World Food Books

Purple Prose 1
Automne / Autumn 1992

1992, English / French
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 24.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Purple Institute / Paris

$580.00 - In stock -

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The true beginning of Purple — the very rare first issue of Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm's Purple Prose, published in 1992. Founded as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980’s, Purple Prose embraced the immediate fanzine aesthetics of what became referred to as 1990's anti-fashion, a far cry from what we now identify with Purple Fashion with.

Purple Prose 1, Automne 1992, features contributions by Dike Blair, Andrea Zittel, Joshua Decter, Henry Bond, Daniel Lemer, Jutta Koether, Andrea Zittel, Roddy Bogawa, Jon Moritsugu, Jacques Boyreau, Jan Avgikos, Martin Kippenberger, Patrick Van Caeckenbergh, Edgar Heap of Birds, David Robbins, Jean-Christophe Menu, Vitaly Glabel, Kitten (pre—Free Kitten: Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore's Julia Cafritz), Patrick Bouchitey, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, François Roche, and many more.

Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm created spin-off publications like Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction and what we now know and love, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple Fashion.

Before entering the world of fashion, Zahm worked as an art critic with widespread recognition for his work as a curator as well as his participation in over 150 exhibitions featuring international contemporary art. In 1994, Zahm and Fleiss curated “The Winter of Love,” a hit show for the Museum of Modern Art in Paris that they later took to P.S.1 in New York. In responding to the superficial glamour of the 1980s, Zahm co-founded Purple Prose magazine. In the introduction of Purple Anthology, Zahm shares why he chose to create Purple Prose:

"We launched Purple Prose in the early 1990s without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about. [..] It would be a form of opposition of our own".

Very Good—Near Fine copy, light wear.

File under: Dike Blair Andrea Zittel Joshua Decter Henry Bond Daniel Lemer Jutta Koether Kim Gordon David Robbins Martin Kippenberger Julia Cafritz Edgar Heap of Birds Roddy Bogawa Jon Moritsugu Jacques Boyreau Olivier Zahm Elein Fleiss Purple Institute / Paris Fashion Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Photography Art Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay Film / Video Conceptual Art Painting Sculpture / Installation

Stephen Willats
Multiple Clothing: Designs 1965-1999

1999, English/German
Softcover, 64 pages, 20.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Oktagon Verlagsgesellschaft mbH / Cologne Walther König / Köln

$180.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of British artist Stephen Willats' fabulous Multiple Clothing: Designs 1965-1999, published by Walther König in 2000, long out-of-print. Filled with extensive documentation of Willat's conceptual text based clothing designs and accompanied by his texts, with photographic documentation of performances, exhibitions and all original garment designs reproduced in full-colour.

"Since the early 1960s, Stephen Willats has devoted himself to the dialogue between the artwork and the viewer. His models from the series Multiple Clothing are specially made mix-and-match PVC garments. Each design is produced as an assemblage of clothing sections that contain either single words, or a range of letters. These can be built up within the framework of each design, indicating the state of mind of the wearer. This artist's book contains diagrams, drawings and photographs of the work alongside comment and text written by Willats himself."

‘I consider clothing as an important area of strategy in art, as a territory of expression that takes the artist right into the realm of reality that is very much a parameter to people’s experience of society. So the works I have developed as clothing are made to be worn, though there is a clear difference for the wearer with the clothes they might normally wear, so that the act of wearing my clothes differentiates the experience from normality in the surrounding world. My intention is that in wearing one of these clothes you yourself become an integral manifestation of the work, and your internalization of the meaning of the work is through that act of wearing it, and subsequently what happens to you as a result. The works alter your interpersonal relationship with the other people you come into contact with, and alter their relationship with you…..’—Multiple Clothing, Designs 1965 – 1999, Stephen Willats, Walther König, Cologne, 2000

Fine copy.

File under: Stephen Willats Oktagon Verlagsgesellschaft mbH / Cologne Walther König / Köln Art Graphic Design / Typography Fashion Out-of-print / Rare Photography Conceptual Art Textiles Performance / Dance / Theater

Ana Mendieta
A Book of Works

1993, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 74 pages, 26.7 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Grassfield Press / Florida

$220.00 - In stock -

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Rare first edition of Ana Mendieta's posthumous artist's book, A Book of Works, beautifully produced in an edition of 2,400 copies, edited by Bonnie Clearwater, and long out-of-print.

Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta was working on many important projects that were left incomplete at the time of her tragic death in 1985 at age 36. Among these was a beautiful book of photo etchings of her carvings of female figures in remote caves on the outskirts of Havana, Cuba. These sculptures were inspired by the myths and beliefs of the Tainos, pre-Columbian inhabitants of the West Indies. This publication reproduces in facsimile Mendieta's unfinished book of photo etchings and related works and publishes, for the first time, her notes and writings for this important project.

Mencdieta's work crosses the categories of earth art, body art, performance and conceptual photography. As her works generally were site specific and ephemeral, they became know primarily through the photographic documentation she exhibited in galleries and museums. She intended her intimate book of photo etchings to capture the experience of viewing her elusive life-size sculptures in the close quarters of the caves.

Illustrated with many never-before published photographs, this book is an important contribution to the understanding of his extraordinary artist.

"...the authors have honored (Mendieta's) desires by crating a book that speaks softly an genuinely in the artist's voice."
by Alexandra Tager --Art & Auction magazine

"When Ana Mendieta died in 1983, she was working on a book similar to this one, a slim volume of photo etchings of the life-size figures she carved into the stone walls of caves in Cuba's Jaruco State Park. The artist, a "Pedro Pan" child who was sent out of Cuba in the early days of Castro's reign, spent her short art life seeking expression for her personal exile. Inspired by Taino mythology, these pre-Columbian islanders believed the first humans emerged from a cave-Mendieta identified the Cuban caves with birth,including her own. Her entire body of work, largely a collection of photographs documenting such ephemeral art forms as earth works, performance pieces and body art, was spun on this theme of self-identity, a return to her roots, to mother earth. Unlike her other photographic artifacts, however, these photo etchings were destined for a book, of which this is a facsimile. Her montes on the Taino myths appear as if in her own hand on these pages, along with her thoughts about how the book should be arranged. The result is an intimate experience with the artist's hand and mind and a unique act of closure for a career that ended in a still-unexplained fall from a New york high-rise."—Helen L. Kohen—Miami Herald (1993)

Bonnie Clearwater is the Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, and the former curator of the Mark Rothko Foundation, New York. Among her publications are "Frank Stella at 2000: Changing the Rules"; "Defining the Nineties: New York,Los Angeles,Miami"; "Mark Rothko: Works on Paper"; "Edward Ruscha: Words Without Thoughts Never to Heaven Go"; and "David Smith: Stop/Action".

