World Food Books

Eight New Zealand Artists
Binney, Ellis, Garrity, Hanly, McCahon, Mrkusich, Ritchie, Twiss

1966, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 18 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Auckland City Art Gallery / Auckland

$25.00 - In stock -

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Catalogue published in 1966 on the occasion of the exhibition Eight New Zealand Artists, Auckland City Art Gallery, February 1966, featuring Don Binney, Robert Ellis, Patrick Hanly, Colin McCahon, Milan Mrkusich, Ross Ritchie, Greer Twiss, Tim Garrity. Illustrated throughout with work by the artists, introductory essay by Hamish Keith, biographical information on each artist, including exhibition chronologies. Catalogue lists 40 works executed in the years just prior to 1966 when the exhibition was held.

Good copy with age/tanning.

File under: Don Binney Robert Ellis Patrick Hanly Colin McCahon Milan Mrkusich Ross Ritchie Greer Twiss Tim Garrity Hamish Keith Auckland City Art Gallery / Auckland Painting Out-of-print / Rare Group Shows / Collections Sculpture / Installation Art

AUDINT-Unsound : Undead

2019, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 17.1 x 23.5 cm
Published by Urbanomic / Cornwall

$49.00 - Out of stock

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Tracing the the potential of sound, infrasound, and ultrasound to access anomalous zones of transmission between the realms of the living and the dead.

Contributors:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Lendl Barcelos, Charlie Blake, Lisa Blanning, Brooker Buckingham, Al Cameron, Erik Davis, Kodwo Eshun, Matthew Fuller, Kristen Gallerneaux, Lee Gamble, Agnes Gayraud, Steve Goodman, Anna Greenspan, Olga Gurionova, S. Ayesha Hameed, Tim Hecker, Julian Henriques, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou, Amy Ireland, Nicola Masciandaro, Ramona Naddaff, Anthony Nine, The Occulture, Luciana Parisi, Alina Popa, Paul Purgas, Georgina Rochefort, Steven Shaviro, Jonathan Sterne, Jenna Sutela, Eugene Thacker, Dave Tompkins, Shelley Trower, and Souzana Zamfe.

For the past seven years the AUDINT group has been researching peripheral sonic perception (unsound) and the ways in which frequencies are utilized to modulate our understanding of presence/non-presence, entertainment/torture, and ultimately life/death. Concurrently, themes of hauntology have inflected the musical zeitgeist, resonating with the notion of a general cultural malaise and a reinvestment in traces of lost futures inhabiting the present.

This undead culture has already spawned a Lazarus economy in which Tupac, ODB, and Eazy-E are digitally revivified as laser-lit holograms. The obscure otherworldly dimensions of sound have also been explored in the sonic fictions produced by the likes of Drexciya, Sun Ra, and Underground Resistance, where hauntology is virtually extended: the future appears in the cracks of the present.

The contributions to this volume reveal how the sonic nurtures new dimensions in which the real and the imagined (fictional, hyperstitional, speculative) bleed into one another, where actual sonic events collide with spatiotemporal anomalies and time-travelling entities, and where the unsound serves to summon the undead.

File under: Lawrence Abu Hamdan Lawrence Abu Hamdan Lendl Barcelos Charlie Blake Lisa Blanning Brooker Buckingham Al Cameron Erik Davis Kodwo Eshun Matthew Fuller Kristen Gallerneaux Lee Gamble Agnes Gayraud Steve Goodman Anna Greenspan Olga Gurionova S. Ayesha Hameed Tim Hecker Julian Henriques Toby Heys Eleni Ikoniadou Amy Ireland Nicola Masciandaro Ramona Naddaff Anthony Nine The Occulture Luciana Parisi Alina Popa Paul Purgas Georgina Rochefort Steven Shaviro Jonathan Sterne Jenna Sutela Eugene Thacker Dave Tompkins Shelley Trower Souzana Zamfe. Urbanomic / Cornwall Sound / Music Theory / Essay Art

Prisms
by Theodor W. Adorno

1983, English
Softcover, 27 pages, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$48.00 - In stock -

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Prisms, essays in cultural criticism and society, is the work of a critic and scholar who has had a marked influence on contemporary American and German thought. It displays the unusual combination of intellectual depth, scope, and philosophical rigor that Adorno was able to bring to his subjects, whether he was writing about astrology columns in Los Angeles newspapers, the special problems of German academics immigrating to the United States during the Nazi years, or Hegel's influence on Marx.

