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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
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
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 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.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, 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.
2018, Japanese
2 Volumes, softcover (one w. dust jacket), 195 + 95 pages, 19 x 13 cm
Signed by author,
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$40.00 - Out of stock
A must-have book for Biblio enthusiasts. Pursuing the ultimate in erotic expression, dismantling the boundaries between pornography and art, and exploring the deepest mysteries of the desires of
This 2-volume set includes the "Erotic Art and Esotericism" (Booster Booklet), which expands on—in full colour—Soma's selections of artists surveyed, featuring hundreds of artworks and associated book-references. Artists include: Hans Bellmer, Pierre Molinier, Jean Benoit, Gérard Gachet, Sybille Ruppert, Jean-Marie Poumeyrol, H.R. Giger, Zdzisław Beksiński, Nik Douglas & Penny Slinger, Bob Carlos Clark, Hajime Sorayama, Seiu Ito, Kazutomo Fujino, Ayako Nakagawa, Petter Hegre, Henri Maccheroni, Jamie MacCartney, Richard Cerf, Gilles Berquet, Trevor Watson, Laszlo, Tony Ward, Laurent Bunaim...
Limited edition signed by the author.
2011, English
Softcover (die-cut), 140 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
Published by
Experimental Art Foundation / Adelaide
Yuill—Crowley / Sydney
$50.00 $35.00 - In stock -
The rare published chronology of Australian artist John Barbour’s career beginning with the work; ‘immuredinpace’, (1988), through to his final exhibition held at the yuill|crowley gallery in Sydney, published by Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2011. Edited by Ewen McDonald. Fully illustrated with essays and bibliographical references.
"Hard/soft, the title of Ewen McDonald's introductory essay, traces the evolution of Barbour's practice from the late 1980s. The book includes insightful essays by Russell Smith, Michael Newall, Ian North and Linda Marie Walker on themes and projects, augmented by an interview with the artist by Anne Thompson ... an acknowledgement and celebration of John Barbour's significant contribution the visual arts over the past few decades. As the essays and reproductions of key works and installations reveal, Barbour is one of Australia's foremost contemporary artists."—Publisher.
As New.
1991, Japanese
Softcover, unpaginated, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Stunning special 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, with some light wear to cover, inc. one crease to cover corner.
2023, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 17.5 x 11 cm
Published by
Index Journal / Melbourne
$30.00 - Out of stock
Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) was a prolific, popular and controversial Australian artist. He is best known for his children’s book The Magic Pudding and his skilled prints, which mostly draw on Greek and Roman mythology and nineteenth century literature and philosophy. The Australian cultural consciousness is indelibly marked by Lindsay’s output, his prominence in the Sydney bohemian intellectual scene and by The Magic Pudding, which entrances the imagination of generation after generation of Australian children. This consciousness is marked too by the paradoxical conjunctions of Lindsay’s life: artistic bohemia and fascistic tendencies, avant-gardism and a fervour for the rule of law, libertinism and conservatism, worship and denigration.
This collection of essays examines Lindsay’s current position in Australian art history. The authors’ opinions are erudite, varied and often incendiary; few figures are as divisive as Lindsay.
Film critic Adrian Martin writes alongside Ian McLean, the Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne, art historian Cameron Hurst, and literary critic Jeremy George. Art historian Soo-Min Shim responds to a video work by artist James Nguyen.
The project develops research conducted during an exhibition of the University of Melbourne’s Norman Lindsay collection, also titled Venus in Tullamarine, held at the George Paton Gallery in 2022.
1969, French
Hardcover (cloth bound), 106 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Éditions Denoël / Paris
$100.00 - Out of stock
First Edition of the catalogue raisonné of the engraved work of German Surrealist Hans Bellmer, published in 1969 by Éditions Denoël, Paris. Wrapped in the publisher's debossed black covers featuring Bellmer's Céphalopode of 1965, this handsome volume opens with "Morale of Engraving", a four page introduction by author Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues (in French). The rest of the book is made up of 141 beautifully reproduced engraved works of Bellmer, including his exquisite works complimenting Georges Bataille, Marquis de Sade, Joyce Mansour, Louis Aragon, Charles Baudelaire, and others, followed by a 7 pages complete catalogue raisonné index, including work title, date, process and technique, dimensions, printing justifications, editors and other details. An essential title in any Bellmer collection and important reference.
Very Good copy, tanning to board/page edges with age.
