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Rare first edition, first printing of Eikoh Hosoe's classic photo book “Human Body”, published by Nippon Geijutsu Shuppansha, Tokyo in 1982. A stunning collection duotone photogravures, “Human Body” is a gorgeously designed retrospective of Hosoe's inimitable nudes and includes work from his critically acclaimed "Man & Woman", "Embrace", "Killed by Roses", as well as many previously unpublished images including many shot in Yosemite and Arizona. Beautiful black cloth bound, de-bossed covers with dust-jacket housed in the original heavy publisher's printed slipcase. An absolute classic, and wonderful copy of one of Hosoe's scarcer books.

Eikoh Hosoe (Hosoe Eikō, born 18 March 1933 in Yonezawa, Yamagata) is a Japanese photographer and filmmaker who emerged in the experimental arts movement of post-World War II Japan. He is known for his psychologically charged images, often exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession, and irrationality. Through his friendships and artistic collaborations he is linked with the writer Yukio Mishima and 1960s avant-garde artists such as the Butoh dancer Tatsumi Hijikata.

Very Good-Fine copy. Tiny few marks on book-block side-edge of coffee? Otherwise a perfect, preserved copy in original dust-jacket and slipcase with light shelf-wear.

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First 1971 edition of Eikoh Hosoe's celebrated work "Embrace", published by Shashin Hyoronsha Publishing House. 6 years later it would be republished in the collection of Japanese photographers by Asahi Sonorama. This beautiful oversized original hardcover edition by legendary Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe, builds upon the approach of his much celebrated earlier project, Man and Woman (1961). Featuring a preface by Yukio Mishima, "Embrace" is a wonderful collection of photographs of human bodies studio shot in abstract detail using high exposure, Hosoe creating dramatic contrasts that emphasise the dynamism and physicality of these bodies that have become some of his most iconic images. Rich black and white gravure printing, a gorgeous book.

VG—NF copy in VG—NF dust jacket. This copy lacks the publisher's shipping box.

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Very rare original first printing Volume 3 Japanese book collection of the infamous cult classic eromanga "Bondage Fairies" by Kondom, published by Kubo Shoten way back in 1995. Volume 3 of the first ever book collection bringing together over 160 pages of the the original series from the early 1990s, in the original Japanese language, as they appeared in the pages of Kubo Shoten's Young Lemon magazine for the first time as "Bondage Fairies". Includes colour artwork galleries.

Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.

Near Fine copy in original NF dust jacket.

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Very rare original first Fairie Fetish Japanese book collection of the infamous cult classic eromanga Bondage Fairies before they were known as "Bondage Fairies" by Kondom, published by Kubo Shoten way back in 1993 and again in 1995. Bondage Fairies first appeared in Japan in 1990 as "Insect Hunter", but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Fairie Fetish revisits the first collection of "Insect Hunter" by Kondom from 1990, collecting over 150 pages of the first of the original series, in the original Japanese language. Includes colour artwork galleries.

Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.

Near Fine copy in original NF dust jacket.

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Signed, first edition of this wonderful, now out-of-print and hard to come by, compact and sturdy publication designed by Satoshi Machiguchi and published to accompany the large-scale retrospective exhibition of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, “Moriyama Daido’s Tokyo: Ongoing”, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, June 2 – September 22, 2020.

Printed on warm paper and packed cover-to-cover with full-bleed reproductions of all the works in the exhibition, starting with his iconic "Tights" photographs and the repetitive image of the lips inspired by Warhol from his "Nippon Gekijo Shashincho / Japan, A Photo Theater", sampling some of his most recognisable early works, the book focuses on the theme of Tokyo seen through the never-restless lens of the Japanese master photographer. In addition to a foreword by Daido Moriyama, the book also contains essays by writer Akiko Otake and photo critic Yoshiaki Kai, shedding light on Moriyama’s photographic practice and his legacy (all texts included in Japanese and English translation).

