World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1991, Japanese
Softcover, unpaginated, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
Stunning special ocer-sized edition of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, dedicated to the theme of Bondage Fantasy. With cover design by Tadanori Yokoo and design by Makoto Ohrui and edited by Japanese novelist Mari Akasaka, this 1991 volume is profusely illustrated throughout showcasing the erotic illustration and photography of artists John Willie, Irving Klaw, Eric Stanton, ENEG, Jim, Bill Ward, Jay, Tealdo, Europa, Gilles Berquet, Wolfgang Eicher. Perfectly compiled in the way SALE2 did so well, with elegant scrapbook style, dense with imagery, blown-up, full-bleed reproductions from many publications, and although a primarily visual volume packed cover-to-cover with illustrations, it also features a number of interviews with the artists in Japanese. Highly recommended!
Published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. Each issue covers different themes and features, heavy on fetishism.
Mari Akasaka (b. 1964) is a Japanese novelist born in Suginami, Tokyo, and studied Politics in the Law Department at Keio University. In 1999 her novel Vibrator was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, which was adapted into a 2003 film directed by Ryūichi Hiroki. She was again nominated for the Akutagawa prize in 2000 for her novel, Muse, and won the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers for the same novel.
Very Good copy, well preserved.
1995, English
Hardcover, unpaginated, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heavy Metal / New York
$80.00 - In stock -
First English hardcover edition of Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri's first sketchbook collection, published by Metal Heavy in 1995, the magazine that serialised his highly successful erotic sci-fi saga of 'Druuna' since the mid 1980's. This handsome book is comprised entirely of Serpieri's masterful renderings of the well-endowed heroines that earned him the undisputed title of the "Master of the Ass", with many explicit images accompanied by his writings in English.
Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri (b. 1944, Venice, Italy) is an Italian comic book writer and illustrator, noted for his works of highly detailed renderings of the human form, particularly erotic images of women. He is best known for his work on the Druuna erotic science fiction series.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
1987, English / French
Softcover, 208 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre International D'Art Contemporain De Montréal / Montréal
$20.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition STATIONS, Les cent jours d'art contemporain de Montréal, an ambitious series of exhibitions that ran from August 1 to November 2, 1987, around the eternal inspiration of The Fourteen Stations of the Cross, the series of 14 devotions or images depicting events in Jesus Christ's last day on Earth, specifically his passion and death. Heavily illustrated with the works, texts and installations of the broad array of contemporary artists featured, including Ulay and Marina Abramovic, John Baldessari, Georg Baselitz, Louise Bourgeois, Eric Fischl, Leon Golub, Betty Goodwin, John Heward, Marcel Lemyre, Duane Michals, Joseph Felix Müller, Bruce Nauman, Arnulf Rainer, Nancy Spero, Duane Michals, Joseph Felix Müller, Bruce Nauman, Arnulf Rainer, Nancy Spero, Robert Adrian, Jocelyne Alloucherie, Daniel Buren, Michel Goulet, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Ron Huebner, Peter Krausz, Raimund Kummer, Serge Lemoyne, Sol Lewitt, Gerhard Merz, Guido Molinari, Hermann Pitz, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Susan Schelle, Françoise Sullivan, Ian Wallace, Francesco Clemente, and more. Accompanying essays are in both French and English.
Good-Very Good copy.
1972, German
Softcover, 96 pages, 28 x 205 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Heyne Verlag / Münich
$35.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful 1972 German book of erotic art selected by Phyllis and Dr. Eberhard Kronhausen, rightly considered international experts in the field. "Their exhibition "Erotic Art," which has been shown in many countries around the world, formed the basis for this illustrated volume. Because this exhibition included loans from museums and galleries, as well as works from the Kronhausen couple's collection and other private collections, it was possible to present images that had previously been inaccessible to the public. In selecting works for this volume, care was taken, on the one hand, to depict these unknown works, and, on the other, to provide a reliable overview of the erotic work of the leading artists (painting, graphic art, and sculpture) of our century. Thus, this book is a fortunate exception; it is a precious document, but also a demonstration of the sexual and cultural revolution of our century."
Features the work of Franz von Bayros, Hans Bellmer, Marc Chagall, Lovis Corinth, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Otto Dix, J. Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Ernst Fuchs, Willi Geiger, George Grosz, Horst Janssen, Allen Jones, Gustav Klimt, Felix Labisse, Jan Lebenstein, Edward Munch, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Herbert Rauschenberg, George Segal, Max Walter Swanberg, Tomi Ungerer, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann.