2016/2017, Japanese
3 softcover publications (staple-bound), plus flyer, 70 pages, 26 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vanilla Gallery / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare collected documents from the first exhibitions of Serial Killer Art at Vanilla Gallery, Ginza, Tokyo, in 2016 and 2017, from the HN collection. From John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ronnie Clay, these exhibitions featured artworks, self-portraits, letters, and documents of serial killers in Europe and America whose heinous personalities and numerous crimes have served as models for novels and films, becoming known the world over.
"The world portrayed by murderers who committed crimes that make you want to look away is like a dreadful, lonely, impermanent feeling that looks into the depths of the viewer's heart, and is like when confronted with something unknown. It's full of tension."
Collected by Mr. HN (H. Nakajima), over 200 items were displayed in Tokyo on the occasion of these exhibits, with these pamphlets available at the exhibitions only. Illustrated with examples throughout in colour and b/w, texts in Japanese by film critic Kiichirō Yanashita, Orihara Ichi, and collector/curator H. Nakajima.
Killers included in the exhibitions: John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, Peter Sutcliffe, Danny Rowling, Keith Jasperson, James Earl Ray, Thomas Pitera, Henry Hill, Nicholas Crowe, Dorothy Puente, Haddon Clarke, Gerald Shaffer, Anthony Shore, James Munro, Gary Ray Balls, Hudson Graham, Carroll Bundy, Otis Toole, Charles Watson, Lawrence Bittaker, Herbert Mullin, Arthur Shawcross, Rod Ferrell, Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, Christa Pike, Harvard Baumeister, David Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez, Ronnie Clay, Irene Wuornos, Wayne Low, Dana Sue Gray, Roy Norris, Kenneth Bianchi, Michael Alig, Veronica Compton, Joe Roy Metheny, Gary Heidnik, Charles Manson, Jeremy Jones, Jack Trawick, Carl Drew, Wayne Harton, Rosemary West, Theodore Kaczynski, Thomas Heyer, Ed Gein, Ferrell Mykers, Douglas Clark, Richard Clarey, Ian Brady, Jack Kevorkian, Bonnie & Clyde, Philip Jacobinski, Daniel Siebert, Tommy Lynn Sells.
Very Good with only light wear. Includes flyer for the 2017 exhibition, folded as issued.
1980, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 30.5 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Watari / Tokyo
$400.00 - In stock -
Stunning, exceptionally rare Japanese Sol LeWitt artist book/catalogue, "All Four Part Combinations of Six Geometric Figures", published to accompany his 1980 solo exhibition at Galerie Watari, Tokyo. Handsome LeWitt book design of minimal title texts introducing this unusual staple-bound oblong book of 15 b/w drawings of Six Geometric Figures in variation by LeWitt, 1980. First and only edition, printed in Japan and only available at the exhibition itself.
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt (1928 – 2007) was one of the most distinctive and influential American artists of the 20th century. He shaped and defined many of the century's most cerebral "isms", notably minimalism and conceptualism.
Near Fine copy with only light tanning to cover and page edges, otherwise beautifully preserved, no spine pinching.
1984, German
Softcover, 78 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition C / Zürich
$180.00 - Out of stock
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.
"The "Necronomicon" is a legendary magical book that is kept in inaccessible places only in a few, incompletely preserved specimens because it could have disastrous consequences if it fell into the wrong hands. It was written down around 730 AD in Yemen by the legendary Abdul Al Azred. It is said to tell of things and events that took place in the gray age, and illustrations of uncanny creatures lurking in the depths of the earth and the seas, one day destroying mankind and striking the world.
Al Azred's "Necronomicon" is a kind of museum of the most wonderful abominations and perversions. The well-known writer HP Lovecraft was the first to report in his "Cthulhu" mythology of this work. Many other science fiction and fantasy writers have quoted this fictional work time and again, but it has only become a visual reality in "HR Giger's Necronomicon"!"
"Giger always opens up new approaches to the origins of our psyche," writes Clive Baker in his foreword. "He is planning for us to go, encouraged by the knowledge that others have gone before this path, and only a few artists are able to give such impulses, and if we follow Giger, we are initially afraid of our mental health. And quickly recognize that the supposed new territory has countless stations that are connected with our familiar life. For, after all, we are no strangers: Giger points the direction into the world in which we must return, where we pledge our pledge, to pay the tithes which we owe. Giger's world is the place of our own taboos, and only our own disregard makes him appear frightening, sullen, "alien" (alien). (...) Giger's work calls us to the common ground of the unconscious, where, though we sometimes alienate ourselves from it, we are never really strangers. In other words, HR Giger's fantastic art is calling us home."
Beginning with a hommage from Salvador Dali, the first in this series of oversized and visually overwhelming 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.
This is the first Swiss edition, published by Edition C.