Fine copy in VG—NF dust jacket with sunning to spine.

File under: Ana Mendieta Bonnie Clearwater Grassfield Press / Florida Sculpture / Installation Performance / Dance / Theater Conceptual Art Photography Out-of-print / Rare Art

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry
Edited by Emmett Williams

1967, English
Hardcover, 342 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf

$190.00 - Out of stock

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Rare first 1967 European hardcover edition of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, published by the legendary edition hansjörg meyer. The book's editor, Emmett Williams, "as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance." An Anthology of Concrete Poetry was the first anthology on the international movement of Concrete poetry, published subsequently by the legendary Something Else Press in 1967 in America. The movement itself began in the early 1950s, in Germany–through Eugen Gomringer, who borrowed the term “concrete” from the art of his mentor, Max Bill–and in Brazil, through the Noigandres group, which included the de Campos brothers and Decio Pignatari. Over the course of the 1960s it exploded across Europe, America and Japan, as other protagonists of the movement emerged, such as Dieter Roth, Öyvind Fahlström, Ernst Jandl, bpNichol, Mary Ellen Solt, Jackson Mac Low, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Pierre Garnier, Henri Chopin, Brion Gysin and Kitasono Katue. By the late 1960s, poet Jonathan Williams could proclaim: “If there is such a thing as a worldwide movement in the art of poetry, Concrete is it.” The work of the 77 writers collected in this anthology varies greatly in its aims and forms, but all can be said to emphasize the visual dimension of language, manipulating individual letters and minimal semantic units to produce poems that are for contemplating as much as for reading. Emmett Williams, the book’s editor, added explanatory commentary for the poems and biographies of their authors, making this volume–long out of print–the definitive anthology of this movement, which has so influenced artists and writers of subsequent generations.

Writers and artists included: Friedrich Achleitner, Alain Arias-Misson, H. C. Artmann, Ronaldo Azeredo, Stephen Bann, Carlo Belloli, Max Bense, Edgard Braga, Claus Bremer, Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Henri Chopin, Carl Friedrich Claus, Bob Cobbing, Paul de Vree, Reinhard Döhl, Torsten Ekbom, Öyvind Fahlström, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Larry Freifeld, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Matthias Goeritz, Eugen Gomringer, Ludwig Gosewitz, Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal, José Lino Grünewald, Brion Gysin, Al Hansen, Václav Havel, Helmut Heissenbüttel, Åke Hodell, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ernst Jandl, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ronald Johnson, Hiro Kamimura, Kitasono Katue, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Jackson Mac Low, Hansjörg Mayer, Cavan McCarthy, Franz Mon, Edwin Morgan, Maurizio Nannucci, bp Nichol, Hans-Jørgen Nielsen, Seiichi Niikuni, Ladislav Novák, Yuksel Pazarkaya, Décio Pignatari, Vlademir Dias Pino, Luiz Angelo Pinto, Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd, Diter Rot, Gerhard Rühm, Aram Saroyan, John J. Sharkey, Edward Lucie Smith, Mary Ellen Solt, Adriano Spatola, Daniel Spoerri, Vagn Steen, Andre Thomkins, Enrique Uribe Valdivielso, Franz Van Der Linde, Franco Verdi, Emmett Williams, Jonathan Williams, Pedro Xisto and Fujitomi Yasuo.

"Emmett Williams, as one of the original practitioners of concrete poetry, has been in a unique position to observe the development of the movement since its beginnings, and the selection in this volume therefore reflects a view of this evolution from within the movement rather than from a distance. However it is far too soon to regard any anthology of Concrete Poetry as being definitive since the movement is extremely active and major new works have yet to appear in this most interesting of current poetry movements." -- from interior flap. Printed in black-and-white.

Very Good copy with some light edge wear to thick covers, general light age/tanning.

