World Food Books

The Portrait of Eccentricity : Arcimboldo and the Mannerist Grotesque
by Giancarlo Maiorino

1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 184 pages, 22.23 x 14.61 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Penn State University / Pennsylvania

$50.00 - Out of stock

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“In many ways, like its subject, marvelously idiosyncratic and playful, this book will make an important contribution to our understanding of the rhetoric of mannerism.”—Ernest B. Gilman New York University

First 1991 hardcover edition of Giancarlo Maiorino's The Portrait of Eccentricity : Arcimboldo and the Mannerist Grotesque. In this companion to his The Cornucopian Mind and the Baroque Unity of the Arts, Maiorino examines the links between Renaissance and the modern versions of the Groteseque.

In this interdisciplinary study, the term "eccentricity" refers to styles of playful extravagance. Maiorino focuses on the rhetorical figures of excess employed by a critic-historian (Giorgio Vasari), on the willful artificiality of a painter (Giuseppe Arcimboldo), and on the programmatic and interpretive commentary of a theorist (Gregorio Comanini).

Maiorino draws subtle and persuasive connections between the images he discusses and the grotesque "face" of sixteenth-century poetics and rhetoric. He sets the mannerist and the grotesque against the philosophical seriousness of Renaissance humanism, interpreting them as a celebration of the ludic and fantastic possibilities of art itself. Aiming at pleasure rather than instruction, this art plays on the boundaries of the natural and the artificial, the credible and the impossible, taking delight in parody, excess, disjunction, and exaggeration.

Fine copy in Near Fine dust jacket.

File under: Giuseppe Arcimboldo Giorgio de Chirico Gian Lorenzo Bernini Michelangelo Federico Zuccari Giulio Romano Giorgio Vasari Giancarlo Maiorino Giorgio Vasari Gregorio Comanini Penn State University / Pennsylvania Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Painting Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Art Surrealism Architecture / Interior

Hidden Symbolism Of Alchemy And The Occult Arts
By Herbert Silberer

1971, English
Softcover, 452 pages, 21.4 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Dover / New York

$45.00 - Out of stock

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First English 1971 edition of Herbert Silberer's examinations of alchemy and the occult, and his attempts to correlate the two crafts to the pursuit of psychoanalysis. First published in 1917, this text represents the extensive investigations Herbert Silberer undertook in order to map occurrences in the occult with the ascendant psychoanalytic disciplines present in the Vienna School of which he was part. This text is marked by its depth of research, with sources such as Hermes Trismegistus, Flamel, Lacinius, Michael Meier, Paracelsus, and Boehme quoted and drawn upon in service of Silberer's thesis. The support of alchemy as a spiritual movement, on the same level as the yoga traditions of the Indian subcontinent, is also notable.

Very Good copy.

File under: Herbert Silberer Dover / New York Psychoanalysis Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Occult / Esoterica Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Art

The Post Card : From Socrates to Freud and Beyond
by Jacques Derrida

1987, English
Softcover, 522 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$55.00 - Out of stock

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First 1987 edition. Translated by Alan Bass.

"You were reading a somewhat retro loveletter, the last in history. But you have not yet received it. Yes, its lack or excess of address prepares it to fall into all hands: a post card, an open letter in which the secret appears, but indecipherably.

What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, uniquely you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occasionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.
On the other side of the card, look, a proposition is made to you, S and p, Socrates and plato. For once the former seems to write, and with his other hand he is even scratching. But what is Plato doing with his outstretched finger in his back? While you occupy yourself with turning it around in every direction, it is the picture that turns you around like a letter, in advance it deciphers you, it preoccupies space, it procures your words and gestures, all the bodies that you believe you invent in order to determine its outline. You find yourself, you, yourself, on its path.
The thick support of the card, a book heavy and light, is also the specter of this scene, the analysis between Socrates and Plato, on the program of several others. Like the soothsayer, a “fortune-telling book” watches over and speculates on that-which-must-happen, on what it indeed might mean to happen, to arrive, to have to happen or arrive, to let or to make happen or arrive, to destine, to address, to send, to legate, to inherit, etc., if it all still signifies, between here and there, the near and the far, da und fort, the one or the other.

You situate the subject of the book: between the posts and the analytic movement, the pleasure principle and the history of telecommunications, the post card and the purloined letter, in a word the transference from Socrates to Freud, and beyond. This satire of epistolary literature had to be farci, stuffed with addresses, postal codes, crypted missives, anonymous letters, all of it confided to so many modes, genres, and tones. In it I also abuse dates, signatures, titles or references, language itself." — J. D.

“With The Post Card, as with Glas, Derrida appears more as writer than as philosopher. Or we could say that here, in what is in part a mock epistolary novel (the long section is called “Envois,” roughly, “dispatches” ), he stages his writing more overtly than in the scholarly works. . . . The Post Card also contains a series of self-reflective essays, largely focused on Freud, in which Derrida is beautifully lucid and direct.”—Alexander Gelley, Library Journal

As New copy.