Very Good copy.
1971, German
Softcover, 134 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Walter Zürcher Verlag / Gutendorf
$500.00 - Out of stock
The very rare first 1971 edition of H.R. Giger A Rh+, Giger's first mythical book, and still the most special (in our opinion). Designed by the young artist himself and published independently in a limited edition in 1971 by Swiss esotericist Walter Zürcher, A Rh+ is Giger's very first oeuvre catalogue — filled entirely with black-and-white documentation of the first major work groups of the fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger, spanning his earliest grotesque ink cartoons and introducing his "biomechanical" paintings (while the ghost of Alfred Kubin still looms heavily), along with his early film works including Heim-Killer (1967) and Swiss Made (1968), his early sculptures, furniture pieces, exhibitions, prints, theatre work, the “Poëtenz-Show” work and his collaboration with anarchic collective and political "krautrock" group Floh de Cologne. Accompanied by sketches, clippings and photographs of Giger and accomplices in the studio, posing with works, in the forest, etc. A Rh+ has a very private and occult feel, augmenting the mysterious quality of these wonderful early visions of the macabre. An incredible and scarce document that did not see distribution much further than Giger's own circles. A long out-of-print, collector's item.
Very Good copy.
1990, English / German
Softcover, 84 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museum für Moderne Kunst / Frankfurt am Main
$65.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful publication on the work of German artist Charlotte Posenenske, published in 1990 by the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and edited by museum founder/director Jean-Christophe Ammann. Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with examples of her sculptural work, drawings, and paintings, this generous little book also includes her writings alongside texts by Burkhard Brunn, Friedrich Meschede and Hans Ulrich Reck, in English and German.
Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985) was a German artist associated with the minimalist movement who predominately worked in sculpture, but also produced paintings and works on paper.
Posenenske worked in a variety of mediums, her practice becoming more abstract through the course of the 1960s. While other artists of the period worked in multiples, where a finite edition of a work could be produced, Posenenske worked in series, meaning that there was no limit to the editions. Posenenske rejected the commercial art market, offering her work for sale at its material cost. Reconstructions authorised by the artist’s estate are not replicas, and they are outwardly identical to the original prototype. Only the certificate differentiates the unsigned work from other commodities.
In 1968 Posenenske published a statement in the journal Art International referencing the reproducibility of her works, and her desire for the concept and ownership of the piece to be accessible:
I make series
because I do not want to make individual pieces for individuals,
in order to have elements combinable within a system,
in order to make something that is repeatable, objective,
and because it is economical.
The series can be prototypes for mass-production.
[...]
They are less and less recognisable as "works of art."
The objects are intended to represent anything other than what they are.
Poseneske stopped working as an artist in 1968, no longer believing that art could influence social interaction or draw attention to social inequalities. She retrained as a sociologist and became a specialist in employment and industrial working practices until her death in 1985. During this period of self-imposed exile Posenenske refused to visit any exhibitions, and did not show her work.
1990, Japanese / French / English
2 volumes in cardboard slipcase (w. adhered Man Ray "stamp"); volume 1 68 pages (colour ill.) volume 2 196 pages (b/w ill.), 22.5 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sezon Museum of Art / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, visually exhaustive two-volume boxset catalogue for the traveling exhibition held on the centenary of Man Ray's birth in Japan in 1990-1991.
Each volume of this Japanese publication on the American artist Man Ray serves as a wonderful index of his incredible lifetime of work. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Man Ray was a renowned representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century and is considered as the pioneer of Surrealist photography. A major contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media including drawings, objects and films, but considered himself a painter above all. Volume One compiles many examples of his diverse non-photographic works, reproducing his many paintings, drawings, objects, prints and book editions in full colour. Volume Two (the heavier of the two volumes) focuses on his prolific photographic work, copiously illustrated with a huge catalogue of beautifully reproduced monochromatic works throughout his entire career -- Paris, America, Dada, Surrealism and beyond -- showcasing his significant contribution to the evaluation of photography as a form of modern art.
Accompanying texts by Merry Foresta, Lucien Treillard, Toshiharu Ito in Japanese, French and English. Primarily in Japanese language. Includes full biography, bibliography and catalogue of all works.
Good-Very Good copy. Tanning to slipcase, light wear to cover otherwise Very Good in general.
1995, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 21.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$90.00 - Out of stock
It was a good year, 1995, and with each month one of Tom of Finland's iconic and impeccable erotic graphite drawings of macho leathermen, bikers, cops, lumberjacks, soldiers, punks, all in all their glory, courtesy of his self-published wall-calendar. A scarce, unused copy, ready for the wall, with no inscriptions.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
Very Good copy with only notable damage being light wrinkling to one corner from moisture.