File under: Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal José Lino Grünewald Václav Havel Helmut Heissenbüttel Åke Hodell Friedrich Achleitner Alain Arias-Misson H. C. Artmann Ronaldo Azeredo Stephen Bann Carlo Belloli Max Bense Edgard Braga Claus Bremer Augusto de Campos Haroldo de Campos Henri Chopin Carl Friedrich Claus Bob Cobbing Paul de Vree Reinhard Döhl Torsten Ekbom Öyvind Fahlström Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim Ian Hamilton Finlay Larry Freifeld John Furnival Heinz Gappmayr Ilse and Pierre Garnier Matthias Goeritz Eugen Gomringer Ludwig Gosewitz Dom Sylvester Houédard Ernst Jandl Bengt Emil Johnson Ronald Johnson Hiro Kamimura Kitasono Katue Jiri Kolar Ferdinand Kriwet Arrigo Lora-Totino Jackson Mac Low Hansjörg Mayer Cavan McCarthy Franz Mon Edwin Morgan Maurizio Nannucci bp Nichol Hans-Jørgen Nielsen Seiichi Niikuni Ladislav Novák Yuksel Pazarkaya Décio Pignatari Vlademir Dias Pino Luiz Angelo Pinto Diter Rot Gerhard Rühm Aram Saroyan John J. Sharkey Edward Lucie Smith Mary Ellen Solt Adriano Spatola Daniel Spoerri Vagn Steen Enrique Uribe Valdivielso Franz Van Der Linde Franco Verdi Emmett Williams Jonathan Williams Pedro Xisto Fujitomi Yasuo André Thomkins André Thomkins Friedrich Achleitner Alain Arias-Misson H. C. Artmann Ronaldo Azeredo Stephen Bann Carlo Belloli Max Bense Edgard Braga Claus Bremer Augusto de Campos Haroldo de Campos Henri Chopin Carl Friedrich Claus Bob Cobbing Paul de Vree Reinhard Döhl Torsten Ekbom Öyvind Fahlström Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim Ian Hamilton Finlay Larry Freifeld John Furnival Heinz Gappmayr Ilse and Pierre Garnier Matthias Goeritz Eugen Gomringer Ludwig Gosewitz Bohumila Grögerova and Josef Hiršal José Lino Grünewald Brion Gysin Al Hansen Václav Havel Helmut Heissenbüttel Åke Hodell Dom Sylvester Houédard Ernst Jandl Arrigo Lora-Totino Jackson Mac Low Hansjörg Mayer Cavan McCarthy Franz Mon Edwin Morgan Maurizio Nannucci bp Nichol Hans-Jørgen Nielsen Seiichi Niikuni Ladislav Novák Yuksel Pazarkaya Décio Pignatari Vlademir Dias Pino Luiz Angelo Pinto Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd Diter Rot Gerhard Rühm Aram Saroyan John J. Sharkey Edward Lucie Smith Mary Ellen Solt Adriano Spatola Daniel Spoerri Vagn Steen Andre Thomkins Enrique Uribe Valdivielso Franz Van Der Linde Franco Verdi Emmett Williams Jonathan Williams Pedro Xisto Fujitomi Yasuo Bengt Emil Johnson Ronald Johnson Jiří Kolář Hiro Kamimura Kitasono Katue Ferdinand Kriwet edition hansjörg meyer / Düsseldorf Concrete Poetry Conceptual Art Out-of-print / Rare Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Art Minimal Art Fiction / Poetry Poetry Fluxus

Memo Review 2025: Issue 4

2025, English
Softcover, 200 pages. 23 x 16.6 cm
Published by Memo Review / Naarm

$35.00 - In stock -

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Issue 4 of Memo Review focuses on Frankfurt-based artist Hana Earles, a defining figure in the recent history of Melbourne’s backyard gallery scene. Other pieces include renowned French philosopher Catherine Malabou on Cyril Schäublin’s 'Unrest', Chris Kraus on her literary evolution, Micaela Sahhar on media and institutional censorship of Palestine, and features on Caveh Zahedi, Carol Jerrems, Rosemarie Trockel, Hany Armanious, Nora Turato, Robert Rooney and more. Also featured: eminent art historian T. J. Clark’s Marxist-inflected commitment to modernity comes under review by Francis Plagne, and Keith Broadfoot restages Imants Tiller’s canonical von Guérard copy, Mount Analogue, as repetition and resurrection of Australian art through the colonial sublime.

"Across this issue, a recurring tension emerges between what can be said, what must be withheld, and who controls the threshold between the two. In conversation with Declan Fry, Chris Kraus reflects on her new novel’s blend of small-town crime and Trump-era “cancellation,” asking how a writer can depict other people’s lives when social media, true crime, and activist vocabularies are all busy turning them into types, or erasing them altogether. Micaela Sahhar turns to Anna Akhmatova, the poet who defied Stalin’s censors, to trace how media and cultural institutions now treat Palestine as a zone of censorship, suppression, and risk management. That climate finds an echo in Berlin, where Tania Bruguera’s hundred-hour Hannah Arendt reading at the Hamburger Bahnhof was overtaken first by pro-Palestine activists, then by the institution’s own fear. As Hilary Thurlow argues, what played out was not a clash of opposing camps but a sign of the Left’s deeper fractures under the pressure of moral absolutism. And is this not close to Nicolas Hausdorf ’s claim that the West’s moral language, forged in the crucible of the twentieth century’s horrors, has been worn thin by empty repetitions and meme-like escalation, until it can no longer bear its original meaning?

Meanwhile, the old question of “effective political art” persists. Rex Butler reads 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art as a kind of visual plebiscite, a wall of works in which every artist gets a vote and every vote counts the same — a quasi-“Voice” in exhibition form — while there are revisitations of the weary Marxist art historian T. J. Clark, whose new collected essays are reviewed by Francis Plagne.

Elsewhere, the veil is not political but ontological. For Susie Anderson and Hannah Presley, the veil marks a space of partial revelation in which artists choose what to show and what to keep, set in stark contrast to the radical transparency of Caveh Zahedi’s life-as-art practice, with all its personal collateral, as explored by Chelsea Hopper.

Questions of exposure return again in Biz Sherbert’s interview with Hana Earles, where scribbled text, titles, and even Jo Malone perfume bottles act as “secret doorways” between diary-like interiority and the messy surface of painting. Seen this way, Earles’s work, steeped in psyops, Manson girls, anime adolescence, Addison Rae, mumblecore, and spiritual acceleration, offers an oblique map of Melbourne’s outwardly impoverished backyard-gallery ecology over the past decade — the Meows, Guzzlers, Asbestoses, and Punk Cafés at the fringes of the city’s institutional officialdom. Call it, with Gemma Topliss, façadism." — Paris Lettau

Contributors:

File under: Hana Earles Nora Turato Robert Rooney Caveh Zahedi Carol Jerrems Rosemarie Trockel Hany Armanious Audrey Schmidt Paris Lettau Giles Fielke Amelia Winata Tristen Harwood Gemma Topliss Hilary Thurlow Chelsea Hopper Memo Review / Naarm Art Australian Art Painting Conceptual Art Sculpture / Installation Sound / Music Film / Video Theory / Essay

KITSCH 1 + 2 (all volumes)

1970/1971, French
Softcover, 2 volumes, unpaginated, 28.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Marie Concorde / Paris