File under: Jacques Derrida Sigmund Freud Socrates University of Chicago Press / Chicago Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Transference : The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII
by Jacques Lacan

2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 464 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by John Wiley and Sons / London

$55.00 - In stock -

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"Alcibiades attempted to seduce Socrates, he wanted to make him, and in the most openly avowed way possible, into someone instrumental and subordinate to what? To the object of Alcibiades's desire - ágalma, the good object.

I would go even further. How can we analysts fail to recognize what is involved? He says quite clearly: Socrates has the good object in his stomach. Here Socrates is nothing but the envelope in which the object of desire is found.

It is in order to clearly emphasize that he is nothing but this envelope that Alcibiades tries to show that Socrates is desire's serf in his relations with Alcibiades, that Socrates is enslaved to Alcibiades by his desire. Although Alcibiades was aware that Socrates desired him, he wanted to see Socrates's desire manifest itself in a sign, in order to know that the other - the object, ágalma - was at his mercy.

Now, it is precisely because he failed in this undertaking that Alcibiades disgraces himself, and makes of his confession something that is so affectively laden. The daemon of Αἰδώς (Aidós), Shame, about which I spoke to you before in this context, is what intervenes here. This is what is violated here. The most shocking secret is unveiled before everyone; the ultimate mainspring of desire, which in love relations must always be more or less dissimulated, is revealed - its aim is the fall of the Other, A, into the other, a."—Jacques Lacan

"In this extraordinary text Lacan teaches us that to become Lacanians would be to miss the point. To understand transference, Lacan shows us with his usual wit and precision, is to understand how and why people get stuck in their relationships to people, and to ideas. This is Lacan at his breeziest and most incisive. He reveals once again, in his own inimitable way, that to talk well about psychoanalysis is always to talk about so much more than psychoanalysis."
-Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst and writer

First HC Polity edition. Very Good copy with light wear.

File under: Jacques Lacan John Wiley and Sons / London Theory / Essay Psychoanalysis Out-of-print / Rare Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Helen in Egypt
by H.D.

1974, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 20 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by New Directions / New York

$65.00 $45.00 - Out of stock

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First 1974 paperback edition of Hermetic Definition by H.D. published by New Directions.

"The poem is as easy to read as breathing: it could be danced, it could be sung, the clarity of image is so perfect… Tremendous suggestiveness and magnetic force radiate from the scenes… H. D.’s verse has the balance, the amplitude and the clean outlines of a Greek temple."—Nation

The fabulous beauty of Helen of Troy is legendary. But some say that Helen was never in Troy, that she had been conveyed by Zeus to Egypt, and that Greeks and Trojans alike fought for an illusion. A fifty-line fragment by the poet Stesichorus of Sicily (c. 640-555 B.C.), what survives of his Pallinode, tells us almost all we know of this other Helen, and from it H. D. wove her book-length poem. Yet Helen in Egypt is not a simple retelling of the Egyptian legend but a recreation of the many myths surrounding Helen, Paris, Achilles, Theseus, and other figures of Greek tradition, fused with the mysteries of Egyptian hermeticism.

An innovative modernist writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. Although she is most well known for her poetry—lyric and epic—H.D. also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality.

Very Good copy.

File under: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) New Directions / New York Poetry Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Ancient / Medieval / Gothic SALE

Forbidden History : The State, Society, and the Regulation of Sexuality in Modern Europe
Edited by John C. Fout

1992, English
Softcover, 410 pages, 23.17 x 16.66 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of Chicago Press / Chicago

$45.00 - Out of stock

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From incest to infanticide, from breast-feeding and women's sexuality to female prostitution, from pornography to reproductive politics, and from the first homosexual rights movement to AIDS—this anthology addresses these and other crucial questions concerning the regulation of sexuality: How have society's values and attitudes toward sexuality and morality changed over the centuries? Why and how has the state sought to criminalize certain forms of sexual behavior and to control reproduction? How have churches tried to influence the state in its regulation of sexuality?

Contributions from a diverse group of prominent scholars representing a variety of disciplines are included in this anthology that spans European history. Essays by Randolph Trumbach on "Sex, Gender, and Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London"; Ruth Perry on "Colonizing the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth Century England"; Theo van der Meer on "Female Same-Sex Offenders in Late Eighteenth Century Amsterdam"; Robin Ann Sheets on "Pornography, Fairy Tales, and Feminism: Angela Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'"; and James W. Jones on "Discourses on and of AIDS in West Germany, 1986-1990." Offering the most up-to-date scholarship from a significant and growing field, this collection is essential for both students and faculty in social history, family history, women's and gender studies, gay studies, sociology and literature. These essays were originally published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

John C. Fout is professor of history at Bard College. He is the founding editor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and general editor of The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society, a book series published by the University of Chicago Press.

Very Good copy.