Good—VG copy with some laminate seperation to cover extremities and slight corner bump.
1998 / 2008, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 32 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Morpheus International / US
$140.00 - In stock -
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen"—H.R. Giger
Wonderful, scarce and collectible monograph capturing 30 years of the work of the great Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, published by Galerie Morpheus in Las Vegas. First issued in 1998, this lavishly illustrated hardcover monograph reproduces Beksiński's surreal dystopian paintings spanning his entire career, alongside an introduction by James Cowen, texts by Tadeusz Nyczek, and great quotes and reflections throughout by Beksiński himself.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good copy of the later expanded edition, now long out-of-print. With VG—Fine dust jacket, light wear.
2014, Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi), 64 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Atelier Third / Japan
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Japanese artist Toru Nishimaki’s first art book, “Pollen of the Rocaille”, published in Japan in 2014 and long out-of-print. 13 years since his first solo exhibition, Toru Nishimaki (b. Tokyo, 1964), has been committed to what the artist has dubbed "black caricatures," using his pencil to bring the viewer deep into a world of densely rendered, transgressive eroticism. Nishimaki's unique works depict cherubic, often genderqueer, boys/girls/hermaphrodites engaging in all kinds of unadulterated erotic and immoral behaviour (sitophilia, emetophilia, coprophilia) amidst an enchanted gothic setting of period train-compartments, children's toys and tea cakes — a "utopia where everyone is happy to drown in their fetish". An extraordinary vision that brings to mind scenes from Věra Chytilová's Daisies (1966) or Dusan Makevejev's Sweet Movie (1974)! Also includes fantastic prose from the artist (in Japanese) that leads the viewer further into the narrative of this unique world.
As New copy! With obi (not pictured).
1966, French
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 110 pages, 20.5 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Éditions Denoël / Paris
$160.00 - In stock -
Beautifully produced, scarce French hardcover monographic volume dedicated entirely to reproductions of Surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer's incredible drawings. This is the very first edition, published by Éditions Denoël, Paris, in 1966. With an introduction by Constantin Jelenski. A stunning book, and a key title in the artist's oeuvre.
German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 1975), was best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. "Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925)."
Very Good – (in original dust jacket and protected under plastic wrap)
1993, French / Japanese
Softcover, 32 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yoshifumi Hayashi / Paris
$160.00 - In stock -
First, only edition of this a rare self-published book of drawings by Yoshifumi Hayashi, published by the artist in 1993, who moved from Japan to Paris in the 1970s and has devoted himself to his singular, existential, philosophical world of cerebral eroticism. Femmes de Plomb, is entirely comprised of a carefully selection of large reproductions of his detailed lead pencil drawings (hence the title "Lead Women"). The final page features a short biography.
‘Eroticism is to establish order, or in other words the principle of constitution, and not to destroy,' Hayashi says. First a student of philosophy, Hayashi has, for almost half a century, shamelessly asserted the importance of sexual desire and the body in all its material dimensions. His masterfully rendered obsessive visions of grotesque, disembodied eroticism within metaphysical environments occupy his unique and highly original exploration of graphic art. Hayashi's Art emerges from the depths of his subconscious, revealing his fetishistic and obsessive paranoias, creating works of great erotic power.
Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Hayashi's art comes straight from the darkest depths of his subconscious and the artist lays his innermost paranoias, fetishes and obsessions. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in lead pencil. , Few artists manage to reconcile the world of Eros and that of mutation like Hayashi, though we could cite Hans Bellmer, Pierre Molinier, H.R. Giger, Sibylle Ruppert, even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings are unlike anything else. Though published by specialist publishers in France and Japan, featured in specialist fetish and art magazines, and with director Walerian Borowczyk even making a film in 1980 of the artist at work, Hayashi still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
Very Good copy, light wear to extremities.
1960, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 106 pages, 26.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Misuzu Shobo / Tokyo
$100.00 $70.00 - In stock -
First edition of this lovely 1960 hardcover monograph published in Tokyo on the German Surrealist Max Ernst (1891—1976), as part of a Misuzu Shobo series on Modern European and American artists issued for Japanese readers. With accompanying text by Japanese poet, critic and fellow Surrealist artist Shūzō Takiguchi. A prolific and highly original painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet, Ernst's various works are surveyed (paintings, collages, and frottages dating upto the late 1950s) herein generously in colour and b/w reproductions. Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada and Surrealism movements.
