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:
CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
(ORDER SHIPPING RESUMES NOV 10)
World Food Books
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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.
1984, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$220.00 - In stock -
First Japanese edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon from 1984. Beginning with a hommage from Salvador Dali and introduction by Clive Baker, the first in this series of oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed volumes takes us through the early history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. From his "Passegen" series, his work for theatre, posters, album artwork, environments, personal works, is designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's DUNE, and much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. 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 1 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!
With an introduction by Clive Baker and numerous texts by HR Giger as well as texts by Fritz Billeter and Simon Vinkenoog and a tribute from Salvador Dali. Note: Japanese language edition.
First Japanese edition, published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1984. Very good copy throughout with Very Good dust jacket. Some edge wear with fragile, oversized edition.
1969, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, unpaginated, 22 x 16 cm
Signed and numbered edition,
Published by
Gentosha / Tokyo
$280.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare signed first 1969 edition of Japanese illustrator Ken Katayama's masterpiece artbook, Beautiful Days, in limited edition hardcover, numbered and slipcased. Beautiful Days is the most crystallised embodiment of one of the most unique artistic visions of fantasy illustration one could ever find, and the first collection ever published by the artist, when, after discovering the erotic works on the fringe of Surrealism he gave up becoming a painter and gave himself over to the obscene impulses of drawing. "There, so to speak, masturbation became a picture. Until then, I never thought that masturbation could become a painting"—excerpt from Ken Katayama's postscript. Katayama's magnificently, obsessive graphite-rendered world making is, like that of Lewis Carroll before him, made up almost entirely of children; children in states of blank-faced entrancement, possession and naked abandon; groping, lost and frozen in a psychosexual schoolhood theatre. Unlike anything else, aspects of Katayama's bewildering, often sadomasochistic, fairytale visions recall the tales of de Sade, Bataille, Klossowski, Carroll's Alice; the unconscious pictures of Balthus, Hans Bellmer, or Leonor Fini; the architectural dreamscapes of Delvaux or the Metaphysical painters; even the dark psychological renderings of fellow Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi — a haunted landscape of eroticised adolescent memories with recurring motifs of free flowing urination and defecation, violently strewn newspapers, urinals, and apparitions of cat-people. Nothing like it! The work even inspired an experimental film of boyhood memories directed by the provocative film-maker Nakamura Masanobu in 1970.
Signed in 1969 by Katayama.
"If you
keep your hands in your pockets
in your pocket
what are you hiding
that's how I got it
darkness in my pocket, days of dust
I opened the old album and showed
beautiful days other days"
Virtually unknown outside his native Japan, Katayama (b. 1940, Tokyo) studied at the Musahino Art University and in the 1960s and 1970s begin contributing illustrations to underground art and literary magazines such as Black Notebook, Featured Story and fetish magazines such as SM Select, amongst many others. He published art books such as Angel Hour, Lost Child's Top, Match Taker, The Cat in Boots, and many more, and went on to become a successful children's story book illustrator, publishing many works throughout the 1980s—90s.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved in Very Good slipcase. Signed and numbered first edition. The most complete, finest edition of this work.
2021, Japanese / English
Hardcover (with obi), 368 pages, 20 x 30 cm
Published by
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi
$130.00 - In stock -
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.