"Known as a master of snapshots, Moriyama Daido, one of Japan’s preeminent photographers, began his career in the 1960s. His grainy, high-contrast style, which came to be described as “are, bure, boke” (rough, blurry, out of focus), sent shockwaves through the photography world. Over the years, Moriyama has held large exhibitions at museums in a host of different countries, and received countless international photography prizes, including the 2019 Hasselblad Award, and today, 55 years after his debut, he remains active at the forefront of the art world.

Based on the theme of “ongoing,” this exhibition focuses the city of Tokyo as seen through the constantly sprinting Moriyama’s lens in his latest color and monochrome works."

A wonderful collection.
Near Fine copy, signed "Daido" in silver metallic marker to the first page.

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Super rare and bookshop favourite early collection of artworks by ero-guro master Toshio Saeki (1945—2019), published in 1971 by Gakugeishorin. Stunning large-format softcover collection of exquisitely printed saturated full-bleed colour and b/w artworks on warm matte paper stock capturing this legendary underground artist at the height of his powers, housed in original publisher's cardboard slipcase. His third book collection featuring so many of his finest works. Postface by Hiraoka Masaaki in Japanese. A must!

Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).

“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.

Very Good copy. Very complete copy with slipcase and obi present. Some wear/marking to a VG slipcase.

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Rare first 1969 printing of the seminal "Art Povera", the phenomenal and now legendary critical/photographic book by the great Italian art historian, critic and curator Germano Celant (1940—2020) that internationally established the so-called Art Povera / Arte Povera movement (meaning "poor art", coined by Celant in 1967) and published by Studio Vista, London and printed in Italy.

Includes profiles of major artists of the movement, including a short text followed by pages of full-page photographs for each artist. Artists featured: Walter de Maria, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Stephen Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbets, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Giulio Paolini, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Franz Erhard Walther, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Emilio Prini, Richard Serra.

"This book does not aim at being an objective and general analysis of the phenomenon of art or life, but is rather an attempt to flank (both art and life) as accomplices of the changes and attitudes in the development of their daily becoming. This book does not attempt to be objective since the awareness of objectivity is false consciousness. The book, made up of photographs and written documents, bases its critical and editorial assumptions on the knowledge that criticism and iconographic documents give limited vision and partial perception of artistic work. The book, when it reproduces the documents of artistic work, refutes the linguistic mediation of photography. The book, even though it wants to avoid the logic of consumption, is a consumer's item. ... This book produces a collection of already old material. ... In this book there is no need to reflect in order to seek a unitary and reassuring value, immediately refuted by the the authors themselves, rather there is the necessity to look into it for the changes, limits, precariousness and instability of artistic work." — text from Celant's introduction "Stating That."

A must.

Very Good copy, usual tanning.

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Rare first 1970 edition of MoMA's landmark book on conceptual art, published to accompany this groundbreaking avant-garde show.

In the summer of 1970, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the now legendary exhibition Information, one of the first surveys of conceptual art. Conceived by MoMA’s celebrated curator Kynaston McShine as an “international report” on contemporary trends, the show and attendant catalog together assembled the work of more than 150 artists from 15 countries to explore the parameters and possibilities of the emerging art practices of the era. Noting the participating artists’ attunement to the “mobility and change that pervades their time,” McShine underscored their interest in “ways of rapidly exchanging ideas, rather than embalming the idea in an ‘object.’” Indeed, much of the work in the exhibition engaged mass-communications systems, such as broadcast television and the postal service, and addressed viewers directly, often encouraging their participation in return.

The catalog, rather than merely document the show, functioned autonomously: it included a list of recommended reading, a chance-based index by critic Lucy Lippard, and individual artist contributions in the form of photographic documentation, textual description, drawings and diagrams—some relating to work in the exhibition and others to artworks as yet unrealized.

Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Keith Arnatt, Art & Language Press, Art & Project, Richard Artschwager, David Askevold, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Barrio, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, Bernhard & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, George Brecht, Stig Broegger, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, James Lee Byars, Jorge Luis Carballa, Christopher Cook, Roger Cutforth, Carlos D'Alessio, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Group Frontera, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Giorno Poetry Systems, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Ira Joel Haber, Randy Hardy, Michael Heizer, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Peter Hutchinson, Richards Jarden, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Cildo Campos Meirelles, Marta Minujin, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, New York Graphic Workshop, Newspaper, Group Oho, Helio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Paul Pechter, Giuseppe Penone, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Alejandro Puente, Markus Raetz, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Edward Ruscha, J.M. Sanejouand, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Erik Thygesen, John Van Saun, Guilherme Magalhaes Vaz, Bernar Venet, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson.