In these essays, Adorno explores a variety of topics, ranging from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Kafka's The Castle to Jazz, Bach, Schoenberg, Proust, Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumption, museums, Spengler, and more. His writing throughout is knowledgeable, witty, and at times archly opinionated, but revealing a sensitivity to the political, cultural, economic, and aesthetic connections that lie beneath the surfaces of everyday life.

Prisms is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a student of philosophy, musicology, psychology, and sociology at Frankfurt where he later became Professor of Philosophy and Sociology and Co-Director of the Frankfurt School. During the war years he lived in Oxford, in New York, and in Los Angeles, continuing to produce numerous books on music, literature, and culture.

Shierry Weber Nicholsen teaches environmental philosophy and psychology in Antioch University Seattle's M.A. Program on Environment and Community and is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Seattle. She has translated several works by Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas.

Very Good copy.

File under: Theodor W. Adorno The MIT Press / Massachusetts Philosophy Sound / Music Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Sociology / Politics

Remedios Varo
La Obra De Remedios Varo

1964, Spanish
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Mexico City

$300.00 - In stock -

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Very rare 1964 catalogue of surrealist Remedios Varo (1908—1963), recorded as the first book devoted solely to the work of Varo, published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition presented by the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, August 3—31, 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with the paintings of Varo reproduced in colour and b/w, plus portrait of the artist. Introduction by Horacio Flores-Sanchez, essays by Raul Flores Guerrero and Carlos Pellicer. Texts in Spanish. A wonderful historical document of a visionary artist.

Remedios Varo (1908—1963)
During her childhood in Spain, Varo was influenced by her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled. Following her graduation from art school, she pursued Surrealism and political change. She moved to Paris in 1937, later finding that she could not return to Spain following the Spanish Civil War. Varo associated and exhibited with the Surrealists, exploring magic, alchemy, and analytical psychology. As World War II threatened Paris, Spanish refugees came under threat. Varo was arrested and held in early 1940. After her release, she fled Paris in the face of the Nazi invasion, and by late 1941 had secured passage to Mexico. In Mexico, Varo remained friends with fellow refugees from her European Surrealist circle, including artist Leonora Carrington, who became her closest friend and collaborator. In the late 1940s, as she supported herself through commercial illustration, Varo began to develop her mature personal style. During succeeding decades, she devoted increased time and energy to her art, and she delved further into the fantastical sources that captured her imagination. Her death of a heart attack in 1963 occurred as she was reaching new renown.

Very Good copy with light wear to boards. Previous owner inscription to inside front cover.

File under: Remedios Varo Horacio Flores-Sanchez Raul Flores Guerrero Carlos Pellicer Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Mexico City Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Art Painting Feminism Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Drawing Occult / Esoterica

Jay Defeo
Photographic Work

2023, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 31.2 x 25.4 cm
Published by DelMonico Books / US The Jay DeFeo Foundation / San Francisco

$145.00 - Out of stock

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A revelatory trove of innovative photo collages, photograms, photographs and photocopies--many never before published--most reproduced at the size DeFeo printed them

This monograph on the legendary and influential artist Jay DeFeo features over 150 photographic works--many never before published--most reproduced at the size the artist printed them. After the completion of her monumental masterpiece The Rose in 1966, DeFeo moved from the heart of artistic activity in San Francisco to a small house in Marin County, California. There she embarked on a focused and rigorous exploration with the camera. For much of the 1970s, she used the camera as a tool to look and think with, creating a wide range of black-and-white photographs she processed in her darkroom. The artist used experimental photographic techniques to produce extraordinary artworks, alongside documentary images of her studio and paintings in process. Her contact sheets, some of which are reproduced here, are often filled with multiple views of one object, revealing the way DeFeo looked and sketched with the lens. In 1972 she wrote: "My interest in photography has always paralleled my expression as a painter."