2014, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 256 pages, 17 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Parkstone International / New York
$25.00 - In stock -
Julius Mordecai Pincas (1885–1930), known as Pascin, Jules Pascin, also known as the "Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian artist of the School of Paris, known for his paintings and drawings. His canvases are as turbulent as his “bad boy” lifestyle; full of parties and places the affluent patronize but never mention in polite society – those brothels and cabarets where scantily clad ladies hosted the pillars of society. His most frequent subject was women, depicted in casual poses, usually nude or partly dressed. Pascin set out on a wild and adventurous journey, studying in Vienna, Munich, then to Berlin before settling down in Paris in 1905 and painting under the name of Pascin. Over 1907 to 1930, Pascin exhibited in Berlin, Paris, and New York at fairs such as the 1911 Berlin Secession in 1911 and the 1913 Indepéndants and Autumn salons as well as at Bernheim and other leading private galleries. His experience as a satirical draftsman and his knowledge of German expressionism are evident in his early works, where some portraits evoke Otto Dix or Grosz with a less incisive and less cruel touch. He quickly evolved towards pastel-like, almost unreal colours that he skillfully harmonized with the theme of the female body, the center of his production. Among the painters of the School of Paris, Pascin's art noted itself with the imposition of expressive truth and melancholic gentleness. He painted with indulgence the underworld "of the girls," using a pearly touch, light with iridescent colors, in shades of gray, pink, ocher, and violet-blue. The languid bodies with softened forms exuded a heavy scent of eroticism. These women, captured in their intimacy, are, in fact, the mirror of Pascin's existential malaise. He spent most of his time travelling across Algeria, Cuba, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, and the American South where he gained citizenship in 1920. After years of struggling with depression and alcoholism, he slit his wrists and hanged himself in his studio in Montmartre on June 2, 1930, only a year before major retrospective exhibitions of his works in New York and Paris. He left a message written in blood on the wall to his mistress Lucy Krohg.
Pascin was as brilliant at the easel as the drawing board but was all too easily overlooked, perhaps because he lived in the shadow of contemporaries Picasso, Modigliani, and many more.
VG copy with slight cocking to block, wear to DJ edges.
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.
2005, English / German
Softcover (w. folded poster dust-jacket), 192 pages, 22.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$300.00 - In stock -
Rare 2006 edition (w. original fold-out dust-jacket poster) of Rosemarie Trockel's Post Menopause catalogue (raisonné), published on the occasion of the major 2005—2006 exhibition Rosemarie Trockel: Menopause, at the Museum Ludwig, Köln, and MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome.
This wonderful, major survey disappeared from print very fast, quickly becoming a valuable item in the mid-2000s. A catalogue raisonné of sorts, collecting Rosemarie Trockel's work from 1980—2005 (sculpture, wool works, drawings, publications, garments, photography, video — including many very rarely seen objects), Post Menopause remains one the best, most comprehensive, and Trockel-esque books produced on one of Germany's most important and influential conceptual artists. Not surprisingly, since Post Menopause was realised in close collaboration between Trockel herself with Museum Ludwig curator Barbara Engelbach, and designed by her regular design collaborator, and sometimes muse, the great graphic designer Yvonne Quirmbach. Extensive chronological cataloguing of all works, biography, bibliography, and bilingual (English and German) essays by Brigid Doherty, Silvia Eiblmayr, Barbara Engelbach, Kasper König, and Gregory Williams.
A highly recommended and invaluable resource on the artist.
Rosemarie Trockel (*1952) is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential conceptual artists in Germany. Her sculptures, collages, ceramics, knitted works, drawings and photographs are noted for their subtle social critique and range of subversive, aesthetic strategies—including the reinterpretation of “feminine” techniques, the ironic shifting of cultural codes, a delight in paradox, and a refusal to conform to the commercial and institutional ideologies of the art system.
VG/VG.
2024, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 24.5 x 24.5 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Albertina Modern / Vienna
$90.00 - In stock -
Kubin's eerie, unsettling illustrations reveal his preoccupation with the world's evils
For Austrian artist Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), evil was intrinsic to his life and work. After a traumatic childhood growing up in Zell am See and subsequent mental crises, he began his artistic training in Munich in 1898. He processed his nightmares and obsessions in a large number of fantastical drawings. His subjects, perpetually pessimistic, remain relevant a century later: war, famine, pestilence, death and every horror in between. Kubin had a pronounced fear of the feminine, sexuality, night time and of being at the mercy of fate, all of which visited him in uncanny dreams. For Kubin, the aesthetic of evil proved to be the antithesis of the idyll: the deliberate suppression of a hideous reality.
Drawn from the Albertina Museum's collection of over 1,800 drawings by the artist, The Aesthetic of Evil displays Kubin's grotesque vision as well as his superb draftsmanship. Amid the violent, haunting atmosphere of his graphic works it is easy to see how Kubin became trapped in his dark visions, to the point where the inexhaustible, intangible specter of evil consumed his life. Essays by Elisabeth Dutz, Natalie Lettner and Brigitte Holzinger explore Kubin's cosmos of the sinister: his personal iconography of evil fueled by his nightmares and obsessions.