$320.00 - In stock -

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Both of the only volumes ever produced of this wonderful French avant-garde journal, published in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s. A visual manifesto against the prudishness of the times, KITSCH presented hundreds of illustrations of mostly erotic, fetish and fantastic/grotesque artwork by artists from all over the world, and spanning generations, with both issues wrapped in the most striking Tom Wesselmann covers. KITSCH 1 includes Toshio Saeki, Guido Crepax, Richard Linder, Robert Crumb, Guy Bourdin, Petr Herel, Hannes Jahn, Roman Cieślewicz, Ben Vautier, Christian Bour, Jacques Sternberg, Roland Topor, Jim, Allen Jones, Thomas Weir, alongside photo essays on upskirt polaroids, Satanik, Diabolik, fashion and more. KITSCH 2 includes Aslan, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Finlay, Jim Osborne, Ronald Lipking, Greg Irons, George Grosz, Egon Schiele, Mel Ramos, alongside photo essays on subjects such as "Pop Art", "Human Concern" and Paris' "Pigalle" district, further featuring work by H.C.Westermann, Paul Thek, Edward Keinholz, William Tunberg, Christian Schad, William Weegee, James Rosenquist, Frank Gallo, Tom Wesselmann, and many more.

Very good copies both, light wear.

File under: Toshio Saeki Guido Crepax Richard Linder Robert Crumb Guy Bourdin Petr Herel Hannes Jahn Roman Cieślewicz Ben Vautier Christian Bour Jacques Sternberg Roland Topor Jim Allen Jones Thomas Weir Aslan Roy Lichtenstein Virgil Finlay Jim Osborne Ronald Lipking Greg Irons George Grosz Egon Schiele Mel Ramos H.C.Westermann Paul Thek Edward Keinholz William Tunberg Christian Schad William Weegee James Rosenquist Frank Gallo Tom Wesselmann Christian Bour Jacques Sternberg Marie Concorde / Paris Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Photography Pop Art Conceptual Art Art Counterculture Fetishism / BDSM Group Shows / Collections Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction

Marianne Wex
Let's Take Back Our Space (“Female” and “Male” Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures)

1979, English
Softcover, 366 pages, 30 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Frauenliteratur Verlag Hermine Fees / Germany

$500.00 - In stock -

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Very rare first 1979 English edition of one the finest artist's books and photographic projects of the 1970's, Let's Take Back Our Space (“Female” and “Male” Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures / with 2037 photographs / In the second part of the book: Man's stuggle against womanpower and the effects upon body language throughout the course of history.)

The German artist Marianne Wex started out as a painter before producing her encyclopaedic photographic project "Let’s Take Back Our Space", one of the great unsung works of 1970s feminist history and cultural analysis. Marianne Wex bases her work on the assumption that body language is a result of sex-based, patriarchal socialization, affecting all of our other "feminine" and "masculine" role behavior. Born in Hamburg in 1937, Wex studied at the city’s University of Fine Arts, where she later taught for seventeen years. In 1979, she published Let’s Take Back Our Space as a book in both a German and English edition, to accompany an exhibition in the Neue Gesellschaft fair Bildende Kiinste in Berlin, in connection with the show Women Artists International, 1877 to 1977. It is an in-depth visual survey comprised of 5,000 to 6,000 photographs of body postures, taken between 1974 and 1977, assembled into dozens of thematic grids: Seated persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; standing persons—leg and feet; arm and hand positions; people sitting and laying on the ground; arm and leg positions; and so on. The images were culled from a huge range of sources—re-photographed advertisements, reportage, fashion magazines, pornography, studio portraits, the history of art—and many were taken on the streets of Hamburg by Wex, who proposes that our smallest, most unconscious gestures speak volumes about the power relations of gender in daily life. The work was expanded to include an extensive historical section for the book, where Marianne Wex investigates the body language shown in sculptures of the last 3,000 to 4,000 years, and comes to the conclusion that the ideals of body language and body forms have never been so different between the sexes as they are today.

Very Good copy. General light wear/ageing, tanning to cover, but a most lovely copy of the rare first edition from 1979. A more common reprint edition was published in 1984.

File under: Marianne Wex Frauenliteratur Verlag Hermine Fees / Germany Conceptual Art Feminism Photography Out-of-print / Rare Art

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

$380.00 - 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 run 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, 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 corner and edge wear/marking.

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

Richardson Issue A4
The Female Gaze Issue

2010, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 30.5 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Richardson / New York

$220.00 - In stock -

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Incredible fourth issue ("The Female Gaze Issue") of Richardson magazine, the cult magazine that navigates the murky boundaries between art and obscenity, edited by Andrew Richardson (of Richardson label, fashion stylist w. Supreme, CK, Valentino, etc.) and art direction by Laura Genninger of STUDIO 191 (designer of AnOther Magazine, etc.). This fourth issue (The Female Gaze Issue) features the Sasha Grey cover photographed by Glen Luchford (w. continued photo feature inside), and featuring work by Carolee Schneemann, Valie Export, Genesis P-Orridge, GB Jones, Alex Needham, Amy Kellner, Kira Jolliffe, Bunny Yeager, Tristan Taormino, Michelle Maccarone, Mila Djordjevic, Gunter Rambow, V. Vale/ Re/Search, Simon Ford, Clara Herve & Eugene Krafft, Carol Bove, Sue Williams, Tracy Emin, Carolin Kunst & Sunje Todt, Kotaro Iizawa, and much more. Riddled with bans and confiscations due to explicit un-censored imagery by Japanese censorship standards.

Very Good copy.