Very Good copy with some internal blank stock paper tanning. Dust Jacket with some wear and tear to extremities, all preserved in mylar wrap. A lovely copy of this uncommon title.
1971, French
Softcover, 48 pages, 22 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Orangerie des Tuileries / Paris
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this lovely, simple catalogue published in 1971 on the occasion of Max Ernst's 80th anniversary exhibition at Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris. 40 works illustrated in b/w with some colour. Full catalogue of exhibited works.
Good copy. Some age spotting to both covers, otherwise very good throughout.
2010, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Incredible Hans Bellmer special feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2010, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Being a magazine specialising in the doll arts it was only natural that they would dedicate an entire issue to the ground-breaking work of German Surrealist Hans Bellmer and the development of his dolls, and pay homage to his immense influence on Japanese doll artists by discussing his work with them. Heavily illustrated with reproductions of Bellmer's iconic doll photography and drawings, alongside reproduced and translated original texts, extensive chronology of Bellmer and Unica Zürn, the drawing and anagram work of his partner Zürn, an invaluable bibliography of publications related to Bellmer to date, and many portraits of the artist. There is an extensive chronicle of doll history and development stretching from 1902—2010 and a large part of the issue is made up of heavily illustrated exclusive interviews with Japanese artists influenced by the legacy of Bellmer, including Simon Yotsuya, Nori Doi, Ryo Yoshida, Tatsumi Hijikata, Makoto Onozuka, Kishin Shinoyama, Minori Nawata, and more, surveys contemporary doll artists Volks, PEACH-PIT, naruto, Hizuki, Tari Nakagawa, Minori Nawata, Os, Akihiko Aono, mican, Ayumi, Masanao, Katan Amano, Nishioka Bro. & Sis., and many more, and includes essays by Sue Taylor, Alice Mahon, Kumi Ogata... absolutely packed with content and a valuable Bellmer reference in the context of his Japanese influence on the arts.
Good—Very Good copy with some light general reading wear.
2006, Japanese / French
Hardcover (w. slipcase), 26.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seirin Kogeisha / Tokyo
$330.00 - In stock -
Now very rare out-of-print collection "1970, Toshio Saeki" by the Japanese master of Ero guro, published in 2006 by Seirin Kogeisha. Published in this hardcover, slipcased, numbered edition of 2000 copies, "1970, Toshio Saeki" reproduces a fine selection of colour and b/w works of the erotic bizarre, accompanied by captions and postface by Saeki himself, in Japanese and French.
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy in VG slipcase.
1984, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase (w. obi), 110 pages, 31cm x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shogakukan / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
First 1984 edition of Kuniyoshi Kaneko's Theatre of Eros, one of the finest monographic volumes on Japanese painter, illustrator and photographer Kuniyoshi Kaneko (1936—2015), this copy with signed dedication by the artist (dated "1984.1.2") to the first blank page. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with Kaneko's figurative paintings and drawings of young men and women in enigmatic, metaphysical scenes of surreal, stylised erotic beauty, channeling the spirits of Cocteau and Balthus, including his famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, his illustrations for Orpheus, an array of his beloved oil on canvas and pastel and paper works, plus much more. Free of convention, Kaneko's dreamlike scenarios were very often of same-sex, homo-erotic, even fetishistic nature, and his artwork, encouraged by editor and writer Shibusawa Tatsuhiko (1928—1987), became a staple in the underground publishing scene of 1970's Tokyo. Theatre of Eros includes an extensive, illustrated biography, many photographic portraits, and a conversation with Japanese essayist and poet Mutsuo Takahashi (b. 1937). Takahashi was one of the most prominent poets of postwar Japan, known for his bold poetic work of male-male eroticism.
A beautifully preserved complete copy with original publisher's obi, and inserted with a file of various Kaneko Japanese media press clippings, 1984 Seibu gallery Theatre of Eros exhibition flyer, and the complete pages of an amazing photographic feature on Japanese pop star (and YMO-founder Haruomi Hosono collaborator) Miharu Koshi art directed and designed by Kaneko himself.
F copy in NF slipcase and obi.
