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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
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.
2019, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - Out of stock
Eric Kroll's "Every Mother’s Nightmare" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2019. Second Extended Edition.
Eric David Kroll is an American photojournalist, fetish photographer, erotica historian, and book editor.
2021, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - In stock -
Nobuyoshi Araki's "Polanography" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2021. First Edition.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. Celebrated the world-over as one of Japan's leading, most original photographers, to date Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
2018, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 300,
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - Out of stock
"Selected Drawings from 1950 to 1990" is a limited edition publication dedicated to the rarely seen drawings of the reclusive and mysterious Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý. Published in 2017 by Innen Books in Zürich in an edition of 300 copies only.
Miroslav Tichy (1926-2011)
After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague (1945-48), Miroslav Tichy withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia, Czech Republic. In the late 1950s he quit painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. He later mounted them on hand-made frames, added finishing touches with pencil, and thus moved them from photography in the direction of drawing. The result are works of strikingly unusual formal qualities, which disregard the rules of conventional photography. They constitute a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of feminine beauty in a small town under the Czechoslovak Communist regime.
2020, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - Out of stock
Richard Kern's "Extra High" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2020. First Edition.
Richard Kern (b. 1954) is an American underground filmmaker, writer and photographer. He first came to prominence as part of the cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films like The Right Side of My Brain and Fingered, which featured personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, Karen Finley and Henry Rollins. Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence and perversion and was involved in the Cinema of Transgression movement, a term coined by Nick Zedd.
2016, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Ed. of 500,
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - In stock -
Limited edition publication dedicated to the drawings of William Crawford, published in 2016 by Innen Books in Zürich in an edition of 500 copies.
Published in collaboration with Delmes & Zander and Ampersand Gallery.
William Crawford's drawings were discovered in an abandoned house in Oakland, California. His work brings to mind characteristics of prison drawings, an impression confirmed by the fact that several were made on the backs of prison roster sheets dated 1997. These printouts, however, were cut down the middle, so the exact prison from which they originate is unknown. But given their origin in the Bay Area and the fact that several drawings include San Francisco landmarks, it's possible that Crawford made the work in a California state prison. Other than this information drawn from the archive itself, nothing is known about Crawford's life. Indeed, we only know his name because he signed just a few of the drawings, either as Bill, William or WM Crawford.
The archive appears to have consisted of several books, with individual drawings in sequences of 30 or more adding up to tell complex visual stories. Several include written captions or fragments of conversation between male and female characters. These sequences, however, have been broken up over the years and reach us now in a fragmentary and fascinating collection of hundreds of delicate pencil drawings. The work conveys the intense sense of sexual longing of a man with an urge to tell dynamic stories.
The drawings, which resemble the eroticism of Eric Stanton, the exaggerated male anatomy of Tom of Finland or the ample breasts of a John Currin, show scantily dressed women, drug use, cuckolding and orgies. The details of his interiors, the hairdos and style of dress suggest that Crawford might have come of age in the late 70s or early 80s. A cast of recurring figures populate the drawings, notably one man with a short afro and a moustache who often figures at the center of events, presumably the artist William Crawford himself.
Remarkably, given the number of drawings, there is little to no repetition in the work. Crawford’s inventive eye for sexual positions, facial expressions and gestures of hand and body was vast and masterful. Simple geometric details and architectural subtleties define the unusual settings where the action unfolds. We see rooms shown from unusual angles, features that are hinted at, erased or altogether omitted and articles of clothing that are drawn with obsessive precision. This singular and original drawing style compels us to immerse ourselves in the world William Crawford created, more dream than documentation, more fantasy than perversion.
In reviewing "System and Vision" at David Zwirner, an exhibition organized in collaboration with Delmes & Zanderit and featuring the work of Williams, The New Yorker wrote, "William Crawford's orgiastic illustrations on the backs of prison rosters haven an erotic intensity that rivals anything by Hans Bellmer or Pierre Klossowski."
2021, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Brad Phillips' "Delete Instagram" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2021. First Edition.
Brad Phillips is a contemporary Canadian artist and writer. He is best known for his work around subjects like mental illness, suicide, fakery, addiction and pop culture. His first book of short stories, Essays and Fictions, was published in 2019.
2018, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 16.5 x 23.6 cm
Ed. of 500,
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$28.00 - In stock -
Limited edition publication from Innen Books in Zürich dedicated to the erotic drawings of the great Francis Picabia. Selected works from 1922 to 1950, published in an edition of 1000 copies only.