File under: Sasha Grey Glen Luchford Carolee Schneemann Valie Export Genesis P-Orridge GB Jones Alex Needham Amy Kellner Kira Jolliffe Bunny Yeager Tristan Taormino Michelle Maccarone Mila Djordjevic Gunter Rambow V. Vale/ Re/Search Simon Ford Clara Herve Eugene Krafft Carol Bove Sue Williams Tracy Emin Carolin Kunst Sunje Todt Kotaro Iizawa V. Vale Richardson / New York Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Eros Japanese Photography Photography Conceptual Art Feminism Art Sound / Music Film / Video Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

An Artist, a Coyote, and a Cage: Joseph Beuys in New York 1974
Photographs by Stephen Aiken

2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 26 x 28.6 cm
Published by Letter16 Press / Miami

$90.00 - In stock -

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New documentation of Joseph Beuys’ controversial performance piece.
Edited with foreword by Brett Sokol

May 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of Joseph Beuys’ infamous piece of performance art staged in New York City: I Like America and America Likes Me. The premise—a man and a wild coyote locked together inside a room—helped build a cult following for Beuys that has made him alternately revered and reviled throughout the contemporary art world. Stephen Aiken’s (born 1948) photographs of this May 1974 "action" by Beuys—recently unearthed and previously unpublished—offer a fresh look at this seminal art happening. These striking images are supplemented with a set of previously unseen color photos taken by Aiken of Beuys at Greenwich Village’s New School in January 1974: verbally sparring onstage with fellow artist Hannah Wilke and jousting with a raucous audience that threatened to turn his lecture into a brawl.

File under: Joseph Beuys Hannah Wilke Stephen Aiken Brett Sokol Letter16 Press / Miami Photography Conceptual Art Performance / Dance / Theater Art Sculpture / Installation

Joseph Beuys
Soziale Plastik

1976 / 1984, German
Softcover, 24 x 19.5 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Achberger Verlag / Achberg

$28.00 - In stock -

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1984 print of the 1976 Joseph Beuys book "Soziale Plastik". "The three authors of this book engage with one of the most dazzling and controversial figures in contemporary cultural life. Joseph Beuys is among the most prominent figures in the modern art scene, and one cannot claim to have grasped the essential characteristics of this scene without also considering Beuys's contribution. This contribution is multifaceted, and the individual parts of his work are often judged very differently. The authors demonstrate how the various works and pronouncements of Joseph Beuys, often described as contradictory, can be considered together to form a unified, coherent, and consistent whole. Drawings, sculptures, performances, and lectures appear as logical stages in the development of an artist who, in recent times, has attracted particular attention by publicly presenting social concepts and advocating for political goals.

Beuys' political engagement can be understood as an integral part of his work, as a necessary consequence of the image of humanity presented throughout his oeuvre and the resulting image of society.

A large number of drawings, sculptures, and action photographs, some previously unpublished, help those unfamiliar with Beuys's work to gain an understanding. For those already acquainted with the work of Joseph Beuys, this book provides new material."

NF—Fine copy. German language.

File under: Joseph Beuys Joseph Beuys Achberger Verlag / Achberg Art Sculpture / Installation Out-of-print / Rare Conceptual Art Arte Povera Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Performance / Dance / Theater Drawing Sociology / Politics

Eleanor Antin
Works 1965-2017

2025, English
Softcover, 220 pages, 32 x 24.5 cm
Published by Hatje Cantz / Berlin

$85.00 - Out of stock

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Edited by Vanessa Joan Müller, Bettina Steinbrügge.
Text by Lisa E. Bloom, Andrea Bowers, Haden Guest, Ingrid Luquet-Gad, Jason McBride, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Olaf Nicolai, Letizia Ragaglia, Alexandro Segade, Bettina Steinbrügge.

Previously unpublished ephemera, poems and photographs accompany this sharp retrospective volume of Antin's 50 years of conceptual, feminist art, the most comprehensive publication on the artist to date, published to accompany the first survey on the artist in more than two decades.

For more than 50 years, Eleanor Antin (born 1935) has been a distinctive voice in postmodernism, traversing conceptual art and feminist movements. Her projects, often photographic series or performances, scrutinize the historic and contemporary roles of women, darkened by consumerist commentary on the ideal feminine. Crash dieting, Schick razors, mascara and pill bottles all play starring roles in her most famous works. This most comprehensive monograph to date accompanies Antin's first retrospective in 25 years and her first ever in Europe. Each commissioned text dives into a different facet of her work: her life in New York and San Diego; her Jewish identity; her feminist activism; her unfailing humor; her performances and films; and the impact of her art on younger generations of artists. It also features a complete exhibition history, a comprehensive list of works and a timeline of her life.

Eleanor Antin is a key figure emerging from the Conceptual art movements of the 1970s. Today as an octogenarian artist, she remains one of the world's leading Feminist artists. Her ground-breaking practice spans five decades and has covered themes surrounding identity, gender, autobiography, class and social structures. Antin's multi-disciplinary approach includes installation, painting, drawing, writing and most notably photography and performance. Over the last 50 years Antin has performed and exhibited her work internationally.

File under: Eleanor Antin Eleanor Antin Vanessa Joan Müller Bettina Steinbrügge Lisa E. Bloom Andrea Bowers Haden Guest Ingrid Luquet-Gad Jason McBride Christiane Meyer-Stoll Olaf Nicolai Letizia Ragaglia Alexandro Segade Hatje Cantz / Berlin Feminism Conceptual Art Art Poetry Photography Performance / Dance / Theater Drawing

Richard Prince
Spiritual America

1989, English
Softcover 138 pages, 28.6 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Aperture / New York Institute of Modern Art / Valencia

$440.00 - In stock -

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Very rare first 1989 edition of one of Richard Prince’s best and most influential books. Spiritual America is a catalogue cum artist's book published by Aperture in conjunction with the artist’s landmark 1989 exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain, and Guggenheim Museum, New York. Lavishly illustrated and stylishly designed closely with Prince by Bethany Johns, Spiritual America “retains a dual role as a retrospective survey of Prince’s work and a fascinating re-integration of his repertoire of images into the format from which they mostly originated - the magazine”(—Greg Hilty, Frieze Magazine). With over 200 colour images of Prince's work (the jokes, the bikers, the cowboys, the glamour girls, the hoods...), Spiritual America marked the first comprehensive publication on the artist and his work, featuring Prince's own texts as well as an incredible transcribed "interview" with author J.G. Ballard, and a preface by Corinne Diserens and Vincent Todoli.

"What would it be if I had the eyes of a fly?"