Kynaston McShine was formerly Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Very Good copy. Light cover wear, single spine crack, all crisp, clean interior and tightly bound copy of a book that usually sees serious page detachments. Best copy we have seen.

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The immediately out-of-print Tarot of Leonora Carrington. As New sealed copy of the first edition.

The British-born artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is one of the more fascinating figures to emerge from the Surrealist movement. As both a writer and painter, she was championed early by André Breton and joined the exiled Surrealists in New York, before settling in Mexico in 1943. The magical themes of Carrington’s otherworldly paintings are well-known, but the recent discovery of a suite of tarot designs she created for the Major Arcana was a revelation for scholars and fans of Carrington alike. Drawing inspiration from the Tarot of Marseille and the popular Waite-Smith deck, Carrington brings her own approach and style to this timeless subject, creating a series of iconic images. Executed on thick board, brightly coloured and squarish in format, Carrington’s Major Arcana shines with gold and silver leaf, exploring tarot themes through what Gabriel Weisz Carrington describes as a ‘surrealist object’. This tantalising discovery, made by the curator Tere Arcq and scholar Susan Aberth, has placed greater emphasis upon the role of the tarot in Carrington’s creative life and has led to fresh research in this area.

The Tarot of Leonora Carrington is the first book dedicated to this important aspect of the artist’s work. It includes a full-size facsimile of her newly discovered Major Arcana; an introduction from her son, Gabriel Weisz Carrington; and a richly illustrated essay from Tere Arcq and Susan Aberth that offers new insights ­—­­­ exploring the significance of tarot imagery within Carrington’s wider work, her many inspirations and mysterious occult sources.

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It was a good year, 1995, and with each month a new full-colour depiction of H.R. Giger's universe of the grotesque fantastic. 15 large-format reproductions, including never before published works, his hommage to Gustave Moreau, his Biomechanoids and Biomechanical Landscapes, designs for the unreleased films "The Tourist" and Jodorowsky's "Dune". Unused copy ready for the wall. Live in the past, who cares.

Very Good copy with light wear.

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First 1966 English-language edition of this huge monograph by Hieronymus Bosch (1450—1516) authority de Tolnay, the definitive work on the fifteenth-century Dutch/Netherlandish artist, containing not only a full introduction to Bosch's life and work, but a complete catalogue raisonné of all his paintings and drawings, including fold-out panels.

Hieronymus Bosch (1450—1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school, his work, generally oil on oak wood, mainly contains fantastic illustrations of religious concepts and narratives. His pessimistic fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder being his best-known follower. Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell. Little is known of Bosch's life. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in his grandfather's house. Today, Bosch is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into humanity's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand along with eight drawings. About another half-dozen paintings are confidently attributed to his workshop. His most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, including The Garden of Earthly Delights.

VG/VG DJ in mylar wrap.