1972/2006, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket, slipcase, obi), 92 pages, 31 x 25 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$150.00 - In stock -
2006 facsimile edition of this wonderful 1972 slip-cased hardcover monograph on German artist Hans Bellmer, considered one of the most important representatives of Surrealist Art. Bound in brown cloth and wrapped in illustrated original dust-jacket, this heavily illustrated book surveys Bellmer's incredible paintings, drawings, photography and sculptural dolls through beautiful colour and monochrome gravure reproductions, with alongside various texts, biography, bibliography and portrait of the artist. Published as volume 2 of the deluxe La Septième Face du Dé series by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in Japan in the 1970s, all later re-printed in the 2000s. All editions now out-of-print.
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902 – 1975), was best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. "Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925).
Fine copy.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and plastic sleeve), 126 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppansha / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
Published in 1982 and long out-of-print, Masquerade is one of the finest artist books of Japanese illustrator and graphic artist Aquirax Uno. Lavishly illustrated and elaborately designed and directed by the artist himself, this beautiful album collects Uno's most stunning fantastical illustration and painting throughout the 1960s—1980s, alongside texts and photography of Uno in his atelier. Masquerade collates a cross-section of Uno's graphic work spanning his entire career, his iconic and innovative print, book, and theatre works, including many new, unpublished works and illustrations printed in large format across many full-colour fold-outs — a wonderful way to capture his decadent, provocative, stream of consciousness line work in intimate detail. Highly recommended!
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s–1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Good copy with heavy foxing to cover edges and end pages, original publisher's textured plastic protector sleeve with usual slight shrinkage from age, edge wear. Sample images only.
1977, French
Hardcover (gilt-blocked, decorated clothbound w. gold dust jacket), 294 pages, 22 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Draeger / Paris
$220.00 $160.00 - In stock -
First French edition of this extravagant, lavishly illustrated book of wines and famous vineyards, created by Dalí in honor of his wife Gala and published in 1977 by Draeger, Paris. The perfect, equally surreal and sensual viticulture follow-up companion to Dalí's best-selling cookbook, Les dîners de Gala. A Dalínian take on pleasures of the grape and a coveted collectible, the book sets out to organize wines “according to the sensations they create in our very depths.” Through eclectic metrics like production method, weight, and color, the book presents wines of the world in such innovative, Dalíesque groupings as “Wines of Frivolity,” “Wines of the Impossible,” and “Wines of Light.”
Bursting with imagery, the book features more than 140 illustrations by Dalí. Many of these are appropriated artworks, including various classical nudes, all of them reconstructed with suitably Surrealist, provocative touches, like Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus, one of Dalí’s favorite points of reference over the decades. Dalí also included what is now considered one of the greatest works from his late “Nuclear Mystic” phase, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), which sets the iconic biblical scene in a translucent dodecahedron-shaped space before a Catalonian coastal landscape. Dalí was by this stage a devout Catholic, simultaneously captivated by science, optical illusion, and the atomic age.
The first section is dedicated to “Ten Divine Dalí Wines,” an overview of 10 important wine-growing regions, while the second develops Dalí’s revolutionary ordering of wine by emotional experience, instead of by geography or variety. Rather than any prescriptive classification, it’s a flamboyant, free-flowing manifesto in favor of taste and feeling, as much a multisensory treat as a full-bodied document of Dalí’s late-stage oeuvre, in which the artist both reflected on formative influences and refined his own cultural legacy. Texts in French by Dalí, Max Gerard, Louis Orizet.
Very Good copy in beautiful gold dust jacket in Good condition, light wear to extremities, now preserved under mylar wrap.
1991, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and slipcase), 168 pages, 26 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$160.00 - In stock -
The incredible and rarely seen 1991 Japanese slipcased, hardcover edition of Jacques Henric's monographic volume on the great Pierre Klossowski. One of the most comprehensive books ever published on the artist, with beautiful large reproductions of artworks in colour and b/w heavily featured throughout, alongside Henric's text (here translated into Japanese from the original French) with a full catalogue of works and bibliography. First printing in original dust jacket, illustrated slipcase, beautifully printed in Italy and bound in Japan.
Jacques Henric (b. 1938) is a French literary critic, essayist and novelist.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Fine As New copy of book and dj, preserved in Good slipcase with some wear and bumps.