Artist's book entry 13 in "Bibliotheque d'un Amateur: Richard Prince's Publications 1981-2012"

VG—Near Fine, seemingly unread, tightly bound copy, no sunning. A light remainder stamp to top of book-block is the only detraction from a remarkable copy.

File under: Richard Prince Richard Prince J.G. Ballard Corinne Diserens Vicente Todoli Aperture / New York Institute of Modern Art / Valencia Photography Conceptual Art Painting Sculpture / Installation Art Out-of-print / Rare

Christopher Williams
Program. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision I)

2006, English / German
Softcover, 88 pages, 21 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Kunstverein Braunschweig / Germany Sternberg Press / Berlin

$280.00 - In stock -

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Edited by Karola Grässlin
Text by Helmut Draxler

Christopher Williams’ work operates within the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and, ultimately the history of Modernism. In photography, film, performance, sculpture, graphic design, and video, the process of reproduction is the artist’s point of entry; from there he exposes the flaws in a near-perfect, carefully constructed reality. Each image, whether architectural or figurative, natural or manufactured, is subject to the conditions of production and the inevitable boundaries of the pictorial surface.

By systematically building such provocative moments into his work, Christopher Williams to an extent kick-starts the process of perception and reception and at least points it in a certain direction. This approach, which oscillates between the work itself and the process of producing it, can now also be related to the genealogy of his own artistic methods, both in relation to and in contradistinction from Rephotography and Conceptual Art.
—Helmut Draxler

Accompanying the same-titled exhibition at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, this fully illustrated catalogue documents the show and contains a theoretical essay by Helmut Draxler.

As New copy. Out-of-print.

File under: Christopher Williams Karola Grässlin Helmut Draxler Kunstverein Braunschweig / Germany Sternberg Press / Berlin Conceptual Art Out-of-print / Rare Art Photography

Christopher Williams
Program. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle (Revision 10)

2010, English / Norwegian
Softcover, 80 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Bergen Kunsthall / Norway

$140.00 - Out of stock

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For over 20 years Christopher Williams has worked in the field between photography as art and the application of the photographic medium to documentation, advertising, and journalism. The works involve volumes of such subtexts and themes, which are rarely fully apparent, but are concealed behind layer upon layer of circumstances and references, connotations, and background stories. Williams is a decided storyteller, and builds up his narratives by way of an almost essayistic juxtaposition of photographs that stand in relation – not directly obvious – with one another.

The exhibition in Bergen Kunsthall was the first solo presentation of Williams's work in Scandinavia and the title hints at a specific angle of approach to the complex network of connections. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle suggests a course of lessons that covers the industrial preconditions of the spread of photography, and which can in turn be applied to society in a larger perspective. The accumulation of loosely related events in European culture (decolonization, industrialization, the revolution of ‘68) is paralleled with inventions from the same era which have influenced photographic technology. The same title has been used for several exhibitions in recent years, but often with an addition that indicates that each new exhibition is a new experiment: a new revision. The way the titles begin with “For Example” also indicates the same experimental attitude.

The exhibition in Bergen Kunsthall was not a retrospective in the traditional sense, but brought out various aspects of the artistic oeuvre through a selection of both recent photographs and older works. The exhibition itself thus constituted a new revision of Williams’s ongoing project.

The exhibition catalogue collects, for the first time, a selection of Williams’s own writing in the form of press releases for recent exhibitions, each containing only minor changes from one exhibition to the next. The book also presents two new essays on the work of Christopher Williams by John Kelsey and Diedrich Diederichsen.

Designed by Christopher Williams and Petra Hollenbach.

In the 1970s, Christopher Williams studied at the California Institute of the Arts under the first wave of West Coast conceptual artists, including John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler, only to become one of his generation’s leading conceptualists. Williams’s work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, the artist manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism. Deeply political, historical, and sometimes personal, the photographs are meant to evoke a subtle shift in our perception by questioning the communication mechanisms and aesthetic conventions that influence our understanding of reality.

Now out-of-print.

File under: Christopher Williams Diedrich Diederichsen John Kelsey Bergen Kunsthall / Norway Art Conceptual Art Photography Out-of-print / Rare

Duchamp in California
Walter Hopps Curates a Retrospective

2025, English
Hardcover, 392 pages, 29.5 x 25 cm

$150.00 - In stock -

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Marcel Duchamp’s first retrospective in 1963, curated by the youthful and energetic curator Walter Hopps, was a singular moment in twentieth-century art history. This chronicle of its conception and execution reveals an ascendant cultural history of Los Angeles in the early 1960s. A reawakening to Duchamp’s impact on contemporary thought was on full display first in California—accompanied by a remarkable cast of artists, curators, critics, gallerists, and collectors, including Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Bereal, Wallace Berman, George Brecht, William N. Copley, Sam Francis, Joe Goode, Richard Hamilton, Dennis Hopper, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Alison Knowles, Gerard Malanga, Marisol, Patty Mucha, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Pettibone, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Robert Watts. With detailed installation diagrams and reproductions of every art object displayed published here for the first time, Duchamp in California shows why the exhibition is revered as an exemplar of curatorial practice for its compelling design and critical acclaim.

By Don Quaintance

File under: Marcel Duchamp Don Quaintance Pop Art Conceptual Art Dada Surrealism Theory / Essay Curatorial Painting Sculpture / Installation

The Originality of the Avant-garde and Other Modernist Myths
by Rosalind E. Krauss

1986, English
Softcover, 319 pages, 175 x 229 mm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by The MIT Press / Massachusetts

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major formulation of the theory of postmodernism. In this challenging collection of fifteen essays, most of which originally appeared in October, she explores the ways in which the break in style that produced postmodernism has forced a change in our various understandings of twentieth-century art, beginning with the almost mythic idea of the avant-garde. Krauss uses the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism, and poststructuralism to reveal new meanings in the visual arts and to critique the way other prominent practitioners of art and literary history write about art. In two sections, "Modernist Myths" and "Toward Postmodernism," her essays range from the problem of the grid in painting and the unity of Giacometti's sculpture to the works of Jackson Pollock, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra, and observations about major trends in contemporary literary criticism.

