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
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
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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.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 3, February 1995. Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue features the Latin American corpse/death photography of Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, bondage and fetish photography by Kiyoshi Ikejiri, the artwork of Trevor Brown, the Police Hospital on Bangkok photographed by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, tattoos, female bodybuilders, gynaecology photographs, loads of abnormal medical photography, fetish and bondage photoshoots, close-up genital photography, deranged art/collage, you name it.
Very Good - Fine copy.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 5 July 1995. Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 6 August 1995, features Thailand corpse/death photography by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Trevor Brown artwork, Crime Museum photography, Chokudo Shibuya, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, western hardcore porn, asshole photography by Goro Asawa, Kotaro Kobayashi, x-ray porn, western obesity porn / adipophilia, Berlin sex, death art by noise artist Raita Ishikawa, Lisa Palac's Future Sex, piercing fetish, bizarre sex, medical photography, plus much more.
Very Good copy.
1995, Japanese
Softcover, 210 pages, 15 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 6 August 1995. Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 6 August 1995, features corpse/death photography by Kotaro Kobayashi, fetish photography by Kiyoshi Ikejiri, Japanese neo-surrealist Sakuba Tomomi, upclose genital "non-retouching" collage/photography by Goro Asawa and Yoshiki Tsutsumi, death art by noise artist Raita Ishikawa, formaldehyde fetus photography by Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, genital piercing and modification, demented collage and collected imagery/medical/freak photography/illustration/porn, extreme anatomy imagery, lactating, pissing, western obesity porn / adipophilia, 'Bild Des Verbrechens In Ela Granti' crime scene photography from legend early 20th Century Japanese book, porn star John Holmes, artwork by Trevor Brown, plus much more.
Very Good copy.
1997, Japanese
Softocver, 208 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom Shobo / Japan
$130.00 - Out of stock
Too Negative No. 10 July 1997. Now rare and highly collectible, Too Negative, the "Forbidden Picture Book", was a visceral and visually explosive glossy cult arts magazine that reflected the gory-depraved-beyond salvation-bad taste expressions visible in international subculture at the height of 1990s underground publishing, a time when art was pushing the limits of taste and morality. Edited solely by legendary Japanese publisher and gallery owner Kotaro Kobayashi and published by Tom Publication Inc. between 1994—2000, each thick, glossy volume takes on the aesthetics of a vibrant fashion magazine in the great Japanese "mook" format (the magazine book) packed cover to cover with themes of Eros and Thanatos, such as fetishism, erotica, medical/autopsy photography, death journalism, Japanese bondage, grotesque and neo-surrealist art, crime scene photography, tattooing/irezumi, piercing, and all things of the mondo, macabre, bizarro realm. Frequent collaborators and featured artists were Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, Joel-Peter Witkin, Trevor Brown, Kiyoshi Ikejiri, to name a few. With a Japanese publishing lineage that may be found in earlier bounding-pushing periodicals such as the 1920s erotic grotesque magazine Hentai Shiriou (Pervert Documents), Tasuhiko Shibusawa’s incredible 1960s avant-garde journal Le Sang Et La Rose, or Fiction Inc’s SALE2 journal published from 1980—mid 1990s, Too Negative, and affiliated periodicals such as ORG, Spiral, Schizo, etc. took their subjects to another level of extremism, even by Japanese standards.
Not for the faint hearted.
This issue, Too Negative No. 10 July 1997, focuses around the special anniversary art galley that runs throughout the issue—" Welcome to the Feast of Immorality"—an almost cover-to-cover feature of artworks and photo documents spurred on by the question to editor Kotaro Kobayashi, "where lies the boundary between the grotesque and art", featuring the art of Andres Serrano, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, Joel-Peter Witkin, Joe Coleman, and so many more, a feature gallery of Japanese gore illustrator Shin Taga, pre-execution photographic portraits in Vietnam, "torture in the Edo period" with reference to Yoshihiko Sasama and featuring the ukiyo-e shunga of Yoshikazu Hayashi, vintage corpse/death photography, medical photography, lots of erotica, grotesque artworks, collage, bady manipulation, plus plus plus.