Essays by Hilton Als, Judith Delfiner, Corey Keller, Justine Kurland, Dana Miller and Catherine Wagner survey the rich materiality, sculptural layering and illusionistic devices of DeFeo's playful and enigmatic photographic works, illuminating her astonishing range and daring experimentation with the medium.

Jay DeFeo (1929-89) was a Bay Area artist who created an original and provocative body of work, including the iconic painting The Rose (1958-66). In the 1970s and 1980s, DeFeo continued her visionary work in a range of mediums, including works on paper, photography, collage and photocopies. Among many other exhibitions, a retrospective of her work was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2012.

File under: Jay DeFeo Hilton Als Judith Delfiner Corey Keller Justine Kurland Dana Miller Catherine Wagner DelMonico Books / US The Jay DeFeo Foundation / San Francisco Sculpture / Installation Photography Art Drawing Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Curtis Cuffie

2023, English
Softcover, 252 pages, 27.3 x 20.3 cm
Published by Blank Forms / New York

$85.00 - In stock -

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Curtis Cuffie (1955–2002) was an artist who lived and worked in and around the East Village from the mid-1980s until his untimely death in the early 2000s. He moved to New York from Hartsville, South Carolina, as a teenager and lived unhoused for long stretches of his adult life. Cuffie found local notoriety for the way he adorned the streets of downtown New York, collecting what the city provided, often sifting trash to stage on-the-spot sculptures along the Bowery and Cooper Square. His arrangements took the form of impossibly balanced towers, delicate shrines, and unwieldy processions up to thirty-feet in length installed along the walls, fences, and sidewalks of the Lower East Side. Nearly without fail they were removed by the police, inclement weather, the department of sanitation, or the grounds team at Cooper Union, which would later employ him.

An enduring presence in the East Village, Cuffie staged sprawling tableaux outside the Village Voice offices that were admired by students and venerable artists alike. He was profiled by scene reporters, political writers, and folk-art journalists, all the while exhibiting in the neighborhood’s famed alternative art spaces. While few of his sculptures remain today, a trove of photographs from the 1990s taken by Cuffie and his companion Katy Abel preserve the work he made in the city. This photobook, the first publication about Cuffie, seeks to honor the artist by collecting the efforts of two of his partners: Carol Thompson, who lived with Cuffie from 1996 to 2001 and archived a great number of his 35mm photographs, and Abel, a Cooper Square resident who took hundreds of snapshots of his art. Curtis Cuffie is designed by Julie Peeters, edited by Scott Portnoy and Robert Snowden with Ciarán Finlayson, and additionally includes writing by the artist, Finlayson, and critic Alan Moore, and images taken by Tom Warren and Margaret Morton.

File under: Julie Peeters Curtis Cuffie Scott Portnoy Robert Snowden Ciarán Finlayson Alan Moore Tom Warren Margaret Morton Katy Abel Blank Forms / New York Sculpture / Installation Art Photography

Unica Zürn / Hans Bellmer
Unica Zürn: Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen; Hans Bellmer im Studio: Druckgraphik, Zeichnungenheld

1964, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 22.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Galerie Dieter Brusberg / Hannover

$55.00 - Out of stock

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Wonderful, scarce 1964 catalogue published on the occasion of the two-person exhibition between married artist-couple Unica Zürn and Hans Bellmer - "Unica Zürn: Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen; Hans Bellmer im Studio: Druckgraphik, Zeichnungenheld", held at Galerie Dieter Brusberg, Hannover, April-June 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with portraits of the artists together alongside biographies, a selection of featured works, plus a fully illustrated catalogue of their exhibited drawings and prints. Texts in German.

Very Good copy, light general wear and tanning.