Francis Picabia (22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet, typographist, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence. After experimenting with Impressionism and pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the defining figures in the Dada movement in the United States and in France; indeed, Andre Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. He was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.
2020, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 14 x 20 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
Nieves / Zurich
$18.00 - In stock -
Raymond Pettibon's "Selected Works From 1982 to 2011" zine, published by Innen Books and Nieves, Zürich, in 2020.
Second Edition.
Raymond Pettibon is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art mainly for groups on SST Records, owned and operated by his older brother, Greg Ginn.
2020, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$18.00 - Out of stock
Susan Te Kahurangi King's "Selected Works 1958 – 1980", published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2020. First edition.
Susan Te Kahurangi King (b. 1951, Te Aroha) is a New Zealand artist self-taught artist whose ability to speak declined by the age of four, and by the age of eight stopped speaking altogether. From an early age she communicated solely through her art. She has methodically created an entire analogous world through extraordinary, surreal, cartoon(ish) drawings using pen, graphite, coloured pencil, crayon and ink. From her childhood drawings, to her notebooks, to her mature work of the 1970s and ’80s up until the point, sometime in the 1980s, when King stopped drawing. In 2008 King returned to art, moving beyond representation.
2019, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 16.5 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
Centre d’édition Contemporaine / Geneva
$29.00 - Out of stock
Susan Te Kahurangi King's "Selected Works 1965–1980", published by Innen Books, Zürich with Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, in 2019. First edition.
Susan Te Kahurangi King (b. 1951, Te Aroha) is a New Zealand artist self-taught artist whose ability to speak declined by the age of four, and by the age of eight stopped speaking altogether. From an early age she communicated solely through her art. She has methodically created an entire analogous world through extraordinary, surreal, cartoon(ish) drawings using pen, graphite, coloured pencil, crayon and ink. From her childhood drawings, to her notebooks, to her mature work of the 1970s and ’80s up until the point, sometime in the 1980s, when King stopped drawing. In 2008 King returned to art, moving beyond representation.
1988, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1988 edition of the 1978 translation of Comte de Lautréamont's Maldoror and Poems.
"Darkly poetic, this modern translation conveys the unique eloquence of the original text. This volume also contains a translation of the epigrammatic Poésies.
Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece."—publisher's blurb
Very Good copy.
1986, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Marlborough / New York
$40.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
Scarce 1986 catalogue of Antonio López García: Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings, 1965—1986, published by Marlborough, New York, on the occasion of the exhibition, April 3—26, 1986. Illustrated throughout with many works in colour and b/w, accompanied by introductory text by Francisco Nieva, biography, bibliography.
Antonio López García (b. 1936) is a Spanish painter and sculptor, known for his realistic style. He is criticized by some modern artists for what they consider neo-academism, but has been praised by leading art critics, such as Robert Hughes, who considered him "the greatest realist artist alive" in 1986.
Good—VG copy. Light cover wear, otherwise Very Good copy throughout.
1978, French
Offset poster (74.5 x 50.5 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Claude Bernard / Paris
$180.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous vintage exhibition poster from the late 1970s for an exhibition of drawings by Balthus (Polish-French, born Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, 1908—2001) held at the Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, 1978—1979. Issued by the gallery in a beautiful offset print, printed by Moderne de Lion, Paris, it reproduces a drawing of a standing nude female figure with gold metallic ink for the texts.
A stunning collector's item, ready to frame.
Dimensions : 74.5 x 50.5 cm
Very Good condition, well preserved.
1961 / 1972, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 16 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1961 edition, 1972 original City Lights ($1.50) printing of Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish (and Other Poems 1958—1960).
“In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experience so rarely. I took it to be supernatural and gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own unchanging desire for each other.”—Allen Ginsberg from Kaddish
Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.
Good copy, cover wear, marking, tanning.
1968 / 9170, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 16 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1968 Ed, Second 1970 original City Lights printing ($2) of Planet News "collecting seven years’ Poesy scribed to 1967 begins with electronic politics disassociation & messianic rhapsody TV Baby in New York, continues picaresque around the globe, elan perceptions notated at Mediterranean, Galilee & Ganges till next breakthrough, comedown Poem at heart & soul last days in Asia The Change 1963; tenement doldrums & police-state paranoia in Manhattan then half year behind Socialist Curtain climaxed as Kral Majales May King Prague 1965, same years’ erotic gregariousness writ as Who Be Kind To for International Poetry Incarnation Albert Hall London; next trip West Coast thru center America Midwest Wichita Vortex Sutra . . . at last across Atlantic Wales Visitation promethian text recollected in emotion revised in tranquility continuing tradition of ancient Nature Language mediates between psychedelic inspiration and humane ecology & integrated acid classic Unitive Vision with democratic eyeball particulars-book closes on politics to exorcise Pentagon phantoms who cover Earth with dung-colored gas."—Allen Ginsberg, May 26, 1968
Famous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, N.J. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote "Kaddish" 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile." His other famous poetry collections including The Fall of America, Howl, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, and Reality Sandwiches are also published by City Lights Publishers.
Good copy, cover wear, marking, tanning.
1965, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 20.2 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
New Directions / New York
$55.00 - Out of stock
First New Directions English translation, published by New Directions in 1965. With a contribution by James Laughlin.
The macabre but beautiful work, Les Chants de Maldoror, has achieved a considerable reputation as one of the earliest and most extraordinary examples of Surrealist writing. It is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religious fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautréamont: “He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance.”
Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse, self-styled Comte de Lautréamont, except that he was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1846 and died in Paris at the age of twenty-four. When first published in 1868-9, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the nineties the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Léon Bloy, Maeterlinck, and Rémy de Gourmont. Later still, Lautréamont was to be canonized as one of their principal “ancestors” by the Paris Surrealists.
This edition, translated by Guy Wernham, includes also a long introduction to a never-written, or now lost, volume of poetry. Thus, except for a few letters, it gives all the surviving literary work of Lautréamont.
Very Good with light wear and tanning.
1974, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Newcastle Publishing / Hollywood
$25.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this 1974 anthology of stories by Lord Dunsany, published by Newcastle Publishing in Hollywood, with cover illustration by Sidney Sime.
"LORD DUNSANY (1878-1957) was born in London with the family name of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. A man of action and courage, the 18th Baron Dunsany loved to hunt and roam the outdoors, and travelled extensively around the world. He first became famous through his plays, produced by W. B. Yeats at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, but is his early tales of a wondrous, dreamlike world of his own invention that have made many consider him the greatest fantasy writer of all time. Just as William Morris and H. Rider Haggard shaped the course of the fantasy novel, so Dunsany altered the course of the fantastic short story with such collections as TIME AND THE GODS (1906) and THE BOOK OF WONDER (1912). His influence can be traced throughout the works of such fantasists as James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. And nowhere is the jewel-like quality of Dunsany's prose distilled into such glittering essence as in the delightful and eerie short stories and parables in his 1915 collection, FIFTY-ONE TALES, out of print for many years. We are happy to bring you this new edition of a neglected classic by a true Master of Fantasy."—from back cover.
Very Good copy.
1982, English
Softcover, 262 pages, 21 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Johns Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$45.00 - In stock -
Scarce first paperback edition of Guy Davenport's first book, Tatlin!, a collection of six stories, published by John Hopkins in 1982. When American author, artist, and professor, Guy Davenport (1927—2005) wasn't producing essays and commentary about his friend Ezra Pound, Balthus, Homer, Paul Cadmus, or Charles Burchfield, the devotee of the French utopian philosopher Charles Fourier was producing original fiction works both deeply edifying and unclassifiable.
Tatlin!, Guy Davenport's first collection of fiction, draws on history (real or imagined) to re-create events from the lives of characters as diverse as Franz Kafka, the Soviet engineer-painter-theoretician Tatlin, and the ancient Greek philosopher Herakleitos. These six stories are unified by their dominant themes: that the modern is a renaissance of the archaic, that our age is in a quandary as to what is animate and what is inanimate, that the belief that time can be reversed might be more congenial to mankind than reiterated mechanization. Davenport's tales are brilliant—and always surprising.
Guy Davenport was a writer, illustrator, teacher, and scholar. He is best known for his modernist-style short stories, but his range of works is wide, spanning poetry, translation, and criticism. He was a professor of English for three decades, having taught at Haverford College and the University of Kentucky.
Davenport published over 40 books, among them collections of short stories, translations from the Greek, illustrated works, a novel, and critical studies on literature, culture, and art. Among his five collections of poems are Flowers and Leaves (1966; 1991) and Thasos and Ohio: Poems and Translations, 1950–1980 (1986). He received a MacArthur fellowship, an O. Henry Award, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel award for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Very Good copy.
1970, English
Softcover, 374 pages, 21 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$50.00 - In stock -
Scarce first 1970 edition of Kropotkin's Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, published by the MIT Press, edited with an introduction by Martin A. Miller.
The selection of this anthology is designed to reveal such fundamental conceptions as Kropotkin's interpretation of the role of anarchism in modern history, his criticism of capitalism, his theory of revolution, and his views of the ideals to be realized in the postrevolutionary society of the future.
The editor of this anthology writes that anarchism in the late nineteenth century combined within itself the extremes of intellectuals such as Kropotkin and Tolstoy surrounded by an aura of unimpeachable moral conduct, together with assassins and bandit-outlaws such as Ravachol and Sazonov. What these widely disparate individuals shared was a common attitude toward society and the state. It was an attitude of profound alienation cutting across all social class lines from urban aristocrat to rural peasant.
This anthology contains selected essays and correspondence of Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin, who was, after Bakunin's death in 1876, unquestionably the most widely read and respected theorist of anarchism. The selection is designed to reveal such fundamental conceptions as Kropotkin's interpretation of the role of anarchism in modern history, his criticism of capitalism, his theory of revolution, and his views of the ideals to be realized in the postrevolutionary society of the future. The theoretical writings are supplemented by more concrete articles dealing specifically with conditions in nineteenth-century Russia--a society confronted by an authentic revolutionary opposition. Kropotkin's analysis of the revolution itself is implicit in the report of his meeting with Lenin and in his letters to the Bolshevik leader. The letters to Nettlau, Steffen, and Brandes present additional concerns which are closely related to the large themes of anarchism and revolution described in the essays.
Martin Miller's introduction surveys and analyzes the most significant aspects of Kropotkin's life and thought: Kropotkin's formative years in Russia, 1842-1876, and the origins of his anarchist thinking (military service in eastern Siberia, the influence of the works of Proudhon and Bakunin, his role in the Chaikovskii Circle); his years as an emigre in western Europe, 1976-1917, and the ripening of his political thought (editor of Le Révolté, his views on propaganda by the deed and on Marxist socialism); and his last years in the Soviet Union, 1917-1921 (the revolution and civil war, his meeting and correspondence with Lenin).
Good copy with general age wear. Previous owners name.
1976, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Sargent Porter / Massachusetts
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1976 English edition of Kropotkin's Mutual Aid : A Factor of Evolution, published by Extending Horizons / Sargent Porter, Massachusetts. The fascinating work of a Russian prince-turned-anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Mutual Aid is a pioneering treatise on cooperation and reciprocity, from the major anarchist thinker.
"Don't compete! - competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!"
Welcome to the anarchist history of the world. In this lively, provocative work, Peter Kropotkin argues that 'mutual aid' is a natural instinct in all of us, animal and human. Cooperation, reciprocity, support: these, for Kropotkin, are the overlooked foundations of our history.
From the earliest days of evolution through to artisanal guilds, indigenous nomads and even the Royal National Lifeboat Association, it is a pragmatic, mutually beneficial bond to our fellow humans that has allowed us to survive. In this, Kropotkin challenges all the major orthodoxies of his age, from individualism and social Darwinism to Marxist theories of the saviour state. Instead, these essays insist that a better life for all of us - and our planet - begins when we reject competition, and embrace the local, the mutual and the collective.
One of the world's first international celebrities, Kropotkin was known as a brilliant scientist, famous for his work on animal and human cooperation, but also for his role as a founder and vocal proponent of anarchism. Kropotkin's path to fame was unexpected and labyrinthine, with asides in prison, breathtaking 50,000-mile journeys through the wastelands of Siberia, and banishment, for one reason or another, from most respectable Western countries of the day. In his homeland of Russia, Peter went from being Czar Alexander II's favored teenage page, to a young man enamored with the theory of evolution, to a convicted felon, jail-breaker and general agitator, eventually being chased halfway around the world by the Russian Secret police for his radical - some might (and did) say enlightened - political views.
Both while in jail, and while on the run when he was entertaining and enlightening huge crowds, Kropotkin found the energy and concentration to write books on a dazzling array of topics: evolution and behavior, ethics, the geography of Asia, anarchism, socialism and communism, penal systems, the coming industrial revolution in the East, the French Revolution, and the state of Russian literature. Though seemingly disparate topics, a common thread - the scientific law of mutual aid, which guided the evolution of all life on earth - tied these works together. This law boils down to Kropotkin's deep-seated conviction that what we today would call altruism and cooperation - but what the Prince called mutual aid - was the driving evolutionary force behind all social life, be it in microbes, animals or humans. Today, anthropologists, political scientists, economists and psychologists publish hundreds of studies each year on human cooperation, and researchers in these fields are just beginning to realize that so many of the topics they are investigating were first suggested and promulgated by Peter Kropotkin.
Good copy with general age wear. Previous owners name.
1972, English
Softcover, 330 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Doubleday Anchor / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
First 1972 edition of The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss, edited by Richard and Fernande DeGeorge and published by Anchor Books. Barthes, Marx, Freud, Saussure, Lacan, Foucault, Jakobson, Althusser...
"The first purpose of this volume is to make representative writings from the most eminent structuralist thinkers easily available. They represent a variety of fields and have, in a sense, pioneered a new approach; they are consequently interdisciplinary sources of valuable insights. The second purpose is to help place structuralism in a historical perspective. Marx, Freud, and Saussure are frequently ignored as precursors of present-day structuralism, and yet they developed many of the techniques used and elaborated upon by present scholars."
Good copy.
1981, English
Softcover, 90 pages, 212.5 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Routledge & Kegan Paul / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully-numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance it immediately convinced many of its readers and captured the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920's and 30's, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its philosophy of language, finding attractive, even if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, its own author, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920's, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings of his has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects.
In the present edition Mr Pears and Mr McGuinness have been able to revise their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C. K. Ogden about the first translation.
Introduction by Bertrand Russell.
'Mr Pears and Mr McGuinness have not only achieved a clear and natural English but have been meticulous in their care for accuracy. They have added an index which will be of great value to close students of the work.'—The Times Literary Supplement
'Pears and McGuinness can claim our gratitude not for doing merely this (a better translation) but for doing it with such a near approach to perfection. The present reviewer can find little or nothing of consequence wrong with their work'—Mind
G—VG copy with light edge wear and tanning to cover edge. 1981 edition.
1998, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Temple University Press / Philadelphia
$18.00 - In stock -
First 1989 Edition.
Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived of philosophy as beneficially destructive: its purpose was to remove blocks to the understanding, to destroy "houses of cards," to eliminate philosophical muddles. Rather than providing solutions to philosophical problems—the mind-body problem, the problem of other minds, the problem of skepticism, the problem of universals—Wittgensteinian philosophy tries to show that the problems are nonsensical. This controversial philosopher has been the object of intense scrutiny—both professional and popular—and widely divergent interpretations. In this 100th anniversary of Wittgenstein's birth, Ronald Suter offers a highly accessible account of the thought of one of the most influential Anglo-American philosophers of the twentieth century.
Focusing on his mature conception of philosophy and the application of his philosophical methods to traditional and contemporary debates, Suter shows how Wittgenstein's philosophy can be applied to many philosophical problems. He gives an account of the doctrine of family resemblance and discusses Wittgenstein's relationship to Freud and to Russell. Contrasting Wittgenstein's radically new view of philosophy with more traditional views, the author challenges various notions about the philosopher and shows how his approach dissolves traditional problems in theories of nature, mind, knowledge, and the philosophy of language.
"A very well written and reasoned book; a good introduction to and exposition of Wittgensteinian thinking. Suter does a fine job of showing why Wittgenstein should not be viewed as 'just another analytic philosophy practitioner,' without making him into some sort of mystic.... The book addresses an audience that is rarely addressed by Wittgenstein studies, and it presents interpretations that are original, interesting, and should raise good discussions among the experts."—Julius M. Moravcsik, Stanford University
"This presentation of Wittgenstein is interesting and admirably on target when defending certain interpretations against those of commentators with whom Suter disagrees. And Suter writes lucidly. This is not a simple achievement, and I commend him for really clear and helpful analyses of sticky, dense issues.... A fresh, original study that will be widely discussed—it is no mere 'introduction.'"—Gerald E. Myers, Professor of Philosophy, C.U.N.Y
Near Fine copy.
2021, English
Softcover, 120 pages. 18 x 10 cm
Published by
After 8 Books / Paris
$34.00 - In stock -
Elke, a young academic with a troubled past, is about to leave town for a writing retreat when she meets Pisti, a charismatic Hungarian leftist who runs an anarchist collective in Paris. Over one night in a Belleville apartment, old friends and new lovers discuss polyamory, politics and the art of conversation. A wry exploration of the seductive allure of tropes and cliché in the art world and politics, this title is also an experiment in writing, shamelessly flirting with namedropping and appropriation.
Lauren Elkin of the White Review writes: “This book is zany and provocative and really makes you feel like you’re in the mix with a bunch of queer Parisian anarcho-hipsters, downing lemon hummus and radishes, oysters and anchovies, and plotting to overthrow capitalism.”