File under: John C. Fout Angela Carter Robin Ann Sheets Randolph Trumbach Ruth Perry Theo van der Meer James W. Jones University of Chicago Press / Chicago Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Philosophy Eros Feminism Sociology / Politics Crime / Violence LGBTQ+ Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Harmonies of Heaven and Earth : The Spiritual Dimension of Music from Antiquity to the Avant-Garde
By Joscelyn Godwin

1987, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Thames and Hudson / London

$90.00 - Out of stock

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Scarce original 1987 hardcover edition of Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, published by Thames & Hudson, London. Joscelyn Godwin explores music's effects on matter, living things, and human behavior. Turning to metaphysical accounts of the higher worlds and theories of celestial harmony, the author follows the path of musical inspiration on its descent to Earth, illuminating the archetypal currents that lie beneath Western musical history.

The power of music is spiritual. It is, for many people, the principal point of access to a consciousness beyond that of ordinary life. Musicians and listeners alike can read analyses of the physics or the psychology, the technique or the history of music; but there is a contemporary need, as Joscelyn Godwin reveals in this challenging book, for informed discussion of the almost too obvious fact that there is something supernatural in musical experience. This is that universal dimension of which Plato, Kepler, Rameau and Novalis wrote, and of which Wagner said: 'I feel that I am one with this vibrating Force, that it is omniscient, and that I can draw upon it to an extent that is limited only by my own capacity." The spiritual power of music surfaces in folklore, myth and mystical experience, refusing as music always does- to be bound by narrow rationalism. It embraces Heaven as well as Earth, the music of the spheres as well as the music that is played and sung.

Joscelyn Godwin begins his closely argued study with music's perceived effects on matter, on plants, on animals and on human behaviour. He then turns inward, to the absorbing accounts that have been given of the higher worlds that are the birthplace of Harmony, and of the realm of pure Intelligence which lies both within and beyond. To hear music, however, we need composers and performers, and the argument then follows Harmony on its descent from Heaven to Earth. This descent takes place in the musician's inspiration, in the listener's experience, and in the world at large; for archetypal currents run beneath the surface of musical history, in the centuries that encompass the polyphony of Perotin or J.S. Bach and the psychic impact of Webern, Stockhausen and rock'n'roll. A self-contained final section embodies the fullest account ever given of ancient and modern theoretical systems of celestial harmony, from Pythagoras to Marius Schneider, Rudolf Steiner and Gurdjieff.

Joscelyn Godwin was born in Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, England on January 16, 1945. He was educated as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, then at Radley College (Music Scholar), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (Music Scholar; B.A., 1965, Mus. B., 1966, M.A. 1969). Coming to the USA in 1966, he did graduate work in Musicology at Cornell University (Ph. D., 1969; dissertation: "The Music of Henry Cowell") and taught at Cleveland State University for two years before joining the Colgate University Music Department in 1971. He has taught at Colgate ever since.

Near Fine in VG—NF dust jacket. Beautifully preserved, unread.

File under: Karlheinz Stockhausen Jean-Philippe Rameau Pérotin Johann Sebastian Bach Anton Webern Plato Johannes Kepler Rudolf Steiner Joscelyn Godwin Novalis George Gurdjieff Marius Schneider Thames and Hudson / London Theory / Essay Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Art Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Occult / Esoterica

Le Sang et La Rose No. 1, 1968

1968, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

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Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 1 (1968) sets the scene perfectly, opening with Japanese author Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian by photographer Kishin Shinoyama in a pictorial feature "Les Morts Masculines", a photographic homage to Georges Bataille that also features the photography of Eikoh Hosoe, Ikkō Narahara, Masahisa Fukase, and Osamu Hayasaki, with models including Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, actor Akira Mita, author Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, actor Jin Nakayama, playwright Jūrō Kara, and others. Other features include " All Japanese are Perverse" — stories by Japanese writers including Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Yutaka Haniya, Shinji Sōya; Henry Miller's letters to Anais Nin; a colour gallery of artwork by Belgian painter Paul Delvaux; articles on Vampire fantasy in the arts (including many original illustrations; Witches (illustrated by James Ensor); Oriental Eros, Ancient Indian poetry; Kama Sutra; female bi-sexuality; the history of gay (Danshoku) theatre in Japan; the full-colour art gallery "Masturbation Machine", featuring avant-garde artists Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Masuo Ikeda, Setsu Nagasawa, Carlos Marchioli, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Masakazu Horiuchi, Tadanori Yokoo, Koji Suzuki, Tommy Ungerer; the fully illustrated museum supplement "Pain and Pleasure : On Torture" by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history; pornographic stories by Guillaume Apollinaire and Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (who coined the term "Pornographer"); fiction by Pierre Morion (pseudo. André Pieyre de Mandiargues); critic Jin'ichi Uekusa on the controversial writings of Roger Peyrefitte, illustrations by Ernst, Bellmer, Labisse, Fini, Lam, and much more.

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.

Good copy with some spine damage and tanning/wear.