Highest recommendation.
2002, English / German
Softcover, 144 pages, 29 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$70.00 - In stock -
First edition of this major survey catalogue of the great Austrian draftsman, illustrator and author Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) from The Leopold Collection, Vienna, published by Hatje Cantz in 2002. Long out-of-print and one of the best catalogues on the master of the macabre.
Alfred Kubin, an accomplished draughtsman, was inspired by his fascination with the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; and influenced by the artists Goya, Klinger, Ensor, Redon, Rops and Munch. Kubin called his dreamlike imagery a vital "escape into the unreal": ghostly figures, hybrid creatures, variants of torture and self-torture, dream, vampirism, spiritualism, decadence, sex, death and birth. His extraordinary oeuvre comprises more than 20,000 drawings, a large part of it consist of pen drawings, portfolio pieces and illustrations from more than 70 books. This book features a representative selection of master sheets by the bizarre multi-talented artist.
Very Good copy with light wear.
2013, English
Softcover, 148 pages, 27.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Raw Vision / UK
$45.00 - Out of stock
Now out-of-print, this unique book presents works that until now have only been seen in private collections or museum vaults. Works by well known outsider artists and new discoveries express their personal interpretations of sexual desire and activity.
These rare works are an essential element in the rich and varied world of outsider and self-taught art where the inhibitions and accepted norms of mainstream and contemporary art simply do not apply.
Over 50 outsider and self-taught artists tackle expressions of sex and lust. Their work ranges from depictions of modern sex-folk tales such as the Bobbits or Bill Clinton and Monica, to intimate photographic portraits, rough carvings, kinetic sculptures and startling paintings.
Includes the work of: Aloïse Corbaz, Gaston Duf, Unica Zürn, Malcolm McKesson, Mike Diana, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Miguel Amate, Lewis Smith, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Morton Bartlett, Henry Darger, Katharina Detzel, Hein Dingemans, Ody Saban, Miroslav Tichý, Phillip Heckenberg, Anthony Mannix, Henry Speller, Paul Lancaster, Roy Wenzel, Paulus de Groot, Josef Schneller, Thornton Dial, Steve Ashby, Adolf Wölfli, Royal Robertson, Lawrence Lebduska, Johann Hauser, Ota Keiti, Joe Coleman, Karl Vondal, Josef Hofer, and so many more.
Contents:
Rawerotics. From Compulsion to Repulsion by Colin Rhodes
Depicting the Object of Desire by Roger Cardinal
Steve Ashby, the Outsider’s Outsider by Jenifer P. Borum
Sex as a Matter of Fact: European Outsiders by Laurent Danchin
Free Sexuality or Perversion? The Erotic in American Outsider Art by Michael Bonesteel
The Secret Lens of Miroslav Tichý by Roger Cardinal
Pleasure and Pain—Sexual and Erotic Motifs in the Prinzhorn Collection by Thomas Röske
The Erotic World of Ody Saban by Françoise Monnin
Near Fine copy.
1993, Czech
Hardcover, 214 pages, 30.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Odeon / Prague
$70.00 - In stock -
Rare, Czech language hardcover edition of Czech art historian Eva Petrová's study on Max Ernst (1891—1976), 'The Stohláva Identity of Max Ernst', with introductory text, 'Max Ernst or the Dissolution of Identity', by Per Gimferrer. This major study traces the sources of inspiration of the German-born painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet, a most prolific, experimental artist and pioneer of the Dada movement and surrealism in Europe. Profusely illustrated with 184 mostly coloured reproductions.
Eva Petrová was a Czech art critic, curator, theorist and art historian, graphic artist, writer and poet.
Pere Gimferrer Torrens is a Spanish poet, novelist, literary critic and translator. He has been a member of the Real Academia Española since 1985.
Very Good copy.
1995, French
Sioftcover, 160 pages, 29.5 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Éditions Herscher / France
$100.00 - In stock -
First 1995 printing of this wonderful survey of artworks and writings by French illustrator, oral poet, and writer, Fred Deux (1924–2015). This profusely illustrated, most comprehensive catalogue was published to accompany the retrospective exhibitions presented at the museums of Bochum in Germany, at the French cultural center of Essen, in Châteauroux, Montpellier and Charleroi between 1995 and 1996. Texts in French by Sepp Hiekisch-Picard, Pierre Watt, Geneviève Bonnefoi and Fred Deux. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w. Includes, bibliography and biographical references and personal photographs.
As an artist, he may be situated somewhere between Outsider Art (since he disobeyed the established rules) and Henri Michaux. Influenced by contacts with André Breton, Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer, the constraints imposed by his artistic and literary work prompted him to lead an introspective lifestyle, far from the turbulence of artistic fashion and the art market. As a result, his oeuvre has strong, singular psychological intensity.
A little-known artist outside France, immersed in the quietness of a life devoted to drawing, Fred Deux, illustrator, oral poet, writer, and, under the pseudonym Jean Douassot, author of a cult book, “La Gana”, was a singular artist who cannot be categorised in terms of art fashions and trends. This autodidact, born in the basement of a large house in Boulogne-Billancourt to a working-class family – occasionally flooded and infested with rats – living conditions that had repercussions on his health (tuberculosis). Working night-duties as a maintenance electrician in 1939, he subsequently joined his factory’s FTP resistance group in 1943. This was his first gesture of refusal. In 1944, not wishing to return to factory work, he joined the Moroccan Goums regiment of the French Army (active in the Vosges, Alsace and Germany), but, refusing to serve France’s colonial policy after the war, he was discharged in 1948 and settled in Marseille. In Marseille, Deux worked in a bookshop, discovered literature and spent more time reading than selling books. Among his discoveries: Blaise Cendrars, André Breton (the Surrealist Manifesto), Louis Aragon, Georges Bataille and Benjamin Peret. He was also particularly inspired by a catalogue featuring works by Paul Klee. His first two artworks were created using bicycle paint and involved “spontaneous” gestures. He also began writing notes for what would become Les Rats, the first version of La Gana. His early artworks (1949-1958) are sometimes nicknamed kleepathologies in reference to the influence of Paul Klee. In 1951, he was noticed by Jean Cassou, then director of the National Museum of Modern Art. He also met André Breton, joined the Surrealists and met French resistance member and France's most accomplished living engraver, Cécile Reims, who would become his companion and print collaborator (Reims also famously collaborated with Hans Bellmer). Anxious to preserve his independence and creative freedom, Deux left the Surrealist group in 1954. In 1958, his autobiographical novel La Gana was published by René Julliard under the pseudonym Jean Douassot (the Jean Douassot-Fred Deux duality expressed his double vocation as a writer-illustrator). Awarded the prestigious Prix de Mai, the book gave Deux initial exposure to a wider public.
Very Good copy.
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 - Out of 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)
1967, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 186 pages, 33 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nagel
Geneva
$60.00 - In stock -
First 1967 oversized hardcover edition of "Sarv-e Naz: An Essay on Love and the Representation of Erotic Themes in Ancient Iran" by Robert Surieu, translated to English by James Hogarth. Profusely illustrated in colour plates and monochrome, many with metallic overlay print.
"In few civilisations has love in all its various aspects played such an important part as in that of Iran.
Gradually freeing itself from the legacy of prehistoric rites directed to securing the fruitfulness of the species and the proper balance of the universe, the cult of love developed in the early period, under strong Hellenic influence, towards the courtly ideal which seems to have prevailed in the feudal society of the Arsacid and Sassanian empires and in the early centuries of the Caliphate.
The advent of Islam led to the birth of a new culture, born of the encounter between the old Aryan heritage and the new monotheistic religion from Arabia. In this union love attained a stature far surpassing that hitherto accorded to it. Transcending the pleasures of the flesh and the exaltation of the sense of beauty, it became in the teachings of the sages a means of philosophical perception and of mystical fulfil-ment, which in addition provided the central theme of one of the richest bodies of poetry in world literature.
Yearning always for the absolute, and refined by thousands of years of spiritual and artistic striving, the Persian soul is nevertheless very far from despising the ordinary human joys: indeed it displays infinite ingenuity in savouring them in all their range and variety. We shall see that the greatest poets of Iran accepted and appreciated all the different forms of love, seeing in each of them a fresh means of fulfilment, no matter whether they ran counter to the strict laws of morality or were exalted by the sublimity of their object.
Throughout its history, and particularly in the Islamic period, Iran alternated continually between times of glory and of distress: now basking in the splendour of a great empire, now racked by invasion and war. The vicissitudes of their existence built up in the people of Iran a deep insight into the relativity of things, so that they not only yearned for the ineffable satisfactions of the life beyond but were eager to enjoy to the full all the delights offered by the passing moment. Persian sensibility oscillates continually between these two opposing poles."—from the introduction
VG copy in Good—VG dust jacket, only very light wear, light tanning/toning/foxing to stock edges. Preserved in mylar wrap.
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
$180.00 - 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.
2014, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. hardcase + obi), 222 pages, 26.8 x 17.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Toshokankokai / Tokyo
$460.00 - In stock -
Now very rare out-of-print collection, and hands-down one of the best, "Yumenozoki (Glimpse of a Dream), The Art of Toshio Saeki" collects over 150 vividly coloured works of bewitching cruelty and gruesome beauty by Toshio Saeki, all of which were originally published in cult underground fetish magazine SM Select, between 1972—1984. Published only in Japanese in this hardcover and slipcased edition, includes two bilingual essays (Japanese / English) by Michiko Kitamura and Jun Miura, biography, and complete listing of artworks with original publication dates. An incredible volume of these important artworks that made Saeki a master in the Tokyo underground publishing scene, seen for the first time together, scaled-up and exquisitely reproduced in all their ero-guro glory. Highly recommended. First edition.
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 w. VG obi.
1981, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 40 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charles E. Tuttle / Tokyo
$140.00 - In stock -
Scarce first Japanese edition (entirely in English language), published in Tokyo by Charles Tuttle, of this beautifully produced over-sized 1981 book by H. R. Giger. Foreword by Timothy Leary.
In 1981, a year after being awarded the Oscar for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for Alien, the book H.R. GIGER N.Y. CITY was published. This series of post Alien works, the result of an intense period of non-stop painting, literally day and night, were inspired by Giger's trip to New York City and a template which his colleague Cornelius de Fries, brought back from one of his excursions into the electronic industry. The stencil was actually a sheet of scrap metal from which electrical components had been punched out. Alongside these incredible works are drawings, articles, press clippings, posters and polaroids from Giger's time in New York City.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good—Very Good copy, tight binding with some cover wear and corner wear, some sunning to edges.
2018, English
Hardcover, 480 pages, 17.4 x 23.2 cm
Published by
Atlas Press / London
$74.00 - In stock -
Georges Bataille's secret society, long the stuff of legend, is now revealed in its texts, meditations, rules and prohibitions.
This book recounts what must be one of the most unusual intellectual journeys of modern times, in which the influential philosopher, cultural theorist and occasional pornographer Georges Bataille (1897-1962), having spent the early 1930s in far-left groups opposing the rise of fascism, abandoned that approach in order to transfer the struggle onto "the mythological plane."
In 1937, Bataille founded two groups in order to explore the combinations of power and the "sacred" at work in society. The first group, the College of Sociology, gave lectures that were intended to reveal the hidden undercurrents within a society on the verge of catastrophe. The second group was Acéphale, a genuine secret society and anti-religion whose emblem was a headless figure that, in part, represented the death of God. Until the discovery a few years ago of the group's internal papers (which include theoretical texts, meditations, minutes of meetings, rules and prohibitions and even a membership list), almost nothing was known of its activities.
This book is the first to collect a representative selection of the writings of Bataille, and of those close to him, in the years leading up to World War II. The texts published here comprise lectures given to the College of Sociology by Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris, essays from the Acéphale journal and a large cache of the internal papers from the secret society. A desperate narrative unfolds, wherein Bataille risked all in a wholly unreasonable quest--with a few fellow travelers, he undertook what he later described as a "journey out of this world."
Additional texts by Roger Caillois, Pierre Klossowski, Michel Leiris, and by Georges Ambrosino, Pierre Andler, Michel Carrouges, Jacques Chavy, Jean Dautry, Henri Dobier, Henri Dussat, Imre Kelemen, Jean Rollin, Patrick Waldberg.
And with drawings by André Masson
Highest recommendation!
2025, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 120 pages, 30 x 30 cm
Ed. of 250 copies w. unique hand-drawn details,
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$55.00 - In stock -
Darcey Bella Arnold’s A Measure of Disorder brings together a series of works on paper produced between 2022 and 2024. Presented in a 120-page limited edition (250 copies), measuring 30 x 30 cm, and printed in full colour on high-quality paper in a section-sewn hardback format, the publication documents a body of drawing-based works that extend Arnold’s ongoing inquiry into language, visual structure, and the disruptions embedded within systems of order.
The cover is embossed with black foil printing and each copy of the limited edition book is distinguished by hand-drawn lines in pencil by Darcey Bella Arnold to the cover, rendering each copy unique.
The book includes essays by curator Tim Riley Walsh and artist and curator Brooke Babington. These essays were originally developed in response to Arnold’s two-part exhibition series A Measure of Disorder, held at Gertrude Glasshouse (2022) and ReadingRoom (2023), both in Naarm/Melbourne. Babington’s essay Disordering Measures and Riley Walsh’s If a canvas is feeling and a page is thought situate Arnold’s work within broader conversations around feminist approaches to materiality, language, and repetition.
Designed by Yanni Florence, the publication maintains a focus on the material and formal qualities of the work. The drawings—reproduced at scale and in colour—are presented with attention to their spatial and conceptual detail.
Darcey Bella Arnold is a Melbourne-based artist working across painting, sculpture, and drawing in a research-led practice that interrogates language—its necessity, fallibility, and creative potential. Her work draws on metaphor, humour, and repetition to reframe familiar histories, cultural symbols, and institutional pedagogies through installation-driven environments that merge personal archives with broader cultural and political references. Arnold holds a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts and Honours from Monash University, and has participated in national and international residencies including Gertrude Contemporary (AUS) and Eastside International (LA). Her work has been exhibited at major Australian institutions, with recent commissions at the Melbourne and Lorne Sculpture Biennales.
2025, English
Hardcover, 272 pages, 30 x 23 cm
Published by
Image Comics / US
$75.00 - In stock -
"Vaughn was one of the lights of America."—Moebius
Collecting for the first time, in chronological order, underground comix legend Vaughn Bodē's charmingly risqué strips and "Bodé Broads" from Cavalier magazine ("the kind men like.")
Originally written and drawn in the 1970s, this volume represents a time capsule in erotic humor as only a master of the form could create it. This beautiful hardbound book also collects Bodē's hard-to-find three-page strips and other rarities.
With a foreword and additional new art from Vaughn's son, Mark Bodē. Underground comix enthusiasts, Bodē aficionados and fans of adult humor won't want to miss this uncensored and digitally remastered omnibus.
Vaughn Bodē (1941 – 1975) was an American underground cartoonist and illustrator known for his character Cheech Wizard and his artwork depicting voluptuous women. In 1963, at age 21, and while living in Utica, New York, Bodē self-published Das Kämpf, considered one of the first underground comic books. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he illustrated covers and interior art for the science fiction digests Amazing Stories, Fantastic, Galaxy Science Fiction, Witzend and Worlds of If. Discovered by fellow cartoonist Trina Robbins, Bodē moved to Manhattan in 1969 and joined the staff of the underground newspaper the East Village Other. Beginning in 1968 and continuing until his untimely death from autoerotic asphyxiation in 1975, Bodē entered a prolific period of creativity, introducing a number of strips and ongoing series, most of which ran in underground newspapers or erotic magazines. Bodē described his sexuality as "auto-sexual, heterosexual, homosexual, mano-sexual, sado-sexual, trans-sexual, uni-sexual, omni-sexual." A contemporary of animator Ralph Bakshi, Bodē has been credited as an influence on Bakshi's animated films Wizards and The Lord of the Rings. Bodē has a huge following among graffiti artists, with his characters remaining a popular subject of the culture. Bodē was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame for comics artists in 2006.
1980, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fleetbooks / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
"Unblushing color, is the sexual world around us painted by outstanding artists of the twentieth century. In this extraordinary book, the modern world, the flesh, and the devil are captured as never before."
Foreword by Henry Miller.
Within it are 163 newly photographed works of art, each one faithfully reproduced, unretouched, in four color lithography. On these oversized pages is reflected the erotic life of our times from never before published Picasso watercolors of 1901-02 to the initial publication of recent works by George Segal, Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, R.B. Kitaj, Tom Wesselman and many others.
1980 hardcover survey by Bradley Smith, '20th Century Masters of Erotic Art' is a lavishly illustrated (colour and b/w) collection of erotic works from private and public collections and museums. "Within it are 163 newly photographed works of art, each one faithfully reproduced, unretouched, in four-color lithography. On these oversized pages is reflected the erotic life of our times from never before published Picasso watercolors of 1901-02 to the initial publication of recent works by George Segal, Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, R.B. Kitaj, Tom Wesselman and many others." Featuring further works by Leonor Fini, Otto Dix, Ernst Fuchs, Fernando Botero, Hans Bellmer, André Masson, Mel Ramos, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Paul Wunderlich, Richard Lindner, Elias Friedensohn, Roberto Matta, Graham Ovenden, Francisco Toledo, Carlos Revilla, Egon Schiele, Leonard Foujita, Henk Pander, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Félix Labisse, Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dalí, and many other painters and illustrators who have conveyed human sexuality through fantasy, romance, symbolism, and super realism, contributing to the development of diverse erotic themes in art becoming more prominent and accepted in the modern era. We've since regressed.
Good copy in Good DJ, wear to dj extremities.
2009, English
Softcover, 156 pages, 24 x 16.8 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$78.00 - Out of stock
There are some artists who are never forgotten simply because other artists will constantly cite them as examples. Paul Thek (1933-1988) is one such artist. Revered for his disarming humor and irreverent handling of artworld proprieties, and much lamented for his premature death from AIDS at the age of 55, the likes of Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley, John Miller, Paul McCarthy, Kim Gordon and Matthew Barney have all sung his praises. Tales the Tortoise Told Us is a three-part Thek compendium, composed of writing by Margit Brehm, Axel Heil and Roberto Ort (who discuss the artist's ambivalent relationship with his homeland, and Thek's odd place in the Beat and Hippie generation), a large spread of reproductions of Thek works and a chronologically-arranged survey of works from 1963 up to the artist's death in 1988.
2013, English
Softcover
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$20.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany the 2012-2013 exhibition 'The Four Horsemen: Apocalypse, Death and Disaster' in Melbourne at the NGV's Robert Raynor Gallery Prints & Drawings, 31 Aug – 28 Jan. Profusely illustrated with accompanying texts.
The Four Horsemen presents images of death and disaster in prints, illuminated manuscripts, illustrated books and paintings from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. This was a period of great turmoil in Europe, during which bitter religious conflict, war, famine and pestilence generated deep anxiety. Dramatic events and natural disasters were increasingly read as divine punishments or warnings that the Last Days were imminent.
This exhibition explores the ways in which artists gave expression to the beliefs and fears that plagued individuals and whole societies. The 120 works on display, including Albrecht Dürer’s extraordinary woodcuts illustrating the Apocalypse, prints by Hans Holbein, Jacques de Gheyn and Jacques Callot, illustrate witches, monsters, demons and the Devil. Death, personified as a skeleton, featured prominently in the visual culture of the period, and is represented in all guises – dancing, riding on horseback, and stalking unsuspecting men and women as they go about their daily lives.
The works in this exhibition are drawn from the Prints & Drawings collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and include key loans from the State Library of Victoria and the Special Collections of the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne.
Exhibition curated by Dr Petra Kayser, Curator, Prints & Drawings, NGV; Cathy Leahy, Senior Curator, Prints & Drawings, NGV; Dr Jennifer Spinks, Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne; and Professor Charles Zika, Professorial Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence, History of Emotions, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne.
Near Fine copy.
1993, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 188 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
St. Martin's Press / New York
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1993 edition in rare hardcover.
When the definitive history of the emergence of gay culture in the second half of the twentieth century is written, one individual artist is almost certain to be acknowledged for having singlehandedly shaped the erotic imagination of generations of gay men: the Scandinavian illustrator Tom of Finland.
Working alone and in secret in a far-off land, the remarkable drawings that sprang from this artist's hands—leathermen-bikers, cow-boys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers, and sailors—become archetypal images that delineated the shape of homoerotic desire.
With Tom's full cooperation in the years before his death, F. Valentine Hooven Ill has written a full biography of the man, while tracing the evolution and impact of his art on the world.
"Tom of Finland is one of the gay world's few authentic icons. For over thirty years his drawings have appeared in gay magazines and circulated in pirate editions. His men have entered the fantasy life of thousands, and his vision has influenced such artists as Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder."—Out/Look
Fine copy in Fine DJ.
1973, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + slipcase), 475 pages, 28 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Rembrandt Verlag / Berlin
$110.00 - In stock -
Exceptional 1973 hardcover, slipcased first edition volume dedicated the history of Fantastic Painting in all its mutations, compiled by Austrian art historian and critic, curator, literary scholar and writer, Wieland Schmied (1929 – 2014).
"The fantastic and connected with it the remote, the strange, the absurd, the unreal, the irrational and illusionary, the visionary, the hallucinatory and dreamlike belong to the constant undercurrents and countercurrents of all art. Such images remind us that the world is more diverse, richer and more unmistakeable than we sometimes want to admit, that the night pages with their secrets of the dark belong to it in essence like the day with its magic of light. The fantastic art articulates powers and instincts that have a very intense influence on our lives, on our consciousness. It always shakes the questionlessness of the world, it always frightens us: from the abysses within ourselves and from the mysteries of a world that we have not created.
Wieland Schmied, who, as director of the Kestner Society, highlighted the topicality of fantastic and surrealist thoughts in the work of numerous contemporary artists in much-discussed exhibitions, examines in this book the different definitions of the fantastic and tries to distinguish between similar and related phenomena - the poetic, the grotesque, the absurd, the literary - but also to distinguish the fantastic art from the historical currents of Mannerism, Romanticism, Symbolism and Surrealism, which contain all elements of the Fantastic."
At 475 pages, and profusely illustrated with over 200 plates in colour and b/w, featuring the art of Henry Fuseli, Odilon Redon, James Ensor, Alfred Kubin, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Francisco Goya, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern, Rodolphe Bresdin, Félix Labisse, Meret Oppenheim, Horst Janssen, Edward Burra, Jindřich Štyrský, Victor Hugo, Gustave Moreau, Henri Rousseau, Roland Topor, Giorgio de Chirico, Jane Graverol, Unica Zürn, Max Ernst, Pierre Roy, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró, Salvador Dali, Victor Brauner, Hans Bellmer, Richard Oelze, Wifredo Lam, René Magritte, Ivan Albright, Man Ray, Fred Deux, Morris Graves, Joseph Cornell, Max Klinger, Gustave Doré, Max Walter Svanberg, Toyen, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, André Masson, Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Kurt Seligmann, Miodrag Đurić (Dado), Karel Teige, Paul Wunderlich, Roland Penrose, Josef Šíma, Paul Delvaux, Óscar Domínguez, Fernando Botero, Leonor Fini, Uwe Bremer, Bernard Schultze, František Janoušek, Josef Vyleťal, František Muzika, Domenico Gnoli, Wols, Heinz Trökes, Otto Tschumi, Jindřich Heisler, Václav Tikal, Gisela Breitling, Pit Morell, Graham Sutherland, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Erich Brauer, Anton Lehmden, Ursula, Konrad Klapheck, and so many more....
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket, perfectly preserved in Near Fine-Very Good original-issue publisher's box with some light discolouration.