Rosalind E. Krauss, University Professor at Columbia University and an editor and cofounder of October magazine, is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1985), The Optical Unconscious (1993), The Picasso Papers (1999), and Bachelors (1999), all published by the MIT Press, and coauthor (with Yve-Alain Bois) of Formless: A User's Guide (Zone Books, 1997).

"All of her observations are unfailingly original and provocative."—Art Documentation

Very Good copy of original 1986 edition, 1993 printing.

File under: Jackson Pollock Richard Serra Sol Lewitt Agnes Martin Marcel Duchamp Pablo Picasso Piet Mondrian Man Ray Robert Ryman Caspar David Friedrich Eugene Atget Auguste Rodin Gordon Matta-Clark Alberto Giacometti Max Ernst Rosalind E. Krauss The MIT Press / Massachusetts Art Sculpture / Installation Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Painting Photography Minimal Art Conceptual Art Dada Surrealism

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

$110.00 - 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 copy. 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

Arte Povera
Edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

1999, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 304 pages, 29.2 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Phaidon / London

$120.00 - In stock -

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First 1999 edition of Arte Povera, the most complete overview of this movement ever published, edited by one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject.

Arte Povera is Italy's most important and influential post-war art movement. Originally championed by the leading art critic Germano Celant, it included internationally recognized artists such as Alighiero Boetti, Jannis Kounellis, Mario and Marisa Merz and Michelangelo Pistoletto. Edited by one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, this book is the most complete overview of the artworks and writings associated with Arte Povera, an art movement that explored the relation between art and life, made manifest through natural materials and human artifacts, and experienced through the body.

"This is now the definitive English-language sourcebook on Merz, Pistoletto, Paolini and company, thanks to its rich selection of images and texts."―Bookforum

"Get hold of Arte Povera... It is both compendium and critique, with artists' statements, a chronology and commentary. It contextualizes the work, and the pictures are great."―Adrian Searle, Guardian

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is a writer and curator living in Rome, who has become an internationally recognized scholar of late twentieth-century Italian art. She has written extensively on the Arte Povera movement and published interviews and texts on artists such as Boetti, Pistoletto, Merz, Fabro and Kounellis. Bakargiev is also a noted curator of contemporary art internationally: her exhibitions include 'Molteplici Culture', Rome, 1992 and a homage to John Cage which she co-curated with Alanna Heiss for the 1993 Venice Biennale.

She was part of the curatorial team for the 'Antwerp 93 European Capital of Culture', devising the major international survey, 'On Taking a Normal Situation and Re-translating it into Overlapping and Multiple Readings of Conditions Past and Present'. In 1996 Bakargiev curated a large-scale survey on Italian post-war artist Alberto Burri in Rome, Brussels and Munich. In 1997, she curated 'Citta-Natura': a city-wide exhibition of international artists including Anselmo, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Pascali and Kounellis, held in Rome.

She is Chief Curator at the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, and was formerly Senior Curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. She was co-curator, with Iwona Blazwick, of Faces in the Crowd: Picturing Modern Life from Manet to Today , Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2004 5.

Good copy with some corner knocking, small tear to top of spine dust jacket, otherwise very good throughout.

File under: Pino Pascali Mario Merz Marisa Merz Giovanni Anselmo Jannis Kounellis Alighiero Boetti Michelangelo Pistoletto Piero Gilardi Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev Phaidon / London Arte Povera Conceptual Art Sculpture / Installation Painting Minimal Art Art Performance / Dance / Theater Group Shows / Collections Out-of-print / Rare Curatorial

Environments and Happenings
Edited by Adrian Henri

1974, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 216 pages, 21 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Thames and Hudson / London

$30.00 - Out of stock

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First HC Edition.
Environments and Happenings by painter and poet Adrian Henri, published by Thames & Hudson in 1974, forms one of the first mainstream book surveys to trace the phenomenon of environmental/performative/total living artworks that became prevalent in the 1960s/70s. This historical study is profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with many international works from Fluxus to Zero to Dolle Mina to Nouveau Réalisme to Provo to Gutai to The Situationists and much more. Includes the works of Joseph Beuys, Clarence Schmidt, Ray Johnson, Öyvind Fahlström, Paul Thek, Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow, Hans Haacke, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Guerllia Art Action Group, Daniel Spoerri, Wolf Vostell, Gustav Metzger, Peter Kuttner, Jackson Pollock, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Robert Morris, Situationist International, Ferdinand Kriwet, Klaus Rinke, Duane Hanson, A-Yo, Meret Oppenheim, Space Structure Workshop, Ferdinand Cheval, Dolle Mina (Mad Mina), Robert Smithson, Jeff Nuttall, Stefan Wewerka, Christo, Dennis Oppenheim, Vladimir Tatlin, Provo, Barry Flanagan, Andy Warhol, Meredith Monk, Atsuko Tanaka, Kazuo Shiraga, Ed Keinholz, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Gilardi, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, Les Levine, James Rosenquist, Red Grooms, Tom Wesselmann, George Segal, Eduardo Paolozzi, and many many more. Includes reproductions of performance scripts, partial chronology, etc.

Very Good copy in Good DJ some light wear, price-clipping to inner.