File under: Max Ernst Léonor Fini Felix Labisse Wilfredo Lam Hans Bellmer Paul Delvaux Natsuyuki Nakanishi Masuo Ikeda Setsu Nagasawa Carlos Marchioli Kuniyoshi Kaneko Masakazu Horiuchi Tadanori Yokoo Koji Suzuki Tommy Ungerer Tatsumi Hijikata Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Eikoh Hosoe Ikkō Narahara Masahisa Fukase Osamu Hayasaki Kishin Shinoyama James Ensor Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Jin'ichi Uekusa Roger Peyrefitte Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Yutaka Haniya Shinji Sōya Henry Miller Suehiro Tanemura Guillaume Apollinaire Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne Jūrō Kara Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Fiction / Poetry Japanese Photography Occult / Esoterica Philosophy Photography Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Counterculture Surrealism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Le Sang et La Rose No. 2, 1969

1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

(more...)

(...less)

Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 2 includes photographic features by Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Yoshihiro Tatsuki, the artwork of French decorator of department store mannequins and surrealist Sunday painter Clovis Trouille, Venus in Furs erotic photo shoot by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yokoo Tadanori, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alberto Martini, Félicien Rops, Rene Magritte, an incredible feature "Machine for Murder" with art by Hiroshi Nakamura, Tomi Ungerer, Koichi Tanigawa, Osamu Tsukasa, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marcel Duchamp, Seiichi Horiuchi, and others, an article on the erotica of Ukiyo-e with a fold-out colour three panel poster, the fully illustrated museum supplement on Demonology by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history, texts by Apollinaire, Burroughs, Mutsuo Takahashi, articles on laws pertaining to homosexuality, Kama Sutra, shoe fetishism, and much more.

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.

Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.

File under: Yoshihiro Tatsuki Clovis Trouille Tadanori Yokoo Yasuhiro Yoshioka Yokoo Tadanori Hans Bellmer Leonor Fini Alberto Martini Félicien Rops Rene Magritte Hiroshi Nakamura Tomi Ungerer Koichi Tanigawa Osamu Tsukasa Tatsuo Ikeda Marcel Duchamp Seiichi Horiuchi Yasuhiro Ishimoto Guillaume Apollinaire William S. Burroughs Georges Bataille Mutsuo Takahashi Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Periodicals Eros LGBTQ+ Art Surrealism Counterculture Japanese Photography Photography Out-of-print / Rare Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Theory / Essay Occult / Esoterica Fetishism / BDSM Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Philosophy Fiction / Poetry Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Le Sang et La Rose No. 3, 1969

1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

(more...)

(...less)

Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 3 (with cover by Bronzino, 1554) includes full-colour photographic feature by Kishin Shinoyama ("Virgin In Uniform" featuring models/artists Angela Asaoka, Akaji Maro, Yoko Ashikawa) and beautiful Shomei Tomatsu photo feature ("Scoptophilia"), the artwork of the great French cross-dressing painter-photographer Pierre Molinier, texts by Jirō Kawamura, Yumiko Kurahashi, Taruho Inagaki ("Memories of Hemorrhoids or "New Tsurezuregusa"), Akiyuki Nosaka ("Dear Penis, Goodbye"), Minoru Minamihara ("The Mystic Thought of Love in the Case of Jakob Böhme"), Takiji Kobayashi, The Fictitious Garden of Babylon by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Tsunekazu Murata ("Witch's Ax : Concerning Heresy in Medieval Europe"), translation of Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" illustrated by Franco Gentilini, recent research on homosexuality by film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, Kama Sutra, more Gay (Danshoku) Japanese Theater history, Marquise de Blancvilliers by Koji Nakata, and much more.

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.

Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.

File under: Kishin Shinoyama Shomei Tomatsu Pierre Molinier Franco Gentilini Yokoo Tadanori Angela Asaoka Akaji Maro Yoko Ashikawa Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Franz Kafka Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki Kôichi Iijima Jûrô Kara Ikuya Kato Minoru Yoshioka Ryûichi Tamura The Marquis de Sade Georges Bataille Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Jirō Kawamura Yumiko Kurahashi Akiyuki Nosaka Minoru Minamihara Jakob Böhme Takiji Kobayashi Tsunekazu Murata Jin'ichi Uekusa Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Eros Fetishism / BDSM Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Japanese Photography Surrealism Philosophy Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Art Counterculture Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées LGBTQ+ Occult / Esoterica Photography Sociology / Politics

Le Sang et La Rose No. 4, 1969

1969, Japanese
Softcover, 286 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$140.00 - Out of stock

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Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and this, the fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and especially designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!)

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. Much like an instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design as principally to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 4 includes photographic features by cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka (Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, The Face of Another, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief), work by pioneering, self-taught visual artist and designer, Kiyoshi Awazu, Hans Bellmer, illustrations by the incredible Hiroshi Nakamura, sadomasochism in cinema, Ukiyo-e and Shunga art (erotic Japanese prints), writings by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki, Kôichi Iijima, Jûrô Kara, Ikuya Kato, Minoru Yoshioka, Masaaki Hiraoka, Tadanori Yokoo, and Ryûichi Tamura.   Much more....