File under: Hans Bellmer Unica Zürn Galerie Dieter Brusberg / Hannover Surrealism Art Drawing Out-of-print / Rare Painting Eros

John Nixon
Editions 1 & 2

2023, English
Softcover, 24 x 17cm
Ed. of 300,
Published by Negative Press / Melbourne

$50.00 - In stock -

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From 1982–2020, Nixon produced over 500 printed images in relief, intaglio, stencil and planographic processes. While many of the works in his print oeuvre are unique, Nixon also produced works in small editions. From 2015 till his passing in 2020, Nixon worked with printer and publisher Negative Press.

Known predominantly as a painter, John Nixon was also an inventive and prolific printmaker. This new book documents two exhibitions of Nixon’s editions at Negative Press, featuring works made from across the artist's career, alongside personal responses to the prints by curator Sue Cramer, archivist & designer Elizabeth Boon and artist & publisher Trent Walter.

Published in an edition of 300 copies.

File under: John Nixon Negative Press / Melbourne Painting Australian Art Conceptual Art Art Minimal Art

Martin Kippenberger — EVERYTHING IS EVERYWHERE
By Chris Reitz

2023, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$89.00 - Out of stock

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An illuminating study of the work of artist Martin Kippenberger, whose art expressed the enthusiasms and frustrations of the West German middle class.

Martin Kippenberger: Everything Is Everywhere is the first scholarly monograph in English on West German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997), one of the most prominent German artists of the 1980s. In this book, Chris Reitz shows that the condition of Kippenberger’s art was an endless, enthusiastic searching, constrained by the impossibility of fulfillment. A child during West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, and a young adult during the economic recession and political tumult of the 1970s, Kippenberger belonged to the first truly postwar generation. But, largely uninterested in the legacy of National Socialism that had occupied his predecessors, Kippenberger instead pursued a hyperproductive artistic practice that reflected the dreams and fears of the ascendent 1980s West German middle class.

Kippenberger’s ambitions took him everywhere: he founded a museum in Greece, invested in a fashion business and a restaurant, and even bought a gas station in Brazil. He made art in a dizzying range of genres, from paintings to poetry, from posters to stickers. He made art out of his appetites, too, producing art on the theme of his own alcoholism. Intensely entrepreneurial, Kippenberger carried out an artistic practice in which his diverse endeavors, and the people who joined him in them, were all connected in a sprawling network. Reitz deftly presents Kippenberger’s career as an allegory of the neoliberal networks of capital, technology, and culture that spanned Europe and America in the 1980s.

File under: Martin Kippenberger Albert Oehlen Chris Reitz The MIT Press / Massachusetts Painting Sculpture / Installation Theory / Essay Drawing Art

Walking with Ghosts: Six Conversations about Painting
Edited by Jonathan Nichols

2023, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by Self-Published / Melbourne

$20.00 - In stock -

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Walking with Ghosts: Six Conversations about Painting — John Spiteri, Boedi Widjaja and Audrey Koh, Christoph Preussmann, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Moya McKenna, and David Jolly talking with artist, independent curator and writer Jonathan Nichols, and published on the occasion of his PhD exhibition, VCA Artspace, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, June 2022.

"These conversations originated in thinking about what happened in painting in the last few decades. I put this question to each of the artists I spoke with, except Boedi Widjaja whose art-making started later, deploying it at the outset of each conversation as a means to consider how and why the collective shape of painting during a key period has been relatively undocumented from a contemporary art perspective."—Jonathan Nichols

Designer: Matt Hinkley

File under: John Spiteri Boedi Widjaja Audrey Koh Christoph Preussmann Noor Mahnun Mohamed Moya McKenna David Jolly Jonathan Nichols Matt Hinkley Jonathan Nichols Self-Published / Melbourne Painting Theory / Essay Australian Art Art

The Powers of The Word : Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943
by René Daumal

1991, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by City Lights Books / San Francisco

$65.00 - Out of stock

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First 1991 City Lights edition of The Powers of The Word : Selected Essays and Notes 1927-1943 by early 20th-century French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic, poet, and early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics, René Daumal (1908-1944). Edited, translated and with introduction by Mark Polizzotti.