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The landmark, over-sized Obliques special double issue, "La Femme Surréaliste", published in Paris in 1977. The French literary journal Obliques (who published special issues on Artaud, Bellmer, Kafka, Klossowski, Vian, Sartre, Robbe-Grillet, Strindberg, Genet...) was the first publisher to present a comprehensive list of the literary and plastic production of Surrealist women with this gorgeous volume, long before the works of surrealist women, as a corpus, began to be more widely studied in the 1980s. Featuring well known names, but also many female artists neglected and seldom mentioned in the recent (strangely narrow-minded) re-evaluation of this period, this beautifully printed issue of Obliques is an incredibly valuable reference on a movement that was decidedly ‘feminine’. Edited by Roger Borderie with Michel Camus, it features profiles on the work and writing of Belen, Maya Bell, Bona, Leonora Carrington, Lise Deharme, Jacqueline Duprey, Aube Elléouët, Josette Exandier, Leonor Fini, Aline Gagnaire, Giovanna, Jane Graverol, Marianne Van Hirtum, Rozeta Hum, Valentine Hugo, Karskaya, Greta Knutson, Laure, Gina Pane, Annie Lebrun, Georgette Magritte, Manina, Joyce Mansour, Nora Mitrani, Meret Oppenheim, Mimi Parent, Valentine Penrose, Gisele Prassinos, Karina Raeck, Remedios Varo, Sibylle Ruppert, Colette Thomas, Toyen, Isabelle Waldberg, Unica Zurn, Cécile Reims, Dorothea Tanning, Greta Knutson, and more. Additional texts and works by Beatrice Didier, Cécile Reims, Michel Butor, Michel Sicard, Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues, Jean Roudaut, Rene Micha, Gerard Legrand, Jean Pfeiffer, Jacques Laurans, Michel Carassou, Annie Lebrun, Charles Bachat, Olivier Milliard, Robert Brechon, Jules Michelet, Jerome Prieur, Xaviere Gauthier, Elsa Thoresen Gouveia, plus a gallery by Titi Parant and Henri Maccheroni's Portraits Corrigés. Profusely illustrated with artworks, mostly in b/w with some colour sections.

Very Good copy of the lovely softcover edition with textured boards. Sunning to spine edge, light general wear.

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Extremely rare early Paul Thek Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam catalogue, published in 1969. Designed by Wim Crouwel (Total Design) in the form of a 10-page illustrated leporello fold-out of Thek's installations and sculptures and published with SM no. 460. One of the hardest of all Stedelijk Museum catalogues to find, this copy comes complete with the often missing SM biographical/interview/text insert, and also the loose strip inlay with text advertising ‘a document made by Paul Thek and Edwin Klein’ (published that same year), making it a most complete copy available.

Very Good-Fine with all included, preserved in plastic sleeve.

An American sculptor, painter, and installation artist, Paul Thek (1933-1988) is primarily known for hyper-realistic works of human body parts executed in fleshlike beeswax and for his strongly symbolic, room-size installations constructed from transitory materials. A major figure on the 1960s New York art scene, Thek also spent time in Europe, where he paved the way for artists adopting collaborative strategies. Although he gained a large following and was featured in more than one hundred solo and group exhibitions, the anti-establishment "artist's artist" was practically forgotten at the time of his death from AIDS related illness in New York City in 1988, aged 54.

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Rare copy of this fantastic, seldom seen issue of Camera Graphics Australia (no. 5), published in May/June 1972, published by Payton, McMahons Point, NSW, featuring the work of Australian photographers Sue Ford, Paul Cox, Greg Weight, Roger Warwick Scott, Rob Walls, Lissa Coote, Stan Ciccone (inc. front cover), illustrated review of Toowoomba '72 International Salon, illustrated review on American documentary photojournalist Leonard Freed's Germany... As well as the featured photographic portfolios, the magazine includes essays, news, reviews for photo books, exhibitions, products, photography/camera related advertising, and more.

Good copy with edge wear to textured card covers, some shallow insect marking to front.

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The much scarcer (revised and expanded) 1974 edition of this classic 1955 survey of the paintings of the astoundingly inventive painter and draftsman, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of the most significant artists of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting. Issued by Phaidon, London, this hardcover volume is profusely illustrated with colour and b/w plates of his paintings in full, along with many details, accompanied by English texts and a complete list of works that have lost none of their wonder and continue to be one of the most inspiring catalogues in the history of painting.

"Pieter Bruegel the Elder began his career in 1551, at a period when Michelangelo was painting his last frescoes; and when death took Bruegel in 1569, at the summit of his achievement, the youthful El Greco had just completed his fırst paintings.

The creative originality of Bruegel's inventions is very powerful. It has rightly been said that he discovered the world of the peasants as a new field of artistic representation, that he was the fırst painter to characterize the appearance of the four seasons in nature, and that he depicted both the tragic and the comic elements of human life with a deep understanding.