Very Good copy.

File under: Yasuhiro Yoshioka Kiyoshi Awazu Hans Bellmer Hiroshi Nakamura Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki Kôichi Iijima Jûrô Kara Ikuya Kato Minoru Yoshioka Ryûichi Tamura Masaaki Hiraoka Tadanori Yokoo Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Periodicals Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Surrealism Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Eros Photography Japanese Photography Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Counterculture Fetishism / BDSM Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Occult / Esoterica Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas
by Umberto Eco

1988, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 23 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Radius / UK

$90.00 - Out of stock

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Rare first 1988 English edition.

The well-known Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco discloses for the first time to English-speaking readers the unsuspected richness, breadth, complexity, and originality of the aesthetic theories advanced by the influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, heretofore known principally as a scholastic theologian. Inheriting his basic ideas and conceptions of art and beauty from the classical world, Aquinas transformed or modified these ideas in the light of Christian theology and of developments in metaphysics and optics during the thirteenth century.

Setting the stage with an account of the vivid aesthetic and artistic sensibility that flourished in medieval times, Eco examines Aquinas’s conception of transcendental beauty, his theory of aesthetic perception or visio, and his account of the three conditions of beauty—integrity, proportion, and clarity—that, centuries later, emerged again in the writings of the young James Joyce. He examines the concrete application of these theories in Aquinas’s reflections on God, mankind, music, poetry, and scripture. He discusses Aquinas’s views on art and compares his poetics with Dante’s. In a final chapter added to the second Italian edition, Eco examines how Aquinas’s aesthetics came to be absorbed and superseded in late medieval times and draws instructive parallels between Thomistic methodology and contemporary structuralism. As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas’s aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and anyone involved in poetics, aesthetics, or the history of ideas.

VG copy, light cover/spine wear.

File under: Umberto Eco Dante Thomas Aquinas Radius / UK Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Philosophy Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

The Elgin Affair
by Theodore Vrettos

1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 238 pages, 23.62 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Secker & Warburg / London

$25.00 - In stock -

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Almost two hundred years after they were "purchased" from Greece, the finest and most famous marbles of antiquity still remain a burning issue. This compelling, controversial story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full and colourful detail "the greatest art theft in history," a steamy tale of obsession, intrigue, adultery, and ruin. As the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, Lord Elgin encountered in his endeavors some of the most famous names of nineteenth-century history: Napoleon, Sultan Selim III, Lord Nelson, Lord Byron, and Keats. Drawing on original source material-letters, diaries, official government reports, and memoranda, Vrettos brilliantly brings to life these fascinating stories.

First hardcover edition.
Very Good copy.

File under: Theodore Vrettos Secker & Warburg / London Theory / Essay Sculpture / Installation Art Out-of-print / Rare Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos : Cult, Polis, and Change in the Graeco-Roman World
by Guy MacLean Rogers

2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 528 pages,‎ 15.56 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Yale University Press / New Haven

$65.00 - In stock -

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First, out-of-print hardcover edition of Guy MacLean Rogers' The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos, published by Yale in 2012.

Artemis of Ephesos was one of the most widely worshiped deities of the Graeco-Roman World. Her temple, the Artemision, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and for more than half a millennium people flocked to Ephesos to learn the great secret of the mysteries and sacrifices that were celebrated every year on her birthday.

In this work Guy MacLean Rogers sets out the evidence for the celebration of Artemis's mysteries against the background of the remarkable urban development of the city during the Roman Empire and then proposes an entirely new theory about the great secret that was revealed to initiates into Artemis's mysteries. The revelation of that secret helps to explain not only the success of Artemis's cult and polytheism itself but, more surprisingly, the demise of both and the success of Christianity. Contrary to many anthropological and scientific theories, the history of polytheism, including the celebration of Artemis's mysteries, is best understood as a Darwinian tale of adaptation, competition, and change.

"A magnificent reconstruction of the cult and mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos, capital of the province of Asia Minor and one of the most impressive archaeological sites. Rogers offers many intriguing and provoking hypotheses, based on a profound knowledge of the inscriptions and of the abundant secondary literature, especially those in German, the language of the city’s Austrian excavators."—H.W. Pleket, University of Leiden

"Rogers provides a meticulous and vividly detailed recreation of the history of a single cult, grounded in a mastery of all the relevant evidence and carefully situated in its wider political, social, and cultural context. This book contributes significantly to our appreciation for the complex texture of religious life in the Graeco-Roman world.—James Rives, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"—James Rives

"This magisterial study of the complex evolution of one of Greek antiquity’s most intriguing and long-lasting ritual traditions offers new insights into the attractions of ancient polytheism. Historians of religion, and of the Roman empire too, are greatly in Rogers’ debt.—Greg Woolf, University of St. Andrews"—Greg Woolf

Very Good copy, in VG dust jacket with light wear.

File under: Guy MacLean Rogers Yale University Press / New Haven Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Dark Tongues: The Art of Rogues and Riddlers
by Daniel Heller-Roazen

2013, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Zone Books / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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Dark Tongues constitutes a sustained exploration of a perplexing fact that has never received the attention it deserves. Wherever human beings share a language, they also strive to make from it something new: a cryptic idiom, built from the grammar that they know, which will allow them to communicate in secrecy. Such hidden languages come in many shapes. They may be playful or serious, children’s games or adults’ work. They may be as impenetrable as foreign tongues, or slightly different from the idioms from which they spring, or barely perceptible, their existence being the subject of uncertain, even unlikely, suppositions.

It was in the Renaissance that writers across Europe first noted that willfully obscure languages had come into use. A varied cast of characters — lawyers, grammarians, and theologians — denounced these new forms of speech, arguing that they were tools of crime, plotted in tongues that honest people could not understand.

Before the emergence of these modern jargons, however, the artificial twisting of languages served a different purpose. In epochs and regions as diverse as archaic Greece and Rome and medieval Provence and Scandinavia, singers and scribes also invented opaque varieties of speech. They did so not to defraud, but to reveal and record a divine thing: the language of the gods, which poets and priests alone were said to master.

Dark Tongues moves among these various artificial and hermetic tongues. From criminal jargons to sacred idioms, from Saussure’s work on anagrams to Jakobson’s theory of subliminal patterns in poetry, from the arcane arts of the Druids and Biblical copyists to the secret procedure that Tristan Tzara, founder of Dada, believed he had uncovered in Villon’s songs and ballads, Dark Tongues explores the common crafts of rogues and riddlers, which play sound and sense against each other.

Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.

File under: Daniel Heller-Roazen Zone Books / New York Philosophy Art Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Echolalias: On the Forgetting of Language
by Daniel Heller-Roazen

2008, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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Just as speech can be acquired, so can it be lost. Individuals can forget words, phrases, even entire languages, and over the course of time speaking communities, too, let go of the tongues that were once theirs, as languages grow obsolescent and give way to others. In Echolalias, Daniel Heller-Roazen reflects on the many forms of linguistic forgetfulness.

In twenty-one concise chapters, he moves among classical, medieval, and modern culture, exploring the interrelations of speech, writing, memory, and oblivion. Whether the subject is medieval literature or modern fiction, classical Arabic poetry or the birth of French language, structuralist linguistics or Freud’s writings on aphasia, Heller-Roazen considers with precision and insight the forms, effects, and ultimate consequences of the persistence and disappearance of language.

In speech, he argues, destruction and construction often prove inseparable. Among speaking communities, the vanishing of one language can mark the emergence of another, and among individuals, the experience of the passing of speech can lie at the origin of literary, philosophical, and artistic creation.

From the infant’s prattle to the legacy of Babel, from the holy tongues of Judaism and Islam to the concept of the dead language and the political significance of exiled and endangered languages today, Echolalias traces an elegant, erudite, and original philosophical itinerary, inviting us to reflect in a new way on the nature of the speaking animal who forgets.

Very Good in VG dust jacket.

File under: Daniel Heller-Roazen Zone Books / New York Philosophy Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Psychoanalysis Sociology / Politics Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism

The Great Mother : An Analysis of the Archetype
by Erich Neumann

1963 / 1974, English
Softcover, 565 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Princeton University Press / New York

$45.00 - In stock -

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Early 1974 Princeton printing of this landmark book exploring the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche.

In this profound and enduring work the renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how this archetype has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother.

"Neumann's creative intuition has enabled him to read in these records of the past a content and meaning that throws a beam of light on the psychological history of [hu]mankind."—Journal of Analytical Psychology

Very Good copy with erasable light pencil marginalia.

File under: Erich Neumann Princeton University Press / New York Psychoanalysis Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Theory / Essay Whole Earth / Crafts Occult / Esoterica Health Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Ecology / Earth Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism

The Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy
by Émile Grillot de Givry

1991, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 394 pages, 29 x 23 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Zachary Kwinter / London

$65.00 - Out of stock

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1991 edition of The Illustrated Anthology of Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy by noted scholar of the occult, Émile-Jules Grillot de Givry, first published in French in 1929 and in English in 1931 and again 1963. This reprint volume is published in the original size giving full value to the hundreds of illustrations. From raising the dead and foretelling the future to possession, curses, Kabbalah, alchemy, and more, this historical tour of the occult offers a captivating exploration of sorcery and ceremonial magic. Prepared by a noted French historian, it ventures into virtually all of the classical arts, with illustrations derived from paintings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and architecture, as well as a vast body of literature that includes many rare and beautiful manuscripts from private collections.

Émile Jules Grillot called Émile-Jules Grillot de Givry (1874—1929) was a French Catholic man of letters and occultist, Freemason and pacifist, translator into French of numerous alchemical works including those of Paracelsus.