"Since his death in 1944, Rene Daumal has come to be recognized as one of the original minds of the twentieth century French letters. Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and eclectic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry's Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.

Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had access to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes-many here translated for the first time-from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal's unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations." — publisher's blurb

Fine copy. First 1991 Ed.

File under: Rene Daumal Mark Polizzotti City Lights Books / San Francisco Out-of-print / Rare Art Surrealism 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay Philosophy Drugs / Psychedelia Dada Performance / Dance / Theater

Rasa, or Knowledge of the Self
by René Daumal

1982, English
Softcover, 108 pages, 20.2 x 13.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by New Directions / New York

$70.00 - Out of stock

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Rare first New Directions 1982 edition of Rasa, or Knowledge of the Self, by early 20th-century French spiritual para-surrealist writer, critic, poet, and early, outspoken practitioner of pataphysics, René Daumal (1908-1944). Translated with an introduction by Louise Landes Levi.

Rasa, or Knowledge of the Self; is the remarkable, and now very scarce, first gathering in English translation of essays and review articles on Hindu aesthetics and translations from the Sanskrit by the French writer Rene Daumal. A member of the Simplist group associated from 1928 to 1932 with the journal Le Grand feu ("The Great Game"), he began cultivating his East Indian studies as an extension of his active pursuit of the avant-garde. In 1932, he made the acquaintance of Uday Shankar, becoming secretary to the latter's Hindu dance troupe and accompanying it that year on its premier American tour. In his efforts to make Shankar's music and dance comprehensible to Western audiences, Daumal developed into a passionate spokesman for Indian culture, and his subsequent writings on the subject are far removed from the usual dry philological speculations of academic Orientalists. "To Approach the Hindu Poetic Art" differentiates between the Indian and European views of aesthetic experience, with special emphasis on the concept of rasa—that is, "taste" or "savor"—which Daumal sees at the heart of all Hindu art. Two essays—"On Indian Music" and "Concerning Uday Shankar"—were written at the time of Shankar's Western tour, while the selection of Daumal's "Oriental Book Reviews" deals with topics, such as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which were only to spark general interest in the West decades later. The remaining sections of the collection are translations from the Sanskrit that attempt to resonate against language's deepest core.

Good copy with insect nibbles to cover edges.

File under: Uday Shankar Rene Daumal Louise Landes Levi New Directions / New York Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Whole Earth / Crafts Sound / Music Theory / Essay Occult / Esoterica Performance / Dance / Theater Art 'Pataphysics / Oulipo

Adrian Piper
A Retrospective

1999, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Fine Arts Gallery - University of Maryland / Baltimore

$150.00 - In stock -

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Scarce first extensive monographic catalogue published in conjunction with Adrian Piper's major survey exhibition held at the Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore, October 14, 1999 - January 15, 2000. Traveled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, October 4, 2001 - January 13, 2002. Profusely illustrated in black-and-white and colour, alongside accompanying texts by Piper, Maurice Berger, Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer, Laura Cottingham, and Dara Meyers-Kingsley. With illustrated checklist and bibliography. Cover features her "Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features" (1981) work.

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper (b. 1948) is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. Her work addresses ostracism, otherness, racial passing and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media. The only African American in the early conceptual art movement of the 1960s, she has profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art in America and is widely recognised today through her equally important writings.

Very Good-Fine first edition. Light tanning to edges and light bump to top-right corner.