About forty of his paintings, nearly half of them in Vienna, others in Naples, Brussels, Madrid, London, New York, and elsewhere, have survived. Many of them are rather large and contain a great wealth of figures; hence this volume comprises, in addition to complete renderings, a great number of detail reproductions, which not only show certain beautiful parts of the pictures, but also convey the force and boldness of Bruegel's imagination and of his brush work. [...]"—from inner jacket

VG in VG dust jacket.

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The monumental, and very rare catalogue raisonné of American artist Robert Gober's (b. 1954) sculptures and installations, published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition "Robert Gober. Work 1976-2007" at Schaulager, Basel by the great Steidl publishing house with Schaulager. At 544 pages, this incredible, handsomely designed hardcover book catalogues Gober's work as he developed an iconography once beautifully described as 'The Poetics of the Drain'. It charts his journey through his heart breaking reaction to the emergence of AIDs in the New York community, whilst grappling with issues around childhood, domesticity, sexuality, victimization and religion, relative to the disenfranchised and spurned, melding the human body with the drain. The book firmly places him in the forefront of his generation of artists.

Lavishly illustrated with approximately 250 works, all of which are reproduced in large format along with behind the scenes production/studio photography and comprehensive descriptions complemented by the artist's own commentary on individual works, as well as technical information on their manufacture. With an introductory essay by Elisabeth Sussman, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, this volume remains the most exhaustive and revealing volume on Gober's oeuvre.

A highly sought after book, especially in the more collectible English edition.
Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket, light traces of wear to extremities.

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For some, Nietzsche is the prophet of hierarchy and heroism, a rallying cry against the modern herd. For others, he is the forefather of AI-driven transcendence, an oracle of posthuman futures. His thought has been twisted, worshipped, and weaponised across generations—from avant-garde artists to political extremists, from revolutionary philosophers to Silicon Valley disruptors.

In this book of essays, leading scholars dive into Nietzsche’s early vision, following the tangled, often contradictory paths of his influence: the poets he scorned, the radicals who claimed him, the scholars who tried (and failed) to pin him down. From Australian modernism to French poststructuralism, from political battlegrounds to the shifting tensions between art and philosophy, this book captures Nietzsche’s restless afterlife—revealing how, more than 150 years after the publication of his first book, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche’s thought still provokes, unsettles, and refuses to be tamed.

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Francis Bacon: Paintings is a collection of the complete paintings of Irish-born British figurative painter Francis Bacon. 745 illustrations. Accompanied by a curated selection of compelling quotes — from figures such as Lucian Freud, Roald Dahl and Damien Hirst — the book guides the reader through the evolution of Bacon’s distinctive aesthetic.

A master of the grotesque, Bacon created art that is both unsettling and hypnotic, repulsive and irresistible. Emerging from a turbulent inner life and the devastation of World War II, his images retain a quality of urgency that continues to resonate with contemporary audiences.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Bacon produced almost 500 paintings, including his signature diptychs and triptychs. From his early Surrealist experiments of the 1920s to the stark, elegiac works completed just before his death, this book charts a lifetime of radical and groundbreaking artistry.

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A canonical gem of the nocturnal fantastic, in the tradition of German Romantics such as E.T.A. Hoffmann and Novalis.

Translated by George MacLennan and Edward Gauvin, with an introduction by George MacLennan.

First published in France in the dark year of 1942, the story collection Waystations of the Deep Night remains the best-known of Marcel Brion's numerous novels and stories in the vein of the strange and the fantastic. The journeys in this volume carry the reader through the surreal vistas of an underground city that appears aboveground as a bizarre theater of facades and a fire-ravaged landscape where souls turn to ash. A young castrato sings his heart out in a lost baroque garden; a child falls under the fateful spell of an enchanted painting; a traveler in a burned-out landscape encounters the Prince of Death; and dancing cats engage in mortal combat in the cellars of an abandoned port city.

A self-declared heir of Achim von Arnim and E.T.A. Hoffmann, Brion was also an admirer of the German Romantic writer Novalis and his sequence of Hymns to the Night, but his own imaginative homages to the night are more troublingly ambiguous, possibly an indirect reflection of the dark times in which they were written.

Born in Marseille in 1895, Marcel Brion was a freelance writer and critic. In 1964 he was elected to the Académie française in recognition of both his critical and creative writing, Over the course of a long and productive career he published 20 novels, four volumes of short stories and some 68 nonfiction books covering music, art, literature, history and travel. He died in Paris in 1984.

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René Char (1907-1988) was one of France's most respected 20th century poets. Part of the Surrealist group in the late 1920's-1930's, he gradually drifted away from the group. During WWII he joined the resistance and wrote his forceful prose poems describing what he saw and experienced. This large, bilingual anthology, includes all of his well known books Feuillets d'Hypnos and Fureur et Mystere as well as a sampling of other poems and prose poems. Insightful essays are provided by Sandra Bermann, Mary Ann Caws, and Nancy Kline.

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In the mid-1960s, legendary artist and writer Joe Brainard (I Remember) teamed with poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, and many more for these pioneering collaborative comic strips-unavailable for decades and collected here for the first time.

"PEOPLE OF THE WORLD... RELAX!"

In the creative hotbed of 1960s New York, Joe Brainard was a whirlwind. He was a maker of paintings, assemblages, collages, book covers, poetry-reading flyers, and more. But some of his most exciting work was done with his friends. In 1964, the twenty-two-year-old Brainard turned his talents to rewiring the lowly comic book form into something new and surprising. He invited his friends Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Peter Schjeldahl, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, and others-all of them New York School poets-to collaborate with him on comics that they would write and he would draw.

The results were unlike any comics seen before. Previously available only on the rare-book market (at very high prices) but available here under one cover for the first time, the two issues of C Comics still feel as fresh as when the first page rolled off the mimeograph machine more than sixty years ago. Brainard's energetic line and joyful humor charge across every page, illustrating O'Hara's recasting of a cowboy as a mash-note-writing lover, Padgett's experiments with traditional cartoon sound effects (ROAR! GRRR! SKREE!), cameos by Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy, and heaps of Dadaesque delights.

This edition includes a foreword from Padgett and an essay by comics historian Bill Kartalopolous, who details the creation (and creators) of C Comics. A masterpiece of collaboration and spontaneity, C Comics is a testament to the vastness of Brainard's creativity and his ability to push any artistic form in a new and powerful direction.

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The American artist's much-imitated memoir, described by Paul Auster as "one of the few totally original books I have ever read."

Edited by Ron Padgett.

Joe Brainard's I Remember is a literary and artistic cult classic, praised and admired by writers from Paul Auster to John Ashery and Edmund White. As autobiography, Brainard's method was brilliantly simple: to set down specific memories as they rose to the surface of his consciousness, each prefaced by the refrain "I remember"

"I remember when I thought that if you did anything bad, policemen would put you in jail."

Brainard's enduring gem of a book has been issued in various forms over the past thirty years. In 1970, Angel Hair books published the first edition of I Remember, which quickly sold out; he wrote two subsequent volumes for Angel Hair, More I Remember (1972) and More I Remember More (1973), both of which proved as popular as the original. In 1973, the Museum of Modern Art in New York published Brainard's I Remember Christmas, a new text for which he also contributed a cover design and four drawings. Excerpts from the Angel Hair editions appeared in Interview, Gay Sunshine, The World and the New York Herald. Then in 1975, Full Court Press issued a revised version collecting all three of the Angel Hair volumes and added new material, using the original title I Remember.

This complete edition is prefaced by poet and translator Ron Padgett.

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The Hungarian master’s first work to appear in English, and still one of the best. Translated from Hungarian by George Szirtes.

"This is a book about a world into which the Leviathan has returned. The universality of its vision rivals that of Gogol's Dead Souls and far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing."—W. G. Sebald

"Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance are irresistible, unforgettable and required reading."—Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times

The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find —music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found.

Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, "lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds."

László Krasznahorkai lives in the hills of Szentlászló. He has written five novels and won numerous prizes. New Directions also publishes his novels War and War and Satantango; another novel, Seiobo There Below, is forthcoming.

George Szirtes is a poet who was born in Budapest in 1948 and is now living in London.
His translations have won the European Translation Prize and the Gold Star Award for the Republic of Hungary.

Cover painting: James Ensor, "The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889" (detail)

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