1992, English
Softcover, 390 pages, 28 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$100.00 - In stock -
First 1992 softcover edition of this pioneering work, the first history of the art of the insane, in which the author scrutinizes changes in attitudes toward the art of the mentally ill from a time when it was either ignored or ridiculed, through the era when Paul Klee, along with other major figures in the art world, discovered the extraordinary power of visual statements by psychotic artists such as Adolf Wölfli and Richard Dadd.
John MacGregor draws on his dual training in art history and in psychiatry and psychoanalysis to describe not only this evolution in attitudes, but also the significant influence of the art of the mentally ill on the development of modern art as a whole. His detailed narrative, with its strangely beautiful illustrations, introduces us to a fascinating group of people that includes the psychotic artists, both trained and untrained, and the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, critics, and art historians who encountered their work.
"The psychotics who haunt Mr. MacGregor's pages desperately fling images at us from the midst of their manias, suicidal depressions or paranoid reconstructions of the cosmos. ... All these painters were lost souls, curved in on themselves. Yet despite their isolation, Mr. MacGregor is able to show that their work is by no means sealed off from culture. However private their visions, the ways they represent them in art are shaped to a surprising degree by the styles and taste that dominate their respective times. Mr. MacGregor has written a valuable, at times even a daring book."—Michael Vincent Miller, The New York Times Book Review
"A delightful surprise, a scholarly but warm, lucid, lucent, nondogmatic work.... Valuable reading for anyone interested in the creative process."—Joanne Greenberg
"This fascinating story, which has never been told before, is told beautifully, and with extraordinary scholarship, in [this] richly illustrated new book."—Oliver Sacks
"[MacGregor] is a dedicated scholar who has spared no effort and has written what must be the first and only account of a very interesting and varied subject."—E. H. Gombrich
John M. MacGregor lives in San Francisco. Since 1985 he has devoted himself to research and writing in psychiatric art.
Very Good copy, light wear. First softcover edition (1992), first hardcover edition issued in 1989.
1972, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 29 x 22 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Academy Editions / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
A volume published to accompany an exhibition of etchings by Félicien Rops held at the Editions Graphiques Gallery in London. Profusely illustrated throughout with colour and black and white illustrations, alongside text in English by British art dealer, collector, and art historian Victor Arwas (1937 – 2010).
Félicien Victor Joseph Rops (1833 – 1898) was a Belgian artist associated with Symbolism and the Parisian Fin-de Siecle. He was a painter, illustrator, caricaturist and a prolific and innovative print maker, particularly in intaglio (etching and aquatint). Although not well known to the general public, Rops was greatly respected by his peers and actively pursued and celebrated as an illustrator by the publishers, authors, and poets of his time and provided frontispieces and illustrations for Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Charles De Coster, Théophile Gautier, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Stéphane Mallarmé, Joséphin Péladan, Paul Verlaine, Voltaire, and many others. He is best known today for his prints and drawings illustrating erotic and occult literature of the period. These illustrations influenced many younger artists, including several Symbolists and Expressionist such as Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Fernand Khnopff, Max Klinger, Edvard Munch and others. Rops is recognized as a pioneer of Belgian comics.
Very Good copy.
1998, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 204 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Isshusha / Japan
$45.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue and historical study by renowned Japanese fairy scholar Kimie Imura, published in Japan to accompany a travelling Japanese exhibition in 1998. Profusely illustrated throughout in full-colour, the book traces the history of the fairy in folk-lore and the arts, from Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend, to the danger of their depiction being rejected by Christianity as the descendants of pagan gods, through the Elizabethan era in the 16th century, where they regained their place in the world of literature and theatre, through the adoration of the 19th century Victorian period and future generations of artists in Japan all weaving the fairy legend into works of painting, music, ballet, literature, book illustration, costume, applied arts, sculpture, and much more. Features the work of George Cruickshank, Honor Charlotte Appleton, Arthur Rackham, Amelia Murray, Edmund Dulac, Joseph Payton, John Simmons, Joseph Zevan, The Doyle brothers, C. Wilhelm, Shigeru Mizuki, Yoshitaka Amano, Itsuko Azuma, Suzuko Makino, Akira Uno, Yukio Satsukime, Yuki Yuuki, Akiko Iwakiri, and many more.
Very Good—Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket with a few ballpoint marks to lower back.