File under: Guerilla Art Action Group Joseph Beuys Clarence Schmidt Ray Johnson Öyvind Fahlström Paul Thek Yves Klein Hans Haacke Kurt Schwitters Marcel Duchamp Guerllia Art Action Group Daniel Spoerri Wolf Vostell Gustav Metzger Peter Kuttner Jackson Pollock Alison Knowles Dick Higgins Robert Morris Situationist International Ferdinand Kriwet Klaus Rinke Duane Hanson A-Yo Meret Oppenheim Space Structure Workshop Ferdinand Cheval Dolle Mina (Mad Mina) Robert Smithson Jeff Nuttall Stefan Wewerka Christo Dennis Oppenheim Vladimir Tatlin Provo Barry Flanagan Andy Warhol Meredith Monk Atsuko Tanaka Kazuo Shiraga Ed Keinholz Yayoi Kusama Piero Gilardi Niki de Saint-Phalle Jean Tinguely Claes Oldenburg Les Levine James Rosenquist Red Grooms Tom Wesselmann George Segal Eduardo Paolozzi Allan Kaprow Adrian Henri Thames and Hudson / London Sculpture / Installation Out-of-print / Rare Performance / Dance / Theater Fluxus Arte Povera Conceptual Art Art Dada Counterculture Curatorial Group Shows / Collections Painting Pop Art Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Surrealism Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Sound / Music

Art Since Pop
by John A Walker

1975, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 18 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Thames and Hudson / London

$15.00 - In stock -

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1975, profusely illustrated pocket-book survey of the many strands of contemporary art which have emerged since the appearance of Pop culture.

"Art after Pop, if not exactly uncharted territory, is only now beginning to turn into art history. This book sets out to disentangle the many strands which have appeared since Pop started the cult of cool in art. The Pop artists proved that figuration was not dead; and their Photo-Realist successors have carried the icy gloss finish to its limits. The Abstract Expressionists, too, have had successors, who proved that abstraction was not dead either; these were the Hard Edge artists, whose rejection of illusion was part of the trend towards the reduction of form and content to a minimum. With Minimal Art many people expected painting and sculpture to disappear altogether; this has not happened, but they have been joined by a number of would-be successors: Environments, Actions, Land art, photographic records, printed definitions, Conceptual art. The contact with popular culture, with the Rock underground, even with cybernetics and academic philosophy, has changed the physical appearance of art without changing the art world - and without diminishing the resources of creativity which mankind still puts into art."

John A. Walker is a critic of contemporary art and the author of a glossary of twentieth-century art terms.

Good—VG copy, general light wear/tanning/marking, previous owner's name to title page.

File under: John A Walker Thames and Hudson / London Pop Art Conceptual Art Performance / Dance / Theater Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic Minimal Art Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Art Theory / Essay Group Shows / Collections Feminism Arte Povera Film / Video Fluxus Painting Photography Protest / Revolt Sound / Music Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

Christo
John Kaldor Art Project 1990 (signed)

1990, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 26.5 x 23 cm
Signed by Christo,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney

$160.00 - In stock -

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Artist signed copy of this wonderful, profusely illustrated 1990 monographic survey of Christo's work, published on the occasion of the John Kaldor Art Project 1990 by Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Edited by Nicholas Baume with Jeanne-Claud Christo, the book reproduces all the sculptural works, drawings, and photo documentation of the large-scale site-specific works of Christo throughout the early 1960s—late 1980s. A wonderful retrospective, the works are accompanied by texts from Edmund Capon, John Kaldor, Anothony Bond, Daniel Thomas, and Baume, complete with chronology, bibliography and history of exhibitions.

Signed in large, bold red to first blank "Christo 1990,"

Good—Very Good copy with some tanning to spine, spine creasing, light edge wear and smell of mothballs to stock.

File under: Christo Christo and Jeanne-Claude Javacheff Nicholas Baume Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney Sculpture / Installation Conceptual Art Out-of-print / Rare Signed Books Art Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic

Beuys + Palermo

2021, Japanese / English
Hardcover (with obi), 368 pages, 20 x 30 cm
Published by Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi

$130.00 - Out of stock

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Beautiful hardcover catalogue published in Japan to the exhibition Beuys + Palermo touring three venues across Japan in 2021.

Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo were from different generations, but both experienced WWII and the postwar reconstruction, as teacher and pupil. One of the most important artists since World War II, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) asserted that true capital lies in the creativity of human beings, and viewing the whole of society as sculpture, set out to change it. Beuys is also known for his role in nurturing numerous artists in his capacity as an educator. One such pupil was Blinky Palermo (1943–1977). The modest abstract works that form the legacy of this painter active for just a short few years from the mid-1960s up to his early demise, were an attempt to quietly overturn our perceptions, and social systems, via the visceral experience of color and form, all the while reconstructing the compositional elements of painting. The works of these two superficially contrasting German artists were alike in that both Beuys and Palermo endeavored to restore art to the status of a raw, live endeavor, Beuys indeed later acknowledging his former student to be the artist closest to himself. Composed primarily of works from the 1960s and ‘70s, documentation from the period and detailed texts, “Beuys + Palermo” explores the features of each of these two artists, while simultaneously searching for the latent power of their praxis in their involvement and overlap with each other.

File under: Joseph Beuys Blinky Palermo Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi Art Painting Conceptual Art Minimal Art Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Arte Povera Drawing Sculpture / Installation

Joseph Beuys
Area — Where Would I Have Got If I Had Been Intelligent!

1994, English
Hardcover, 294 pages, 23 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Dia Art Foundation / New York

$90.00 - In stock -

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First 1994 hardcover edition, long out-of-print.

Edited by Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly.

Arena is a major but rarely exhibited Beuys work that consists of 100 framed aluminum and glass panels each approximately 55 x 32 inches, spanning the artist's career from the late 40s to 1972. This vast work is among the most ambitious of Beuys' career and is in many ways autobiographical. An assembly of 264 photographs, the panels in part document Beuys' life including key "actions," concerts, sculptures, objects, and more personal events. Realized in 1973, "Arena" attains a monumental scale and the sort of grand design appropriate to an artistic summa; as such, the project amounts to a broad portrait of Beuys' artistic persona. It is documented in this book for the first time.

Features a preface by Charles Wright, essays by Lynne Cooke, Pamela Kort, and Christopher Phillips. Includes numerous illustrations, a glossary, biography, and bibliography.

Good—Very Good copy with light wear to hardcover edges and some board scratching.

File under: Joseph Beuys Lynne Cooke Pamela Kort Christopher Phillips Dia Art Foundation / New York Conceptual Art Art Sculpture / Installation Performance / Dance / Theater Australian Photography Out-of-print / Rare