Very Good copy.

File under: Émile Grillot de Givry Zachary Kwinter / London Art Occult / Esoterica Out-of-print / Rare Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Ecology / Earth Health

HELL'S GATES REDUX
by Tim Coghlan

2022, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 11.20 x 19 cm
First edition, 2022 Edition of 666,
Published by Knowledge Editions / Brighton

$40.00 - In stock -

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HELL'S GATES is back: HELL'S GATES REDUX. Like Francis Ford Coppola did with his untouchable 1979 masterpiece Apocalypse Now, in 2001 he added an extra 49 minutes of footage that included entire sequences cut from the original film to show even more insanity of war. HELL'S GATE REDUX collects the first two volumes of the Hell's Gates series: Hell's Gates (2018) and Hell's Gates: Notre Damned, an act of God (2019). This edition publishes both volumes together for the first time, also extra content documenting the decimation of these fraudulent unholy places of depravity and sin.

Published on the occasion to celebrate ten years of Knowledge Editions publishing and Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair 2022 at 548 W 22nd St.

Knowledge Editions Book 36, designed by Tim Coghlan.
First edition, 2022 Edition of 666

File under: Tim Coghlan Knowledge Editions / Brighton Photography Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Australian Art

The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer
Walter L. Strauss

1973, English
Softcover, 235 pages, 28.5 x 21 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by Dover / New York

$30.00 - Out of stock

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1973 Dover edition of Walter L. Strauss' The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer, a classic collection on the artist and still in print to this day.

Albrecht Durer's 96 engravings, six etchings, and three dynamic drypoints are counted among his finest and best-known works. By the very nature of the medium, each fine line of an engraving is controlled by the artist and is dependent upon the pressure of the burin in his hand. In the engravings, Durer was therefore able to achieve an unprecedented intricacy of detail, subtlety of line, and three-dimensionality.All 105 of Durer's works in these three mediums are reproduced in this edition. Among them are his most famous works, ""Knight, Death and Devil,"" ""Melencolia I,"" and ""St. Jerome in His Study""; also portraits of his contemporaries, including Erasmus of Rotterdam and Frederick the Wise, popular and religious subjects sold by Durer's wife at fairs, ""Adam and Eve,"" the Engraved Passion (15 subjects), and ""The Virgin with the Dragonfly."" Many of these show him even more charming and subtle than do the comparative woodcuts. Reproductions of experimental impression offer the opportunity to study Durer's working method. Durer's subjects range from scenes of the New Testament and the life of the Saints to portrayals of peasant personalities and representations of portentous events, such as ""The Four Witches"" and ""Sol Justitae,"" done in 1499 in anticipation of the Final Judgment that was widely predicted for the end of the century. The engraving ""The Monstrous Sow of Landser,"" a pig born with one head, four ears, two bodies, eight feet, on six of which it stood, and with two tongues,"" similarly recorded in event that was regarded as an ill omen.In the present edition, by means of shooting in most instances directly to lithographic film from the finest impressions, the engravings, where possible, have been printed so that even under a magnifying glass Durer's exact lines can be seen. Likewise, except in a very few cases, the sizes have been kept exactly to the originals, complete with border-lines where indicated. Walter L. Strauss has prepared the commentary for this edition with references to major catalogs, a summary of the statements of earlier commentators, and background material on the engravings, on Durer, and on the subjects of the works. If you are interested in Durer, a copy of this edition of the engravings is a must.

Good copy, with wear and age to covers. Ex-libris (small previous owner's name) to top of first blank, some marking.

File under: Albrecht Dürer Walter L. Strauss Dover / New York Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Drawing Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Out-of-print / Rare Art Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

The Icon

1982, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 424 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Evans Brothers / London

$200.00 - Out of stock

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The monumental, now collectible, hardcover volume The Icon, by in rare English edition, published by Evans Brothers, London, 1982. A lavishly illustrated, comprehensive volume dedicated to the subject of the Icon spanning 1000 years, from 10th century Constantinople through the centuries in Greece, Russia, Crete, the Balkan peninsula, and the Holy Land. The most out-standing published study on the subject to date, examining icons of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, the great Church feasts, and the Saints and their lives, all artworks beautifully reproduced in vivid colour. Texts by Kurt Weitzman, Gaiane Alibegasvili, Aneli Volskaja, Manolis Chatzidakis, Gordana Babic, Mihail Alpatov, Teodora Voinescu. A stunning book with cloth-binding and gilded detailing.

Kurt Weitzmann (1904—1993) was a Germa-born American art historian who studied Byzantine and medieval art. He attended the universities of Münster, Würzburg and Vienna before moving to Princeton in 1935, due to Nazi persecution. He is well known for the time he spent researching the icons and architecture at Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1964 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978.

Very Good—Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket. Beautifully preserved.

File under: Kurt Weitzman Gaiane Alibegasvili Aneli Volskaja Manolis Chatzidakis Gordana Babic Mihail Alpatov Teodora Voinescu Evans Brothers / London Painting Sculpture / Installation Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Transfixed by Prehistory: An Inquiry into Modern Art and Time
by Maria Stavrinaki

2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 448 pages, 15.4 x 23.5 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$59.00 - Out of stock

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Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Transfixed by Prehistory attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene. Rather, it is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the “new” was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought. Stavrinaki focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger), and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology.

“Transfixed by Prehistory delivers a stunning reconceptualization of the relationship between time and technology in industrial capitalism.” —Devin Fore

“From Cézanne to Smithson via Paleolithic mandibles, Stavrinaki mobilizes an unlikely group of artifacts to explore the core hermeneutic questions of an Anthropocene epoch in which the symbolic and the geological have become intertwined, if not indistinguishable. Through readings that are not just anecdotally rich and methodologically exemplary but also utterly compelling formally, Transfixed by Prehistory delivers a stunning reconceptualization of the relationship between time and technology in industrial capitalism.” —Devin Fore, Princeton University

File under: Lucio Fontana Thomas Hirschhorn Jean Dubuffet Pablo Picasso Giorgio de Chirico Max Ernst Robert Smithson Henri Matisse Paul Cézanne Robert Morris Pierre Huyghe Ernst Jünger Georges Bataille Maria Stavrinaki Zone Books / New York Art Painting Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Theory / Essay Arte Povera Sculpture / Installation Surrealism Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism Conceptual Art

Gothic Painting
by Jacques Dupont and Cesare Gnudi

1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 214 pages, 21 x 28 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Skira / Milan Rizzoli / New York

$60.00 - Out of stock

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First published in 1954, this classic study on Gothic painting by Jacques Dupont is a carefully planned itinerary through the world of Gothic art, a style of medieval art that developed in Northern France out of Romanesque art in the 12th century AD, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, and much of Northern, Southern and Central Europe. This book is also a vivid record of the prodigious intellectual reawakening that took place in the 14th and 15th centuries, and of the masterpieces to which it gave rise. Lavishly reproduced for the first time in colour, most of these works are little known and difficult to access; they are tokens of the cultural revival, the new humanism that led artists to seek their inspiration in the life around them, to look at nature with fresh eyes and an almost childlike curiosity. Half realism, half mysticism, the world they painted was peopled with heroic saints, gallant knights, richly attired ladies, and fabulous animals. Under their brush, even piety and religious emotions acquired the smiling charm of an age of chivalry and knightly courtesy. Once their eyes were opened to the world around them, these painters—following in the footsteps of the great cathedral sculptors—gave expression to their new-found joy in life. While the French artists voiced the new refinement of thinking and feeling in terms of delicate linework and fine shades of color, the Italians showed a keener sense of monumental form in expressing their love of life and nature.

Very Good—Fine copy of English-language 1979 hardcover edition, VG dust jacket protected in mylar wrap.

File under: Jacques Dupont Cesare Gnudi Skira / Milan Rizzoli / New York Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Art

Notes on Prints
By William M., Ivins Jr.

1967, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$18.00 - Out of stock

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William Ivins, probably more than anyone else, has been responsible for the twentieth-century reconsideration of the significance of the significance of graphic techniques. As the first Curator of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art he prepared in 1929 a ground-breaking exhibition of prints, of which Notes on Prints is the book form. The work presented ranges in time and style from anonymous religious pieces, to Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, to the German school of the late fifteenth century. At the time of the exhibition, Ivins had written short but pointed introductory comments which accompanied the prints; with minor changes, they also appear here.

Includes the works of Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Mantegna, Hendrick Goltzius, William Blake, Goya, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, William Hogarth, Jacques Callot, Eugène Delacroix, Manet, Degas, Francesco Bartolozzi, Jean Duvet, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Paul Gauguin, Whistler, Jean Morin, Peter Paul Rubens, Christoffel Jegher, Marcantonio Raimondi, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Lucas van Leyden, Lambrecht Hopfer, Martin Schongauer, and many more.

Average/Fair, worn copy of the 1967 MIT Press edition of this classic title.

File under: Andrea Mantegna Pieter Bruegel the Elder J. M. W. Turner William Blake Francisco Goya Édouard Manet Edgar Degas Giovanni Battista Tiepolo William Hogarth Francesco Bartolozzi John Constable Eugène Delacroix Paul Gauguin James Abbott McNeill Whistler Jean Morin Jacques Callot Peter Paul Rubens Hendrick Goltzius Christoffel Jegher Jean Duvet Marcantonio Raimondi Antonio del Pollaiuolo Albrecht Dürer Lucas van Leyden Lambrecht Hopfer Martin Schongauer William M. Ivins Jr. The MIT Press / Massachusetts Drawing Painting Art Renaissance / Neoclassicism / Romanticism Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Ancient / Medieval / Gothic