File under: Adrian Piper Adrian Piper Maurice Berger Jean Fisher Kobena Mercer Laura Cottingham Dara Meyers-Kingsley Fine Arts Gallery - University of Maryland / Baltimore Art Conceptual Art Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Feminism Out-of-print / Rare

Suzanne Santoro
Per una espressione nuova / Towards a New Expression

1974, English / Italian
Softcover, 40 pages, 20.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Rivolta Femminile / Rome

$300.00 - In stock -

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First, extremely rare, edition of Suzanne Santoro's artist's book "Per una espressione nuova / Towards a New Expression", published in a small edition in Rome 1974 by Santaro and The Rivolta Femminile ("Women's Revolt") publishing house, founded in 1970 by Carla Lonzi. In the 1960s, Suzanne Santoro (b. 1946, Brooklyn New York), after training at the School of Visual Arts in New York and NYU and being affiliated with the minimalist and conceptual New York context of the 1960s, moved to Rome where she studied classical sculpture. Here her artistic path crossed with the experience of feminist militancy, through her connection to Rivolta Femminile and Carla Lonzi and co-founded the Beato Angelico Cooperative (CBA) and exhibition space. Her research immediately focused on restoring those characteristics of the female image that had been intentionally hidden or transformed by the patriarchal tradition of visual arts, culminating in this artist’s libretto. Mysterious, beautiful and fiercely feminist, Towards a New Expression articulates, through a photographic collection of images, a critical stance towards the "subordinate and unclarified" portrayal of women's genitalia in art from classical to contemporary times. Santoro's book generated some controversy when it was censored by The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.

Very rare, especially in this first edition. Good copy, well preserved, only with notable but attractive ex-libris "Moon Books" rubber stamp mark on back cover and another to the front end page. The title is written on the blank spine for filing into the collection. It is believed this was from a community library in Berkley. General light wear/marking.

File under: Suzanne Santoro Rivolta Femminile / Rome Feminism Out-of-print / Rare Photography Art

Valentine Schlegel
Je dors, je travaille

2021, French / English
Softcover, 224 pages (w. English insert), 18.5 x 27.3 cm
Published by CAC / Brétigny <o> future <o> / Paris

$90.00 - In stock -

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Back in print, this time with English translation insert, the wonderful French catalogue that offers a unique insight into the life and work of the French artist, sculptor and ceramist Valentine Schlegel. This richly illustrated, hugely popular volume (now sold out in multiple French editions) forms the most comprehensive monograph on Schlegel ever published, featuring a large iconography, archives, and texts (in French) by sculptor and Schlegel specialist Hélène Bertin. Published on the occasion of the exhibition “Cette femme pourrait dormir dans l'eau – Valentine Schlegel par Hélène Bertin” at CAC Brétigny, from September 30 to December 09, 2017.

Valentine Schlegel (born 1925 in Sète, South of France) was trained at the Beaux-Art in Montpellier before settling in Paris, where she dedicated herself to ceramics. Schlegel conceived her works as sculptures inspired by nature. Her ceramics, primitive but sophisticated at the same time, made Valentine Schlegel one of the most important ceramists of 1950s.

Hélène Bertin (born 1989 in Petruis, lives and works in Paris and Cucuron) develops a practice which connects the activities of artist, curator and historian.

Edited by Hélène Bertin and Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier.
Text by Hélène Bertin.
Graphic design: Charles Mazé & Coline Sunier.

File under: Valentine Schlegel Hélène Bertin CAC / Brétigny future / Paris Ceramics / Glass Sculpture / Installation Architecture / Interior Art

Raafat Ishak
Hot Air

2023, English / Arabic
Softcover, 216 pages, 19 x 25.4 cm
Ed. of 350,
Published by Sonntag Press / Narrm—Melbourne

$55.00 - In stock -

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Hot Air is the first comprehensive book surveying the work of Egyptian-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Raafat Ishak. Rethinking the linearity of the monographic format, Hot Air navigates Ishak’s practice through a sequence of themes and motifs that occupy his art: NUDITY/ SQUARE/ LANGUAGE/ AIR/ SUN/ BLACK/ PAINTING/ ARCHITECTURE. The final chapter, HEIDE, is dedicated to the artist’s major solo exhibition in the celebrated modernist building at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2023.

The publication is richly illustrated with artwork images and reference material alongside newly commissioned essays in English and Arabic by Lisa Radford, Robert Schubert, Stephen Zagala and Melissa Keys. Publication coordinator: Brigid Moriarty. Design: Alex Ward. Translation: Muhammad Y Gamal. Copy editor: Sarah Gory (English) and Salma Harland (Arabic)

File under: Raafat Ishak Lisa Radford Robert Schubert Stephen Zagala -Melissa Keys Sonntag Press / Narrm—Melbourne Art Australian Art Painting Drawing Sculpture / Installation

The Culture of the Case : Madness, Crime, and Justice in Modern German Art
By Frederic J. Schwartz

2023, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 16.8 cm
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$89.00 - In stock -

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How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed.

In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time.

As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.

Frederic J. Schwartz is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at University College London. His books include The Werkbund- Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War and Blind Spots- Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany.

File under: George Grosz Rudolf Schlichter Adolf Loos John Heartfield Oskar Kokoschka Alfred Kubin Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Heinrich Maria Davringhausen Otto Dix Frederic J. Schwartz Bertolt Brecht Ernst Jünger The MIT Press / Massachusetts Painting Drawing Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Crime / Violence Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Art Theory / Essay Surrealism Architecture / Interior Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Protest / Revolt Sociology / Politics

Birth Death : The Come Organisation Compendium
by WHITEHOUSE / COME ORGANISATION

1986, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Strength Through Joy / Seattle

$200.00 - Out of stock

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The incredibly rare 1986 bible of Come Organisation (1979—1985) — a 350+ page collection of Come Org. and Whitehouse material, including all issues of Kata (the official organ publication of Come Org.), "The Story of Come Organisation", Live Action booklets, interviews, the complete Come Org. discography, littered with b/w reproductions of photos, posters, flyers, ephemera, and lots of serial killers. Features Come, Whitehouse, Sutcliffe Jugend, Leibstandarte SS MB (Maurizio Bianchi), Consumer Electronics, Nurse With Wound, Heinrich Himmler, Etat Brut, DDV, P.16D.4, Ramleh, Esplendor Geometrico, Kleistwahr, Krang, Aleister Crowley, William Bennett, Peter McKay, Paul Reuter, Philip Best, Glenn Michael Wallis, John Murphy, Kevin Tomkins, Steven Stapleton, Gary Mundy, Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, Charles Manson, Ed Gein, Peter Sutcliffe... The Come Organisation was a record label founded in London in 1979, initially as a vehicle for founder William Bennett's group Come, then Whitehouse, issuing many now legendary records and cassettes (and publications) that shaped experimental noise, industrial and power electronics to come.

THE resource. Very Good copy with light tanning and only light wear.

File under: MB (Maurizio Bianchi) Maurizio Bianchi (MB) Come Whitehouse Sutcliffe Jugend Leibstandarte SS MB (Maurizio Bianchi) Consumer Electronics Nurse With Wound Heinrich Himmler Etat Brut DDV P.16D.4 Ramleh Esplendor Geométrico Kleistwahr Krang Aleister Crowley William Bennett Peter McKay Paul Reuter Philip Best Glenn Michael Wallis John Murphy Kevin Tomkins Steven Stapleton Gary Mundy Charles Manson Aleister Crowley Ted Bundy Ed Kemper Ed Gein Peter Sutcliffe Peter Sotos Philip Best Strength Through Joy / Seattle Sound / Music Performance / Dance / Theater Art Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Crime / Violence

Woman in the Plural : Verse, Diary Entries, Poetry for the Stage, Surrealist Experiments
by Vitezslav Nezval

2021, English
Hardcover, 198 pages, 13.5 x 19 cm
Published by Twisted Spoon Press / Prague

$33.00 - In stock -

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In the summer of 1935, Vitezslav Nezval, already one of the most celebrated Czech poets of his generation, embarked on a period of manic creativity that would result in three volumes of poetry written and published in a two-year span (1935-37), mirrored by three volumes of memoir-like poetic prose. These collections would not only reshape Czech poetry, blending approaches developed by the French Surrealists with national cultural sensibilities and political concerns, taken together they are among the highest achievements of the interwar avant-garde. Each of the three volumes adopted a different principle of Surrealism as its general modus operandi. For Woman in the Plural (1936), the first volume in this loose trilogy, it was objective chance (while the third and final volume, The Absolute Gravedigger (1937), adopted the paranoiac-critical method).

Appearing in English translation for the first time, Woman in the Plural displays Nezval's prodigious talents in a variety of forms, styles, and genres as he spins images of the female form like a zoetrope to create novel and hallucinatory ways of conceiving woman's mythical, divine, and creative power. It is an eclectic collection that mixes profound free verse, at times reading like a cascade of automatic writing, with pages from Nezval's dream journal, an exuberant set of Surrealist exercises, and a full-length play of chance encounters with "a woman like any other," all the while addressing the social and political uncertainties of the 1930s. Led off by Karel Teige's original collages from the first edition, Woman in the Plural is a vibrant and volatile tour de force from one of the greatest European writers of the 20th century.

Translated by Stephan Delbos and Tereza Novicka
Illustrated by Karel Teige

File under: Karel Teige Vitezslav Nezval Twisted Spoon Press / Prague Surrealism Fiction / Poetry Art

Max Ernst
Gemälde, Plastiken, Collagen, Frottagen, Bücher

1970, German
Softcover (printed cloth), 154 pages, 23 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Württembergischer Kunstverein / Stuttgart

$70.00 - Out of stock

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First printing of this wonderful cloth-covered, 1970 monograph on the work of German artist Max Ernst, published to accompany his solo exhibition at Württembergischer Kunstverein, in Stuttgart in 1970.

Max Ernst "Gemälde, Plastiken, Collagen, Frottagen, Bücher" ("Paintings, Sculptures, Collages, Frottage, Books") is a handsomely designed and profusely illustrated book covering much of his diverse career of work in full-colour and black and white plates. Includes a chronology (1909-1968), bibliography, list of works, and texts by Werner Spies, Lothar Pretzell, Helmut R. Leppien, Uwe M. Schneede, and a series of texts by Max Ernst himself, covering topics of Dada, Nature, Collage, Surrealism, etc. All texts in German.

Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.

Very Good, well preserved and clean copy.

File under: Max Ernst Helmut R. Leppien Lothar Pretzell Uwe M. Schneede Werner Spies Württembergischer Kunstverein / Stuttgart Art Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Surrealism Painting Dada

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. 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

Art of The Holocaust

1982, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 30.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Pan / Sydney

$45.00 - Out of stock

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First 1982 softcover edition of Art of The Holocaust, edited by Janet Blatter and Sybil Milton. A powerful collection of over 350 works of art created in ghettos, concentration camps, and in hiding by victims of the Nazis. Jewish, Communist and "degenerate", exiled, enemy-of-the-State avant-garde German artists, whose art was an "insult to German feeling", present here an arresting collective portrait of horror and the indomitable struggle to survive. Paintings and drawings reproduced throughout in colour and b/w with extensive biographies on the artists. Preface by Irving Howe.

Good copy.

File under: Irving Howe Pan / Sydney Crime / Violence Surrealism Painting Drawing Protest / Revolt Sociology / Politics Art Out-of-print / Rare

Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts
by Ronald Bogue

2003, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by Routledge / London

$50.00 - Out of stock

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Bogue provides a systematic overview and introduction to Deleuze's writings on music and painting, and an assessment of their position within his aesthetics as a whole. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts breaks new ground in the scholarship on Deleuze's aesthetics, while providing a clear and accessible guide to his often overlooked writings in the fields of music and painting.

"After these books are published, there will be no need for anyone else to write a how-to-understand-Deleuze book. The clarity of the prose, the careful explanation of each difficult and important concept, and the lack of any jargon whatsoever make this the definitive commentary on Deleuze." — Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado

First edition. As New.

File under: Gilles Deleuze Ronald Bogue Routledge / London Philosophy Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Art Painting Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Theory / Essay