Very Good copy.
2021, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 12.7 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$38.00 - In stock -
Interrogating the Abyss is the first volume in the collected interviews, essays, and fictions of Chris Kelso. It’s an exploration of darkness and a dissection of human relationships and obsession, featuring conversations with writers such as Dennis Cooper and Matthew Stokoe, and culminating in Voidness, ten sessions of psychic intervention by some of literature's most compelling storytellers.
Chris Kelso is a multi-translated bestselling author and editor from Scotland. His short fiction has been nominated for a British Fantasy-Award, and he is the two-time winner of the Ginger Nuts of Horror Novel of the Year (2016/17). You can find his work in 3:AM, Sensitive Skin, Invert/Extant, The Scottish Poetry Library, Locus, Black Static and many more.
2023, English
Softcover, 380 pages, 12.7 x 20.32 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$42.00 - Out of stock
She asks for a light. You reach in your pocket and dig out your Bic, strike the flint, and touch the flame to her cigarette. She inhales. The tip roils cinder. A line of flame draws down the paper, crossing the band, down the filter. It touches her lips and her entire face is a blaze. Engulfing, disappearing her hair, climbing down her throat, down her shoulders and arms and chest and belly, down her pants to her shoes. Washed in pumpkin light. She waves her arms, spinning in circles and howling.
You run.
Collected fiction.
1980, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 252 pages, 22.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The Viking Press / New York
$150.00 - Out of stock
Gorgeous first 1980 hardcover edition of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, a Seaver Book published by The Viking Press, New York. The literary antecedent to the French director’s film cycle of the same name. Stripped-down and incisive, these stories anticipate the literary quality of the cinematic works they would ultimately become. Translated from the French by Sabine d’Estree.
"Why be a filmmaker if you can be a novelist?" Eric Rohmer asks in the preface to his "Six Moral Tales." A surprising question from one so internationally reknowed for his contribution to the silver screen — and a question that prompts an alternative query: why write a story when you are going to film it? Yet rohmer does both, and his writing and filmmaking are steps to a single goal.
The multifaceted, deeply personal work of Eric Rohmer (1920—2010) has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the 1960s, standing apart from his New Wave contemporaries with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with the audacious and wildly influential series Six Moral Tales. A succession of encounters between fragile men and the women who tempt them, Six Moral Tales unleashed on the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating.
Very Good ex-libris copy, therefore Good with VG dust jacket, sticker to spine, associated library markings to title page/inner front cover and stamping to block edges. Well preserved library copy.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 29.5 x 18.5 cm
Published by
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Warsaw
$95.00 - Out of stock
A look at the dark, symbolic work of Polish painter Aleksandra Waliszewska alongside historical artworks that influence her.
Painter Aleksandra Waliszewska creates densely narrative, art historically saturated oil and gouache paintings. Waliszewska’s pictorial universe is populated by supernatural characters and dark themes: devils, vampires, satanic creatures, possessed girls, apocalyptic scenes, bloodthirsty zombies, and other incarnations of the living dead. These characters are situated in dystopian urban landscapes, lost highways, deserted suburbs, gloomy housing estates, swamps, and other sites associated with the Eastern European landscape. Drawing from the specifically Slavic histories of the Upiór (the living dead), Waliszewska claims her artistic and conceptual descendance from premodern art and Symbolist works of the late 19th and early 20th century from Nordic, Baltic, and Eastern European regions.
The Dark Arts presents a dense visual narrative, reproducing over a hundred images of Waliszewska’s in juxtaposition with dozens of historical paintings and sculptures. Shifting away from the dominant figures of French and Austrian artists, this revisionist look at Symbolism through an Eastern and Baltic lens will introduce a wider audience to a rich and relatively understudied field of visual culture.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket) 330 pages, 21 x 14.9 cm
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
The first of its kind, "KINBAKU The Golden Age of Japanese Restrained & Tortured Artworks" collects the masters of Japanese kinbaku rope bondage and torture artworks by nine Japanese artists, spanning generations, artists who have refined the beauty of masochism and inherited the legacy of Japanese Shibari-e eroticism as pioneered by Seiu Ito. This book presents beautiful reproductions in colour and b/w of many extreme artworks by Kou Minomura, Yoko Ozuma, Yoji Muku, Ran Akiyoshi, Hajime Sorayama, Hiroaki Samura, Shoji Oki, Gengoroh Tagame, and Miyabi Kyodo. Each artist has bilingual introduction text, plus essays in Japanese by Akira Naka, Masakazu Tanaka, and Toshihi Soma.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, The Essentials of KINBAKU ART, held at Vanilla Gallery, Tokyo, 16 March—9 April, 2023.
"After World War II, people who had been freed from the long curse of asceticism sought entertainment and freedom in easy "reading", and a multitude of magazines were launched into the world. Among the numerous magazines were the forbidden maniac magazines. These unique magazines raised people's sexual and even aesthetic interests in
2018, Japanese
2 Volumes, softcover (one w. dust jacket), 195 + 95 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Signed by author,
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$40.00 - Out of stock
A must-have book for Biblio enthusiasts. Pursuing the ultimate in erotic expression, dismantling the boundaries between pornography and art, and exploring the deepest mysteries of the desires of
This 2-volume set includes the "Erotic Art and Esotericism" (Booster Booklet), which expands on—in full colour—Soma's selections of artists surveyed, featuring hundreds of artworks and associated book-references. Artists include: Hans Bellmer, Pierre Molinier, Jean Benoit, Gérard Gachet, Sybille Ruppert, Jean-Marie Poumeyrol, H.R. Giger, Zdzisław Beksiński, Nik Douglas & Penny Slinger, Bob Carlos Clark, Hajime Sorayama, Seiu Ito, Kazutomo Fujino, Ayako Nakagawa, Petter Hegre, Henri Maccheroni, Jamie MacCartney, Richard Cerf, Gilles Berquet, Trevor Watson, Laszlo, Tony Ward, Laurent Bunaim...
Limited edition signed by the author.
2023, English
Softcover, 92 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Apocalypse Party / Philadelphia
$29.00 - Out of stock
"How can a tale be brutal and tender, grotesque and beautiful all at the same time? I don't know, but Sara Tantlinger achieves it in To Be Devoured. Hypnotic, erotic, and gory, this is a novella that will sear itself into your imagination. Highly recommended!"—Jonathan Janz, Author of Marla and The Siren and the Specter
"Sara Tantlinger's To Be Devoured capitalizes on our macabre preoccupation with the uglier side of nature, with love that topples into obsession, and with madness that is strangely beautiful in its barbarity. Her writing is equivalent to those unremitting avian beings her protagonist is so enamored of: It will hook its talons through your flesh, sink its neck into the ribboned edges of your wounds, and only relinquish your blighted body when it has swallowed your very soul."—Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, winner of the Indie Horror Book Awards for Best Debut Collection
"Vultures, obsession, and an unnatural hunger: What more can you want in a horror story? With To Be Devoured, Sara Tantlinger has done it again as she ratchets up the terror in wonderfully surprising ways while crafting prose that's always a heady blend of the vicious and the vibrant. A book that's absolutely not to be missed!"—Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens
2023, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 19.68 x 12.7 cm
Published by
The New York Review of Books / New York
$32.00 - In stock -
Now in a new translation, an imaginative, darkly radiant fable about a pair of brothers, formerly warriors, whose idyll is shattered by an enroaching fascistic force.
Set in a world of its own, Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs is both a mesmerizing work of fantasy and an allegory of the advent of fascism. The narrator of the book and his brother, Otho, live in an ancient house carved out of the great marble cliffs that overlook the Marina, a great and beautiful lake that is surrounded by a peaceable land of ancient cities and temples and flourishing vineyards. To the north of the cliffs are the grasslands of the Campagna, occupied by herders. North of that, the great forest begins. There the brutal Head Forester rules, abetted by the warrior bands of the Mauretanians.
The brothers have seen all too much of war. Their youth was consumed in fighting. Now they have resolved to live quietly, studying botany, adding to their herbarium, consulting the books in their library, involving themselves in the timeless pursuit of knowledge. However, rumors of dark deeds begin to reach them in their sanctuary. Agents of the Head Forester are infiltrating the peaceful provinces he views with contempt, while peace itself, it seems, may only be a mask for heedlessness.
Tess Lewis’s new translation of Jünger’s sinister fable of 1939 brings out all of this legendary book’s dark luster.
2004, English
Softcover, 289 pages, 19.68 x 12.7 cm
Published by
The New York Review of Books / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
The memoir widely viewed as the best account ever written of fighting in WW1
A memoir of astonishing power, savagery, and ashen lyricism, Storm of Steel illuminates not only the horrors but also the fascination of total war, seen through the eyes of an ordinary German soldier. Young, tough, patriotic, but also disturbingly self-aware, Jünger exulted in the Great War, which he saw not just as a great national conflict but—more importantly—as a unique personal struggle. Leading raiding parties, defending trenches against murderous British incursions, simply enduring as shells tore his comrades apart, Jünger kept testing himself, braced for the death that will mark his failure. Published shortly after the war’s end, Storm of Steel was a worldwide bestseller and can now be rediscovered through Michael Hofmann’s brilliant new translation.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), born in Heidelberg, was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist. He ran away from school and volunteered to join the German army. Fighting throughout the war, he recorded his experiences in several books, most famously in In Stahlgewittern (Storm of Steel).
2023, English
Hardcover (with pillowed plastic), 304 pages, 29 x 22 cm
Published by
Apartamento / Barcelona
$149.00 - In stock -
‘If I write it all, search and find it all, it’s maybe to try to understand what happened, everything is ultimately bound, art and life, children, loves, errors, joys, hopes’.—Nicola L.
Nicola L.: Life and Art is the first comprehensive monograph about the pioneering artist Nicola L. (1932-2018), whose wide-ranging work—impossible to categorise—challenged ideas about identity, gender, and the body long before such questions were de rigueur. Born in Morocco to French parents, she spent her formative years in Paris attending the Beaux-Arts, only to burn most of her paintings in 1965 and move towards formats that engaged people more directly: wall-mounted canvases that could be worn as costumes, sculptures that doubled as seats, coats designed for many people to wear at once, or films about radical political figures. Far from settling in a time and place, she travelled the world, finding physical and artistic homes in the free-spirited community of Ibiza, in countercultural New York, and even, briefly, in a Lebanese jail.
The art Nicola made stemmed from the life she lived—there were no boundaries between the two. This book follows the same logic, intertwining both throughout its 304 pages: on one hand, a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of her artworks; on the other, a fanzine of Nicola’s never-seen-before memoirs, in which she narrates her incredible life, punctuated with anecdotes involving Jean-Paul Sartre, Salvador Dalí, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Caetano Veloso, Andy Warhol, Bad Brains, and Carolee Schneemann. Her writing is complemented by the personal stories of those who knew her and the commentary of those who have connected with her work: Christophe and David Lanzenberg (her sons), Gary Indiana (writer and longtime friend), Marta Minujín (artist and longtime friend), Pierre Restany (late critic and mentor), H.R. (Bad Brains frontman and film subject), Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Flavia Frigeri, Ruba Katrib, and Myriam Ben Salah (curators), among many others. Edited by Hannah Martin and Omar Sosa, and made with the support of Alison Jacques, London and the Nicola L. Collection and Archive, this book brings together original images of the work, archival photographs, essays, interviews, and journals—in sum, all the pieces of Nicola’s puzzle.
1984, English / Japanese
Softcover, 96 pages, 27.2 x 21.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Doremi Music / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
The super rare Visual of Heavy Metal (The Heavy Metal Music Encyclopedia), published in Japan in one small edition in 1984! No text fluff, this book is cover-to-cover blazing full-colour reproductions of Heavy Metal album art, published at the height of metal's international break-out. NWOBHM, Speed Metal, Hard Rock, Glam Metal, Thrash... UK, USA, Sweden, France, Australia, Canada... Iron Maiden, Ethel The Frog, Mercyful Fate, Anvil, Exciter, Girl School, Black Sabbath, Samson, The Rods, Venom, Mother's Finest, Killer Dwarfs, Alkatrazz, Praying Mantis, Riot, Cloven Hoof, Gotham City, Raven, Witchfynde, Ostrogoth, Satan Jokers, Satan, Demon Eyes, Chateaux, Blaspheme, Fist, Sortilège, Pink Fairies, Anthrax, Queensrÿche, Heavy Pettin, Alaska, Helstar, Ratt, AC/DC, Jack Starr, Gamma, H-Bomb, Virgin Steele, Black Alice, Spider Force, Dio, Maccoy, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Band Of Joy, Scorpions, Wild Dogs, Kiss, Def Leppard, Alvin Lee, Heaven, Sledgehammer, Electric Sun, Colosseum II, Harman Rarebell, Tank, Pantera, Tokyo Blade, The Michael Schenker Strife Group, Budgie, Wolf, Nazareth, Status Quo, Judas Priest, Icon, Torch, British Lions, Rush, Pandemonium, Crucifixion, Thin Lizzy, Victim, Accept, Trouble Manillaroad, Witch Killer, Crawler, Faithful, Breath, Gary Moore, Trance, Silver Mountain, Slayer, Hawkwind, Helix, The Handsome Beats, Motorhead, Tank, Warrior, Manowar, Picture, Ufo, Rainbow, Alcatrazz, High Power, Warning, Battle Axe, Victim, W.A.S.P., Tsunami, Metallica, Cirith Ungol, Molly Hatchet, Biscaya, Meat Loaf, Bernie Tormé, Talas, Sinner, Chariot, Alien, Thor, Mad Max, Sad Iron, Grave Digger, Mass, Rick Derringer, Santer, Warning, Witchfinder, Be Bop Deluxe, Force, Blue Oyster Cult, Dark Wizard, Twisted Sister, Faithful Breath, Dark Heart, Thunder Fire, Cutty Sark, Night Wing, Cross Fire, Demon, Ostrogoth, Spartan Warrior, Voivod, Joshua, Omen, Elf, Uriah Heep, John Cale, Ian Gillan Band, Cozy Powell, Status Quo, Ted Nugent, Krokus, White Snake, Twisted Sister, Triumph, Wild Dogs, Steeler, Culprit Exciter Randy Hansen, Chris Spedding, Mama's Boys, Acid, Legs Diamond, Le Mans, Killer, Holocaust, Coney Hatch, Dark Star, Waysted, Brian May, Vic Vergat, Robin Trower, Quiet Riot, Ozzy Ozbourne, Gary Moore, Axewitch, Pretty Maids, Grim Reaper, Blade Runner, Black Angels, Captain Beyond, and so many more! Compiled by Masateru Makino. No text, only catalogue data for each LP, full index, appendix, colophon. An excellent reference and visual onslaught.
Very Good copy.
1988, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
First Publishing / Japan
$80.00 - In stock -
One of the more obscure Japanese hardcore SM magazines, SM Secret was edited by Hiroshi Kawate and published by Takanori Shinya, and later Ryoichi Matomaru, between the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Wrapped in possibly the most bold, startling airbrushed covers of the genre, SM Secret was a glossy magazine dedicated to fetish/bdsm, born out the publication "Orange People" — one of the magazines that led the "husband and wife exchange" boom in the 80's. To be expected, this magazine too centres around amateur reader exchange of "Secret" sexual customs and fet-life behind closed doors, filled with photographic features, photographic Secret letters and stories from readers, articles, fetish advertisements, most heavy on photo features of femdom, malesub, torture, cross-dressing, wax play, rubber dress, bondage, urolagnia and queen/mistress S&M.
Very Good copy.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21.2 x 15.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Shishobo / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
SM Secret Club Vol. 7, an obscure Japanese bondage and fetishism magazine from the early—mid 1990s, published by the legendary Shishobo, a faction of Tokyo Sanseisha responsible for SM Fan, SM Frontier, Novel SM Fan, and others, closely related to Sanwa publishing. August 1996 issue is packed with vivid colour hardcore fetish photography of all manner of depraved SM bondage themes including urolagnia and coprophilia, and featuring models/pink actresses Hitomi Kurosawa, Rika Aoki, Yui Kawana and many others. Not for the faint hearted.
Good copy with some edge and corner wear.
1992, Japanese
Softcover, 84 pages, 21.5 cm x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tsukasa Shobo / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
Published in Japan in 1992, BIZARRE JAPAN — Super Fetish Photo Collection Of Far East, is a glossy special edition photo volume published by Japanese bondage magazine Bizarre Japan, comprising entirely of their photoshoots of female fetish fashion wear designed by Z2. Features models Maiko Amagi, Nao Saejima, Reiko Suma, Reika, Mariko Kishi, and Kaoru ‘O’ in vivid colour glamour spreads, followed by a full catalogue of fetish wear. Scarce title!
Very Good copy.
1993, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21.2 x 15.1 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kasakura / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
Published in Winter 1993, issue 12 of L&M (Lesbian & Masochism), published by Kasakura Publishing, originally as a special edition of Video X magazine, then onward as its own publication from the late 1980s until 1994. The title says it all, vivid colour photo features and content centring around lesbian and masochism fetish Queen themes, with regular photography by Norio Sugiura ( SM Fan, SM Select, etc.), Koji Yuhara, Shiko Shima ( Specialty S&M, Yume Club, Speculum, etc.), and models such as Mori Miki, Izumi Kawakami, Sachiko Sugiura, Tomomi Harada, Ayumu Hibino Mai Ito, Reika Mizuki, Queen Serina, Queen Mizuki, Ayaka Shiki, and many others.
Very Good copy.
1991, Japanese/English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tsukasa Shobo / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
CHAIN BONDAGE; ROPE BONDAGE; STOCKING BONDAGE; GUM BONDAGE; COSTUME BONDAGE; TUBE BONDAGE; RESTRAINTS — FANTASTIC PHOTOS OF BONDAGE ART; SWEET, SWEET CHAIN; FOXY BLACK B&D DOLL; BOUND IN A CHAIR; COSTUME LAND; BONDAGE CLINIC; LADIES IN RESTRAINT; PRISONER...
Very rare and published in 1991, "Bound Lady" ("The Magazine For and By Bondagers") is a full-colour glossy SM photo collection by photographer and kinbakushi Kinichi Tanaka, and body design by Go Arisue (b. 1954), one of the world's top kinbakushi. Tanaka (b. 1947) was the main photographer for the Japanese cult fetish magazine S&M Sniper throughout its existence, and both Tanaka and Arisue were contributed to SM Select and SM Fan and shot for many pink movies throughout the 1970s—1990s. Tanaka is a member of the Japan Photographic Art Society and the Shinshashinha Association. "Bound Lady" features Eri Kikuchi, Yuka Kikuchi, Arisa Himeno, Mayu Odagiri, Matsurika Abe, Manami Harada, Rie Kudo, Rena Hashimoto, Aki Sayuri, Yuka Moriguchi, Makoto Chiaki, Ai Okano, Rena Hashimoto, Ryoko Narumi, and others in themed f/f bondage photo shoots. Also features photography by Koji Yokoyama.
"diagnosis and treatment are available to slaves here"
Very Good copy.
2011, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 25.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Serpentine Gallery / London
Walther König / Köln
$90.00 $70.00 - In stock -
First edition of the fast out-of-print "SEE, WE ASSEMBLE" Mark Leckey catalogue.
In a multi-disciplinary practice that encompasses sculpture, sound, film and performance, Leckey explores the potential of the human imagination to appropriate and to animate a concept, an object or an environment.
Drawing on his personal experiences as a London-based artist, who spent his formative years in the north of England, Leckey returns frequently to the themes of desire and transformation.
Leckey’s fascination with the affective power of images is another recurring theme. Meticulously sourced and reconfigured archival footage is a predominant feature of some of his best-known works. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is a seminal exploration of the history of underground dance culture in the UK from the mid- 1970s to the early 1990s.
In the recent performance piece GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010), Leckey sought to communicate the inner life of a ‘smart’ fridge – one that keeps an electronic tally of its contents – and to render audible its ‘voice’.
Included is an interview between the artist and Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and an extract from a script by Mark Leckey and Martin McGeown.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Mark Leckey: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE at Serpentine Gallery, London, May - June 2011.
As New.
1990, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 358 pages, 17.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
October Books / New York
$90.00 - In stock -
First 1990 hardcover edition of this landmark collection of essays, Yve-Alain Bois’ Painting as Model remains to this day one of the most influential contemporary books on painting. Informed by both structuralism and poststructuralism, these essays by art critic and historian Yve Alain Bois seek to redefine the status of theory in modernist critical discourse. Warning against the uncritical adoption of theoretical fashions and equally against the a priori rejection of all theory, Bois argues that theory is best employed in response to the specific demands of a critical problem. The essays lucidly demonstrate the uses of various theoretical approaches in conjunction with close reading of both paintings and texts.
"A genuinely original contribution, in both style and approach, to a 'new history' of art which reconciles critical theory to historical research." - Louis Marin, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Yve-Alain Bois studied at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes under the guidance of Roland Barthes and Hubert Damisch. A founder of the French journal Macula, Bois is currently a professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ.
Very Good copy w. good dust jacket.
2022, English
Softcover, , 56 pages, 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
Self-Published / Sydney
$20.00 - In stock -
Movements, imprints and textures of environmental and anthropologic research built the world of Gathering Geographies – an exhibition at Darren Knight Gallery curated by Mara Schwerdtfeger in 2022. The collection of works questioned how the Earth's movements – weather, time, resources – shape how we gather, act, and move through space, in turn influencing our creativity and history.
Illustrated throughout.
Artists : Arini Byng, Jessie Gall, and Rebecca Jensen (VIC), Marianna Ebersoll (NSW), Lisa Lerkenfeldt (NSW), Nina Nowak (DE / PL), oceanfloor.group (DK), Mara Schwerdtfeger (NSW), Heather Shannon (NSW), Mardi Reardon-Smith (QLD), Lydia Trappenberg (DE). The exhibition reader features essays from Mara Schwerdtfeger, Marianna Ebersoll, and Sally Molloy alongside poetry from Jess Gall, Maira Wilkie, and oceanfloor.group and a score for solo piano by Heather Shannon.
Hand-numbered edition of 50 copies.
2023, English
Softcover, 376 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by
No Place Press / US
$55.00 - In stock -
Essays and reminiscences by one of the preeminent art historians of our time, spanning more than four decades.
An Oblique Autobiography assembles a new collection of essays and reminiscences by one of the preeminent art historians of our time. Spanning more than four decades of Yve-Alain Bois's work as a scholar, journal editor, and occasional curator, this volume traces a deeply personal itinerary through an important era of art history, in which the discipline—in part occasioned by Bois's own journey from France to the United States—was significantly reformulated by new methodologies.
Detailing Bois's early relationships with figures such as Roland Barthes, Hubert Damisch, Lygia Clark, and Jacques Derrida, as well as his extended engagements with Rosalind Krauss, Ellsworth Kelly, and Martin Barré, these essays track Bois's intellectual commitments against the backdrop of an evolving academic field. With texts that range from academic journal articles to obituaries, written from 1976 to 2021, An Oblique Autobiography reveals the range of Bois's authorial voice and offers a remarkable self-portrait of one of art history's primary protagonists.