35.00 - In stock -
Joseph Conrad is a major figure in modern literature. Before his writing career was established in 1899 with 'Heart of Darkness', Conrad was a merchant seafarer and eventually a shipmaster of vessels that regularly sailed between Europe and its antipodes, with several visits to Australia & New Zealand. In 'Marlow’s Dream', Martin Edmond shows in vivid detail how Conrad both collected and began to arrange the tales that would later appear in his fiction during these voyages. Intertwining Conrad’s biography with his own, Edmond masterfully demonstrates how Conrad’s celebrated stories were lifted straight out of his experiences as an itinerant mariner who had spent countless days in antipodean ports between 1878–93.
Martin Edmond is the author of more than twenty books. He has a Doctorate of Creative Arts from Western Sydney University where he wrote his dissertation, which later appeared as the book Battarbee and Namatjira. Edmond’s works of memoir and biography about art and artists include Dark Night: Walking with McCahon, The Supply Party (on artist Ludwig Becker), Chronicle of the Unsung, winner of the 2005 Montana Book Award for Biography, and The Resurrection of Philip Clairmont. His other books include Luca Antara, Waimarino County, The Autobiography of My Father and The Expatriates (the latter including a history of Joe Trapp, the long-serving director of the Warburg Institute who was from New Zealand). In 2013 he received the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction in recognition of hisoutstanding contribution to literature.
1984 / 2003, English
Softcover, 340 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by
Canongate Books / Edinburgh
$39.00 - Out of stock
The unforgettable, challenging and experimental second novel from the author of Lanark. Published in 1984, 1982, Janine remains Scottish author Alasdair Gray's most controversial work. Its use of pornography as a narrative device attracted much criticism, although others, including Gray himself, consider it his best work.
Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover and businessman is alone in a hotel room, drinking whisky, fantasising about sex and contemplating suicide. As he tries to distance himself from reality, his lonely, alcohol-fuelled fantasies are interrupted by a flood of memories, reminding him of his own shortcomings.
An unforgettably imaginative book, deeply experimental in its form and charged with a dark humour, 1982, Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy. Gray's exploration of politics, religion, powerlessness and pornography has lost none of its power to shock and entertain.
Introduced by Will Self.
"Perhaps the finest artist/writer of his generation . . . Tumultuous, inventive, heart-rending . . . A landmark work"—Will Self
"1982, Janine has a verbal energy, an intensity of vision that has mostly been missing from the English novel since D.H. Lawrence . . . Gray is a natural storyteller and it is the wit and energy of his language that keep the rendering of Jock's lonely, wasted life from being unbearably depressing. The richness of this novel and the pleasures of its language and form are sufficient affirmation, a real message of hope"—New York Times
"Made me realise that contemporary fiction would still be a vivid and vital way of interpreting the world . . . 1982, Janine revived my flagging impetus to continue writing myself"—Jonathan Coe
"1982, Janine is not pornography but a thoughtful and sad study of the human predicament; to be trapped in a world where the little man, woman or country will always be exploited by the big bullies"—Irish Independent