1985, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Quartet Books / London
$130.00 - Out of stock
Now rare, first 1985 edition of the first fundamental and comprehensive English-language study of Hans Bellmer (1902—1975), the most provocative representative of Surrealism, authored by Peter Webb with Robert Short and published by Quartet in London. Heavily illustrated throughout with many rare images, in colour and b/w, many photographs and artworks, with bibliography, catalogue and references. An essential, illuminating book for anyone interested in Bellmer's work and life and the development of his historical Doll project, playing close attention to the often neglected but integral visionary texts by Bellmer that accompanied his artworks, with an abundance of written works translated throughout in English for the first time.
"Surrealism was one of the most exciting and influential of twentieth century art movements and much has been written about it since its great flowering in the 1930s. The lives and work of its leading figures (Ernst, Magritte, Dali and Miró) have been extensively researched, but Hans Bellmer, perhaps the most controversial and misunderstood of all the surrealists, has until now remained a mystery. Peter Webb, who interviewed Bellmer shortly before his death, has spent two years unravelling the story of this photographer, sculptor, painter, engraver and writer, and his book provides the first opportunity to evaluate Bellmer's considerable artistic achievement."—book jacket blurb
Very Good copy, mild wear.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover, 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$140.00 $100.00 - In stock -
First special Japanese hardcover edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon II, the second oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed collection that takes us further through the incredible history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. Reproducing Giger's award-winning work for the film ALIEN, lavish reproductions of his major paintings, environments, sculptural works, his work for never-shot film "The Tourist", his early grotesque ink illustrations, collaborations with Blondie's Debbie Harry, his "New York City" series from the late 1970's and so much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. Also includes interviews, texts, biography. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries of the macabre. This is volume 2 of 2 of "HR Giger's Necronomicon" where Al Azred's legendary magical book of the most wonderful abominations and perversions, "Necronomicon" (made infamous in the pages of HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology), becomes a visual reality!
First hardcover Japanese edition, published by Hardcover edition published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1992. Light foxing/splitting/bumping to spine top and bottom, one semi-detaching from binding on endpaper, otherwise internally VG well preserved throughout.
2025, English / Dutch
Softcover, 464 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Published by
WIELS / Brussels
$110.00 - In stock -
The first total survey of Jef Geys' work. Art critics commonly describe the work of Belgian artist Jef Geys (1934-2018) as "unruly, and impossible to categorize in conventional art-historical categories." Despite Geys' subversive and critical attitude towards the art world, this ambitious publication shows that his work is not only deeply engaged and socially critical but also funny and sensory.
Since the early 1960s Geys had compiled an archive of everything he considered part of his artistic practice in to form of his "List of Works" serving as his oeuvre's index. With a total of 844 entries, Catalogue Raisonnable, is the first total survey of Jef Geys' work.
Through access to the artist's archive, close collaboration with Geys' next of kin, and thorough art-historical research, this publication offers a rare opportunity for understanding and appreciating the fascinating practice of one of Belgium's greatest artistic figures.
Jef Geys (1934-2018) was a prominent Belgian conceptual artist known for his multifaceted and often provocative work that intersected art with everyday life. Born in Leopoldsburg, Belgium, Geys was a teacher by profession, a role that deeply influenced his artistic practice. His work is characterized by its exploration of social, political, and cultural themes, often challenging the boundaries between art and daily experience.
Geys gained recognition for his innovative approach to art, which included photography, installation, sculpture, and publications. One of his notable projects was the "Kempens Informatieblad," a self-published newspaper that combined local news with critical commentary on contemporary art and society. This project exemplified his commitment to making art accessible and relevant to the broader public. Throughout his career, Geys exhibited internationally, including notable appearances at Documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale. His work remains influential, celebrated for its critical engagement with the world and its capacity to blur the lines between art, education, and activism.
Texts by Dirk Snauwaert and Charlotte Friling.
1990, French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 24 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Centre National Des Arts Plastiques / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of the comprehensive Pierre Klossowski catalogue raisonné published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition of his work held in Paris in 1990-1991 at CNAP. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with Klossowski's wonderful works, texts throughout by Catherine Grenier, Bernard Blistene, Claude Ritschard, Pascal Bonitzer, Marie-Dominique Wicker, Franco Cagnetta, André Masson, and Pierre Zucca (in French), a densely illustrated catalogue raisonné spanning his work dated 1952/53 through to 1990 (many not seen elsewhere), biography, exhibition history, and much more. Still the most in-depth book on Klossowski's oeuvre to date.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket.