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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
1973 / 1997, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 173 x 213 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$70.00 - Out of stock
“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'”—Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that offers an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists—a historical survey and essential reference book for the period. Lippard provides a new preface to this 1997 reprint edition.
Includes: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young
"Essential source book of documentation of the Conceptual Art, Land Art, Earth Art, Arte Povera, Minimal Art, Performance Art, Video Art movements. Documents the activities, day by day, month by month, year by year of artists including Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Josef Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young and others. "The unusual form of this provocative book intentionally reflects the chaotic network of ideas connected with so-called conceptual art or information art or idea art, in America and abroad, from 1966 to 1972. Arranged as a continuous bibliographical chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents - including texts by, and taped discussions with and among, the artists involved - and annotations by Lucy R. Lippard, the book has the informal quality of a lively contemporary forum. Only a minimum of order is imposed; for the most part the reader is left to confront the curious compendium of information on his or her own, to follow changing ideas and artistic developments over the six-year period, to witness the gradual (and controversial) "dematerialization" of the art object." -- publisher's statement."
Good—Very Good copy with general light shelf wear and tanning to spine.
2009, English
Hardcover, 318 pages, 22.5 x 28.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mark Batty / US
$440.00 - In stock -
Exceptionally rare, collectible first edition hardcover volume of Notations 21, the anthology drawing inspiration from John Cage's Notations. Notations 21 features illustrated musical scores from more than 100 composers from every continent, all of whom are innovators in the art of notation. Each score is accompanied by written contributions from the artists, explaining how the music manifested visually, exploring every facet of their creative processes, from inspiration to execution. Contributors include the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Earle Brown, Halim El-Dabh, Joan La Barbara, and Yuji Takahashi, as well as emerging composers whose compositions are visually astounding and important. In the spirit of honuoring the 40th anniversary of Cage's seminal book, while furthering it in a 21st century context, a portion of the sales of this book were donated to the Foundation for Contemporary Performing Arts.
Includes: Victor Adan, Beth Anderson, Kerry John Andrews, Steve Antosca, Cecilia Arditto, Robert Ashley, Kevin Austin, Trevor Bača, Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, Steve Beck, Irene Becker, Cathy Berberian, David Berezan, Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, Philip Blackburn, Benjamin Boretz, Sam Britton, Earle Brown, Herbert Brün, Ellen Burr, John Cage, Allison Cameron, Joe Catalano, Raven Chacon, Chris Chalfant, Jef Chippewa, Kyong Mee Choi, Henrik Colding-Jørgensen, Nick Collins, David Cope, Philip Corner, Brent Michael Davids, Tina Davidson, Mario Diaz de Leon and Jay King, Robert Denham, Halim El-Dabh, Robert Erickson, Pozzi Escot, Julio Estrada, Rajmil Fischman, Robert Fleisher, Christopher Fox, Bruce L. Friedman, Guillermo Galindo, Malcolm Goldstein, Daniel Goode, Guillermo Gregorio, Barry Guy, Barbara Heller, Brian Heller, William Hellermann, Mara Helmuth, Sven Hermann, Christoph Herndler, Alan Hilario, Robin Hoffmann, Peter Hölscher, Tsai-yun Huang, Christoph Illing, Lynn Dob, David Evan Jones, John Kannenberg, Suk-Dun Kim, Panayiotis Kokoras, Slavek Kwi, Joan La Barbara, John Lane, Mark Lanqford, Hope Lee, Cheryl E. Leonard, Charlotte Lindvang, Anestis Logothetis, Bent Lorentzen, Martin Sebastian Loyato, Michael Maierhor, Tyler Mains, Keeril Makan, Dan Marmorstein, Dimitris Maronidis, Tony Martin, Kate Maxwell, Cilia McQueen, Rajesh Mehta, Ann MiUikan, Rene Mogensen, Stephen Montague, Robert Morris, Gordon Mumma, Gaël Navard, Phill NibLock, Gary Noland, Makoto Nomura, Eoin O'Keeffe, Pauline Oliveros - Vagn E. Olsson, Paul Paccione, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Brice Pauset, Tommaso Perego, Joe Pignato, Jonathan Pitkin, Samuel Pluta, Larry Polansky, Alwynne Pritchard, Anthony J. Ptak, Takayuki Rai, Randy Raine-Reusch, Jon Raskin, Henrik Ehland Rasmussen, Herman Rechberger, Will Redman, Wendy Reid, Steve Roden, Dirk Rodney, Keren Rosenbaum, David Rosenboom, Marina Rosenfeld, Daniel Rothman, Theresa Sauer, R. Murray Schafer, León Schidlowsky, Catherine Schieve, Daniel Schnee, Brian Schorn, Barry Schrader, Phillip Schulze, Michael J. Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Marilyn Shrude, Stuart Saunders Smith, Juan Maria Solare, Mathias Spahlinger, Jack W. Stamps, John Stead, Norbert Stein, Hans-Christoph Steiner, Peter Sterk, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Stump, Chiyoko Szlavnics - Yuji Takahashi, Justinian Tamusuza, John Tchicai, James Tenney, Voya Tonecitch, Laura Toxvaerd, Jeffrey Trevino, Andrea Vaile, J. Simon van der Walt, Ivan Vincze, Stephen Vitiello, Douglas C. Wadle, Jennifer Walshe, Clive Wilkinson, Michael Winter, René Wohlhauser, Ge-Suk Yeo, David Young, Katherine Young and Jonathan Zorn, Judith Lang Zaimont, Edson Zampronha, Peter Zombola, Jonathan Zorn, Richard Carlyon, Philip and Gayle Neuman, Morgan O'Hara...
As New copy.
2017, English
Softcover, 672 pages, 20 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Many of Them / Spain
$80.00 - In stock -
Sealed copy, out-of-print, limited to 1000 copies.
Fashion : Cosmic Wonder, Balenciaga, Loewe, Dries Van Noten, Chanel, Comme Des Garçons, Sacai, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, Junya Watanabe, Paco, Rabanne, Off-White, Dior Homme, Olivier Theyskens, Jacquemus, Lutz Huelle, Vejas, Simone Rocha, Louis Vuitton, Courrèges, Undercover, Celine, Miu Miu, Hermès, Bernhard Willhelm, Sies Marjan, Prada, Raf Simons, John Alexander, Skelton, Olympia Le-Tan, Wendy & Jim, Koché, JW Anderson, Ligia Dias, Lemaire, Cherevichkiotvichki, Eatable Of Many Orders, Daniela Gregis, Hood By Air, Molly Goddard, Bless.
Cinema : Oliver Laxe, Paz Encina, Paul Verhoeven, Amat Escalante, Andres Di Tella, Milagros Mumenthaler, Joao Pedro Rodriges Pablo Larrain Terence Davies, Walter Salles, Jonas Trueba, Bertrand Tavernier.
Many of Them is a limited edition publication. Its aim is to offer a space for discussion in which creators can share their perspective about their own field, their languages and the problems they face in their everyday practices. It originally started as a diary in 2008 and it keeps evolving into different formats.
2018, English
Softcover, 552 pages, 19.6 × 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Many of Them / Spain
$80.00 - Out of stock
"This issue is the result of daily photo shoots on the same street of Paris from 15 May 2018 to 15 July 2018, with selected pieces from: LOEWE, BALENCIAGA, CHANEL, COMME DES GARÇONS, MIU MIU, SACAI, ISSEY MIYAKE, YOHJI YAMAMOTO, PACO RABANNE, BYREDO, GUCCI, SIMONEROCHA, OLIVIER THEYSKENS, JACQUEMUS, REALITY STUDIO, LOUIS VUITTON, CÉLINE , HERMÈS, DIOR HOMME, PRADA, RAF SIMONS, UNDERCOVER, OFF-WHITE, LEMAIRE, BLESS, JUNYA WATANABE, ÉTUDES, LAUREN MANOOGIAN, SIES MARJAN, GOSHA RUBCHINSKIY, BEIRA, GEOFFREY B. SMALL; and conversations with YOSHIYUKI MIYAMAE, WIM WENDERS, BEN GORHAM, DRIES VAN NOTEN, JAMES FRANCO, RUBEN ÖSTLUND, ECKHAUS LATTA, MARK JENKINS, TODD HAYNES AND ANDRE WALKER. Thanks to all the contributors for making it possible to accomplish this love letter to Paris and its citizens."
As New, sealed.
2023, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 20.67 x 12.69 cm
Published by
Polity / US
$29.00 - Out of stock
In this short book, the leading German cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen puts forward a fresh and original account of pop music. He argues that pop music is not so much a form of music but rather a constellation of different media channels, social spaces and behavoural systems, of which music is only part. As a constellation, pop music relates to other forms of music – popular, classical or folk – in the way that photography relates to painting, or cinema to theatre. Its own logic of attraction is based less on compositions and the expression of subjectivity and more on indexicality, real or pseudo-involuntary effects as recorded by sound technologies, and on studio discipline and staging, and hence on performance. Pop music came into existence when recipients became involved via a range of diverse and decentralized outlets like TV, transistor radio, 7"" singles, glossy magazines and jukeboxes in public spaces. They had to create a virtual unity out of these heterogeneous outputs in a process of active reception. Experiencing pop music is more than an act of listening: it is immersing oneself in an alternative ontological regime.
By elaborating his innovative account of pop music as a constellation, Diederichsen develops a theory of pop music that distinguishes itself from sociology, cultural studies, media studies and ethnography while at the same time drawing on and encompassing them all.
Diedrich Diederichsen is Professor of Theory, Practice and Communication of Contemporary Art at the Vienna Academy for Fine Arts.
‘Diedrich Diederichsen’s book presents itself as a rigorous study of pop music considered as a thing in itself. That it is. But then you turn what seems to be a predictable corner and find yourself ambushed by sly humour, playfulness, a willingness to place large analytical bets on what seem to be slim chances. The book is filled with trap doors which open up again and again.’—Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century
‘Diedrich Diederichsen is an always compelling analyst of pop and rock music across all its many genres, and Aesthetics of Pop Music sheds new light on the capacities, identities and meanings of the form.’—Michael Bracewell, author of England is Mine: Pop Life in Albion from Wilde to Goldie
1994, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 20.96 x 13.97 cm
Published by
Grove Press / New York
$39.00 - Out of stock
"Nadja, " originally published in France in 1928, is the first and perhaps best Surrealist romance ever written, a book which defined that movement's attitude toward everyday life.
The principal narrative is an account of the author's relationship with a girl in teh city of Paris, the story of an obsessional presence haunting his life. The first-person narrative is supplemented by forty-four photographs which form an integral part of the work -- pictures of various "surreal" people, places, and objects which the author visits or is haunted by in naja's presence and which inspire him to mediate on their reality or lack of it. "The Nadja of the book is a girl, but, like Bertrand Russell's definition of electricity as "not so much a thing as a way things happen, " Nadja is not so much a person as the way she makes people behave. She has been described as a state of mind, a feeling about reality, k a kind of vision, and the reader sometimes wonders whether she exists at all. yet it is Nadja who gives form and structure to the novel.
2014, English
Softcover, 228 pages, 22.9 x 15.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Polity / US
$25.00 - Out of stock
François Jullien, the leading philosopher and specialist in Chinese thought, has always aimed at building on inter-cultural relations between China and the West. In this new book he focuses on the following questions: Do universal values exist? Is dialogue between cultures possible?
To answer these questions, he retraces the history of the concept of the universal from its invention as an aspect of Roman citizenship, through its neutralization in the Christian idea of salvation, to its present day manifestations. This raises the question of whether the search for the universal is a uniquely Western preoccupation: do other cultures, like China, even have a notion of the universal, and if so, how does it differ from ours? Having considered the meaning of the concept in the East and West, Jullien argues that, if communication between cultures is to be meaningful, facile assumptions of universal values and complacent relativism need to be examined. It follows, therefore, that dialogue between cultures should not begin with issues of identity and difference, but rather by considering divergence and profusion. By no longer simply assuming universality, we allow for greater self-reflection.
This wide-ranging and engaging study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of philosophy and of Chinese culture and society. It will also appeal to a wider readership interested in contemporary thought and the challenges of communication between East and West.
"A valuable contribution to the field. The controversies he identifies are only going to become more deep-set in our increasingly multi-polar world, and given the current geo-political climate we need more than ever to agree on the role that universal Human Rights may play in an increasingly globalised world."—LSE Review of Books
"François Jullien poses the question of dialogue between cultures in a way altogether different from the loose talk that tends to surround this topic, re-examining, in an insightful and rigorous fashion, the problem of the universal ? an ambition hardly surprising in an author who is both a philosopher and a sinologist. If there is a problem, explains Jullien, it is because the universal ? that emblematic category of Western civilization, the source of its vitality for centuries ? continues to be challenged and to find itself in opposition to the rights linked to the irreducible singularity of cultures ... Here we find a rich and agile thought, harvesting new ideas from philosophical tradition, drawing on a detailed knowledge of cultures and clearly interrogating the founding ideological moments of European civilization."—Etudes: Revue de culture contemporaine
2004, English
Softcover, unpaginated (approx 100 pages), 30 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Brown Art / Perth
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare extensive monographic analysis by Dr David Bromfield on the work of Polish-born Australian artist Gosia Wlodarczak, profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w. Born 1959, Banie, Poland; lives and works Melbourne, Victoria and Szczecin, Poland, Gosia Wlodarczak's cross-disciplinary drawing practice has extended into performance, installation, sound and film. Her work is motivated by a fascination with the mind's relationship with the outside world conducted through the senses. Using only what she sees around her, she uses the drawn line as a materialisation of being present in the world and in a moment. She works in private and public spaces rather than an artist’s studio, interacting with the stimuli of the outside world and ordinary life, translating her ‘living energy into the drawn line’.
Fine copy.
1987, Dutch / English
Softcover, 56 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Uitgeverij Waanders / Zwolle
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh / Amsterdam
$30.00 - In stock -
Scarce colour illustrated catalogue on the life and paintings of August Strindberg, published in 1987 by Uitgeverij Waanders, Zwolle and Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam. Heavily illustrated with exhibited works and biography, texts in English and Dutch by Ronald de Leeuw.
Johan August Strindberg (1849—1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics during his career, which spanned four decades. A bold experimenter and iconoclast throughout, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama, and history plays, to his anticipations of expressionist and surrealist dramatic techniques. He is considered the "father" of modern Swedish literature and his The Red Room (1879) has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel.
1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 238 pages, 23.62 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Secker & Warburg / London
$25.00 - In stock -
Almost two hundred years after they were "purchased" from Greece, the finest and most famous marbles of antiquity still remain a burning issue. This compelling, controversial story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full and colourful detail "the greatest art theft in history," a steamy tale of obsession, intrigue, adultery, and ruin. As the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, Lord Elgin encountered in his endeavors some of the most famous names of nineteenth-century history: Napoleon, Sultan Selim III, Lord Nelson, Lord Byron, and Keats. Drawing on original source material-letters, diaries, official government reports, and memoranda, Vrettos brilliantly brings to life these fascinating stories.
First hardcover edition.
Very Good copy.
2020, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 456 pages, 27.9 x 18.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
Out-of-print first hardcover edition.
In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians present a stunning reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. With intellectual brilliance, Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood reexamine the meanings, uses, and effects of chronologies, models of temporality, and notions of originality and repetition in Renaissance images and artifacts.
Anachronic Renaissance reveals a web of paths traveled by works and artists, a landscape obscured by art history's disciplinary compulsion to anchor its data securely in time. The buildings, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and medals addressed in this book were shaped by concerns about authenticity, about reference to prestigious origins and precedents, and about the implications of transposition from one medium to another. Byzantine icons taken to be early Christian antiquities, the acheiropoeton or image made without hands, the activities of spoliation and citation, differing approaches to art restoration, legends about movable buildings, and forgeries and pastiches: all of these emerge as basic conceptual structures of Renaissance art. The authors show how the complex and layered temporalities of images offered a counterpoint to the linear chronologies that increasingly structured commerce, politics, travel, and everyday life in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
While a work of art does bear witness to the moment of its fabrication, Nagel and Wood argue that it is equally important to understand its temporal instability: how it points away from that moment, backward to a remote ancestral origin, to a prior artifact or image, even to an origin outside of time, in divinity. The authors conclude with an analysis of Roman episodes and projects of the decades around 1500, culminating in Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura. This book is not the story about the Renaissance, nor is it just a story. It imagines the infrastructure of many possible stories. Clearly, Anachronic Renaissance will be essential reading for historians of Western art and all those concerned with the historiography of material culture.
"Anachronic Renaissance is a book so rich, challenging, and stimulating that every critique runs the risk of appearing as nitpicking.... In its intellectual ambitions...[it] seeks to reconceptualize nothing less than the idea of Renaissance art, north and south of the Alps. It is a fascinating, learned, and honest invitation to discussion, a must not only for Renaissance scholars."—CAA Reviews
Very Good copy with light edge wear to DJ.
2011, English
Hardcpver (w. dust jacket), 192 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
An ancient tradition holds that Pythagoras invented harmony. It is said that one day, he wandered by a forge and, hearing a wondrous sound come from within, ventured in to investigate. He found five men hammering with five hammers. To his astonishment, he discovered that four of the five hammers stood in a marvelous set of proportions, which, when combined, allowed him to reconstruct the laws of music. But there was also a fifth hammer. Pythagoras saw and heard it, but he could not measure it; nor could he reason its discordant sound. He therefore discarded it.
What was this hammer, such that Pythagoras chose so decidedly to reject it? In The Fifth Hammer, Daniel Heller-Roazen lucidly shows how that fabled gesture offers a key for understanding ideas of harmony in the broadest sense of the term. Since antiquity, "harmony" has been a name for more than a theory of musical sounds; it has constituted a paradigm for the scientific understanding of the sensible world. Nature, through harmony, has been transcribed in the ideal elements of mathematics. But, time and again, the transcription has run up against one fundamental limit: something in nature resists being written down in a set of ideal units. A fifth hammer, obstinately, continues to sound.
In eight chapters, linked together like the tones of a single scale, The Fifth Hammer explores the sounds and echoes of that percussion, as they have made themselves felt on the most varied of attempts to understand the natural world. In vastly different and yet complementary ways, ancient thought and early modern science and philosophy, before and after Galileo, encountered a troubling dimension of nature, which they sought to interpret and resolve.
Confronting disproportion, they revealed their fundamental aims and limits. From music to metaphysics, from aesthetics to astronomy, and from Plato and Boethius to Kepler, Leibniz and Kant, The Fifth Hammer explores the ways in which orderings of the sensible world have continued to suggest a reality that neither notes nor letters can fully transcribe.
Heller-Roazen brings remarkable gifts and skills to his inquiry. Formidably learned and versed in many languages, he has also steeped himself in the original texts and in the manifold and difficult interpretative directions that have struggled with this archetypal narrative....I thoroughly admired Heller-Roazen's thoughtful and beautiful writing in The Fifth Hammer.
-Isis
This tightly reasoned book rewards close study, and will be of interest to astronomers, mathematicians, and students of musical history.
-The Sun News
2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 424 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
First edition HC, out-of-print.
The Form of Becoming offers an innovative understanding of the emergence around 1800 of the science of embryology and a new notion of development, one based on the epistemology of rhythm. It argues that between 1760 and 1830, the concept of rhythm became crucial to many fields of knowledge, including the study of life and living processes.
The book juxtaposes the history of rhythm in music theory, literary theory, and philosophy with the concurrent turn in biology to understanding the living world in terms of rhythmic patterns, rhythmic movement, and rhythmic representations. Common to all these fields was their view of rhythm as a means of organizing time — and of ordering the development of organisms.
Janina Wellmann, a historian of science, has written the first systematic study of visualization in embryology. Embryological development circa 1800 was imagined through the pictorial technique of the series, still prevalent in the field today. Tracing the origins of the developmental series back to seventeenth-century instructional graphics for military maneuvers, dance, and craft work, The Form of Becoming reveals the constitutive role of rhythm and movement in the visualization of developing life.
Translated by Kate Sturge
As New copy.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 336 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$50.00 - In stock -
From Homer's Outis-"No One," or "Non-One," "No Man," or "Non-Man"-to "soul," "spirit," and the unnamable. Homer recounts how, trapped inside a monster's cave, with nothing but his wits to call upon, Ulysses once saved himself by twisting his name. He called himself Outis: "No One," or "Non-One," "No Man," or "Non-Man." The ploy was a success. He blinded his barbaric host and eluded him, becoming anonymous, for a while, even as he bore a name. Philosophers never forgot the lesson that the ancient hero taught. From Aristotle and his commentators in Greek, Arabic, Latin, and more modern languages, from the masters of the medieval schools to Kant and his many successors, thinkers have exploited the possibilities of adding "non-" to the names of man. Aristotle is the first to write of "indefinite" or "infinite" names, his example being "non-man." Kant turns to such terms in his theory of the infinite judgment, illustrated by the sentence, "The soul is non-mortal." Such statements play major roles in the philosophies of Maimon, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Hermann Cohen. They are profoundly reinterpreted in the twentieth century by thinkers as diverse as Carnap and Heidegger. Reconstructing the adventures of a particle in philosophy, Daniel Heller-Roazen seeks to show how a grammatical possibility can be an incitement for thought. Yet he also draws a lesson from persistent examples. The philosophers' infinite names all point to one subject: us. "Non-man" or "soul," "Spirit" or "the unconditioned," we are beings who name and name ourselves, bearing witness to the fact that we are, in every sense, unnamable.
"No One's Ways is a continuation of the series of works of intellectual history Heller-Roazen has produced for the publisher Zone Books-his sixth to date.... Though each books takes up a different subject, there are clear commonalities between them, as well as a discernible set of long-term research interests involving speech and language, the limits of consciousness, and the writing of philosophical and literary histories themselves. No One's Ways, then, is both a journey and a preamble, a case study ahead of a fuller investigation, to be undertaken by-who knows?"—Los Angeles Review of Books
Very Good HC edition.
2012, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 21.6 x 14 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$34.00 - Out of stock
Through speculative philosophy and lurid cultural objects, Slime Dynamics explores the muck of life as a darkly vitalistic substance.
Despite humanity's gradual ascent from clustered pools of it, slime is more often than not relegated to a mere residue—the trail of a verminous life form, the trace of decomposition, or an entertaining synthetic material—thereby leaving its generative and mutative associations with life neatly removed from the human sphere of thought and existence. Arguing that slime is a viable physical and metaphysical object necessary to produce a realist bio-philosophy void of anthrocentricity, this text explores naturephilosophie, speculative realism, and contemporary science; hyperbolic representations of slime found in the weird texts of HP Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti; as well as survival horror films, video games, and graphic novels, in order to present the dynamics of slime not only as the trace of life but as the darkly vitalistic substance of life.
Ben Woodard received his PhD in Theory and Criticism from Western University in 2016. From 2017–20 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the IPK (Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art) at Leuphana University where he completed a habilitation on the analytic/continental divide in philosophy through the work of F.H. Bradley. Since 2020 Ben has lectured at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy mostly on the history, philosophy, and politics of the life sciences. In broad terms, his work focuses on the relationship between naturalism and idealism in the long 19th century. Ben also writes on science fiction and horror film and literature.
1988, German
Softcover, 96 pages, 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition C. (Edition Crocodile) / Switzerland
$500.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, very first 1988 Swiss edition of H. R. Giger's Biomechanics, published by Edition C. (Edition Crocodile). In his classic series of oversized and visually overwhelming early art volumes, this book comprises a retrospective showcase, from 1964—88, of Giger's work, designed by and with running commentary by Giger himself, with over 200 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and including concept art for the film Poltergeist II, and design paintings for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums. With a foreword by legendary Science Fiction author and longtime Giger fan Harlan Ellison, who dubs him "out latter-day Hieronymus Bosch."
Very Good copy with light wear and light pinch to spine.
2016, English
Softcover (w. embossed plastic sleeve), 240 pages, 31 x 24 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$90.00 - In stock -
At the intersection between art, design and social history, The Inventors of Tradition is a subjective study of the history of the Scottish textiles industry since the 1930s. It brings together samples of world-class design, the archive material of individuals and companies, and documentation in the form of film and interviews.
In response to this material the artist Lucy McKenzie and designer Beca Lipscombe, from Atelier, have produced a series of new works including clothing, furniture and accessories in collaborative partnership with Caerlee Mills, Begg Scotland, Hawick Cashmere, Laura Lees, Jannette Murray, Mackintosh, Muehlbauer and Steven Purvis.
With The Inventors of Tradition II, McKenzie and Lipscombe expand their exploration to encompass Scotland’s recent cultural past, making new connections that bring together art, architecture, design and sub-cultural identities.
Edited by Panel (Catriona Duffy and Lucy McEachan) – a collective of freelance curators that promotes design and craft through exhibitions and projects.
Atelier is a collaboration between artist Lucy McKenzie and designer Beca Lipscombe. Atelierʼs design work includes commissions for public and private spaces, temporary and permanent display and design objects.
As New copies with some light moisture rippling to back pages.
1996, Japanese / English
Softcover, 140 pages, 18.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Images of Erotic Art / Tokyo
$390.00 - Out of stock
The ridiculously scarce Japanese-only publication on the work of John Kacere.
Published by Images of Erotic Art in Tokyo in 1996, this fantastic monograph reproduces his famous photorealist paintings in full colour across roughly 140 landscape pages, broken into chapters "Lace", "See Through", "Delta", "Cotton", "Hip", and "Garter". Includes quotes from John Kacere in English, plus short texts and biography in Japanese, portrait of the artist in his studio, and more. Rarely seen and beautifully designed.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
A fine copy of the first and only edition, protected under archival mylar.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - Out of stock
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
1982, English
Offset-lithographic printed poster (80 x 60 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
O.K.Harris / New York
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare early John Kacere exhibition poster, printed in Sweden on the occasion of a New York solo exhibition at O.K.Harris, 1982. Beautiful offset-lithographic printing on thick white stock featuring one of Kacere's iconic photorealist oil paintings. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 80 x 60 cm
Fine copy. Crisp and unmarked, old "as new" preserved stock from the original Swedish print house. Online orders come carefully rolled in thick tubing.
John C. Kacere (23 June 1920 – 5 August 1999) was an American artist. Originally an abstract expressionist, Kacere adopted a photorealist style in 1963. Nearly all of his iconic paintings depict the midsection of the female body. Although he rejected the term, Kacere is considered one of the original photorealists. Kacere's first painting in this style was in 1969, involving the midsection of a woman dressed in lingerie. It was over three times life size. Kacere continued this type of painting throughout the rest of his career, making it an icon of the photorealism movement. Though figurative paintings, Kacere's works have often been considered still lifes or even landscapes.
2000, English / German
Softcover w. CD in printed bag, 104 pages, 23 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Raster-Noton / Chemnitz
$50.00 $25.00 - In stock -
Deluxe edition of raster-noton.oacis, the experimental audio-visual book and CD project published in 2000 by Raster-Noton, the legendary electronic music label founded in Germany in 1996, on the occasion of taktlos-bern event, 15-16 September 2000, Dampfzentrale, Bern. Edition of 3000 copies. Acoustics and optics, raster-noton.oacis goes beyond the momentary. The texts by top writers like Susanne Binas, Rob Young (The Wire), Pinky Rose, Peter Kraut (NZZ) and Martin Pesch (e.g. Frieze, Spex, Kunstforum) examine how raster-noton works on the cutting edge of electronic music, computer graphics and video animation, with which supreme ease the label moves between pop/club culture and the fine arts. Archives all discographies and performances throughout the 1990s, with graphics and photographic illustrations throughout in colour/bw. Softcover book housed in printed plastic bag — creative cover flap includes enhanced CD with audiotracks from the artists and multimedia data for Macintosh to adequately complete this state-of-the-art project. Includes tracks by Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Bender, and others via projects Noto, Impulse, Byetone, Komet, CoH, Alva Noto...
Award for "Best Books of Switzerland" 2000.
Very Good all round, some wear to bag, otherwise all perfectly preserved.
2023, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 17.78 x 12.7 cm
Published by
Spurl Editions / Sacramento
$44.00 - Out of stock
A horror story of one woman's awful reinvention, M. S. Coe's The Formation of Calcium is disturbingly funny and completely unexpected.
Middle-aged Mary Ellen Washie has finally freed herself of her stultified past life in western New York state and moved to Florida. With the husband she's grown to hate firmly in her rearview mirror, and all ties to her family cut off, she changes her name, bleaches her hair, and befriends Natalie, a seemingly kind, martini-loving woman whom she promptly begins to manipulate. As her machinations propel her beyond the brink of who she used to be, Mary Ellen seeks to unburden herself--but not one to sit down with pen and paper, she narrates the events of her new life into a cassette tape recorder, giving each tape an innocuous name to keep the curious away. A riveting account of one woman's awful reinvention, M. S. Coe's new novel is disturbingly funny and completely unexpected. With elements of pulp noir and confessional literature, The Formation of Calcium depicts the bland misery of modern American life as one woman seeks her own ill-fated transformation.
"The Formation of Calcium is a dark comedy, a horror story, and the sad tale of a marginalized woman."--Karen Mulvahill, Foreword Reviews
"The more Mary Ellen tries to reinvent herself, the more lies she tells and the more risks she's forced to take, and her recordings veer from understandable desperation to myopic self-assuredness, making for a vibrant character study ('It's like exhilaration and anticipation colliding down in your stomach, where everything real is felt, ' she says about her gambits). It's a wild, rewarding ride."--Publishers Weekly
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 416 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Simon and Schuster / New York
$49.00 - Out of stock
“It’s shocking to learn that this is McBride’s first book...Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more” —Los Angeles Times
The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was a rare and almost inconceivable thing: a celebrity experimental writer. Twenty-five years after her death, she remains one of the most original, shocking, and controversial artists of her era. The author of visionary, transgressive novels like Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senses; and Pussy, King of Pirates, Acker wrote obsessively about the treachery of love, the limitations of language, and the possibility of revolution.
She was notorious for her methods—collaging together texts stolen from other writers with her own diaries, sexual fantasies, and blunt political critique—as well as her appearance. With her punkish hairstyles, tattoos, and couture outfits, she looked like no other writer before or after. Her work was exceptionally prescient, taking up complicated conversations about gender, sex, capitalism, and colonialism that continue today.
Acker’s life was as unruly and radical as her writing. Raised in a privileged but oppressive Upper East Side Jewish family, she turned her back on that world as soon as she could, seeking a life of romantic and intellectual adventure that led her to, and through, many of the most thrilling avant-garde and countercultural moments in America: the births of conceptual art and experimental music; the poetry wars of the 60s and 70s; the mainstreaming of hardcore porn; No Wave cinema and New Narrative writing; Riot grrrls, biker chicks, cyberpunks. As this definitive, “sympathetic, studious” (Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) biography shows, Acker was not just a singular writer, she was also a titanic cultural force who tied together disparate movements in literature, art, music, theatre, and film.
A feat of literary biography, Eat Your Mind draws on exclusive interviews with hundreds of Acker’s intimates as well as her private journals, correspondence, and early drafts of her work, acclaimed journalist and critic Jason McBride, offers a thrilling account and a long-overdue reassessment of a misunderstood genius and revolutionary artist.
"Kathy Acker was a brilliant bundle of fascinating contradictions, and one of the brightest stars in a period when New York was the world center of creativity. Jason McBride has written a sympathetic, studious biography. He deserves every award for the depth of his research and the verve of his writing."—Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
"At times hilarious, at other times a tear-jerker, Eat Your Mind elucidates Kathy Acker’s complex genius in all its outrageous, tender, brutal glory. Jason McBride has written a page-turner worthy of hyperbole. A tour de force!"—Dodie Bellamy, author of Bee Reaved
"A great and timely biography of Kathy Acker. Unafraid to celebrate the complex intellectual histories that form both outer skin and inner guts of Acker's work, her interweaving of ideology and aesthetics, her passionate conviction that the avant-garde was something to be lived as much as written, McBride has produced a study genuinely faithful to his brilliant, difficult subject."—Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder
"Writers' lives are seldom of much biographical interest, but Kathy Acker's had enough incident for a shelf of novels. She was as singular, passionate, and complex in her life as she was in her work, and Jason McBride accounts for it all with admirable thoroughness and equanimity, in lucid and dispassionate prose."—Lucy Sante, author of Low Life
"An elegant, engaging account of one of the twentieth century’s most important writer-bandits, which traces the twists and turns of her life with great empathy and sensitivity. Eat Your Mind is a feast, full of delicious anecdotes and tasty scraps of previously unpublished material, and a master class in writing the biography of a subject who is always trying to slip the net of narrative."—Lauren Elkin, author Flâneuse