1979, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Harper and Row / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Symbolism, published by Routledge in 1979, the last major study by Robert Goldwater who passed away suddenly prior to its completion. Goldwater (1907—1973) was an art historian, African arts scholar and the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York, from 1957 to 1973. He was married to the French-born American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.
Of all the European artistic movements of the nineteenth century, Symbolism is perhaps the one with most resonance today. A major but short-lived style, it set the foundations of modern art in the first decade of the twentieth century. Art Nouveau, in France and Britain, and Jugendstil in Germany are two major movements associated with Symbolism that together can be seen as the foundation of Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Abstract Art. Beginning in the 1880s, it can be described as a reaction against Naturalism and Impressionism. In broader terms, Symbolism could be defined as a philosophical idealism in revolt against a positivist and materialistic attitude that affected not only painting and literature, but life altogether. For the Symbolists the importance of art lay precisely in its ability to reach beyond realism. Their search for the mysterious reality behind appearances resulted in an art that aimed at representing inner states through generalized figures and congruent, "emotionalized" settings. The viewer was asked to re-experience the emotions that the artist had felt in front of his motif. In this way the artists hoped their subjectivity would become meaningful for humanity at large. These aesthetics anticipate certain ideas at the base of Abstract Art, which is one of the reasons for the appeal of Symbolism today. Another is the Symbolists' concern with refined, even morbid sensibility, with subli-mated sexuality, with the reality of evil, and with love and death as the two poles of human experience.
With singular erudition and insight, Robert Goldwater traces the history and evolution of the movement beginning with Gauguin's revolutionary paintings of the 1880s and ending with the last outposts in Vienna, Holland, and Scotland. Among the artists discussed are Gauguin, Redon, Van Gogh, Munch, Rodin, Klimt, Seurat, Klinger, and Ensor. Profusely illustrated throughout.
Good copy with light wear and marginalia in pen.
1992, English
Softcover, leporello fold-out double-sided card, 15.5 x 11.5 cm (15.5 x 34.5 cm unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Feature Inc. / New York
$90.00 - Out of stock
Very rare show card/fold-out catalogue published on the occasion of the duel exhibition of drawings by Tom of Finland (1920—1991) and G.B. Jones (b. 1965) at Feature, New York, July 10 — August 9, 1991. Titled "Tom of Finland — Drawings and Sketches" and "G.B. Jones — Tom-Girl Drawings", the exhibition, in commemoration of Touko Valio Laaksonen (Tom of Finland) who passed away the same year, is previewed in this lovely little double-sided leporello fold-out catalogue, with three works from each artist, and cover work by Tom of Finland, along with work and exhibition information.
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculine homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3500 illustrations.
G.B. Jones (b. 1965) is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, and founding member of Canadian queer punk band Fifth Column (K Records/Outpunk/Kill Rock Stars/et al). She published legendary queercore fanzine J.D.s (Juvenile Delinquents) with fellow queer filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, which regularly featured her iconic Tom Girl drawings. According to novelist Dodie Bellamy, G.B. Jones' drawing "co-opts the male-on-male objectifying gaze of gay erotica and converts it to a female-on-female gaze." Depicting autonomous women through fantasies of bikers, punks and degenerates in the style of and situations similar to those drawn by Tom of Finland, her Tom Girls are "unapologetic, thrillingly anti-assimilationist."
Fine copy, beautifully preserved.
1985, English
Hardcover (w. slipcase), unpaginated, 22 x 16 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Parlor / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
1985 edition of Japanese illustrator Ken Katayama's masterpiece artbook, Beautiful Days, originally issued in this same hardcover, slipcased form in 1969 in a limited edition. 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 1985 postscript. Katayama's magnificently, obsessive graphite-rendered world-making is, like those 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 sadomasochistic fairytale visions recall the tales of de Sade, Balthus, Hans Bellmer, Carroll's Alice, the architectural dreamscapes of Delvaux or the Metaphysical painters and even 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.
"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.
Fine copy, beautifully preserved in Very Good slipcase.
2022, English / French
Softcover, 128 pages, 11.8 x 19 cm
Published by
Diaphanes / Zürich
$32.00 - In stock -
Translated by Clayton Eshleman
With an Introduction by Richard Hawkins
The first comprehensive collection in English of Antonin Artaud’s writings on his artworks.
The many major exhibitions of Antonin Artaud’s drawings and drawn notebook pages in recent years—at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst, and Paris’s Centre Georges Pompidou—have entirely transformed our perception of his work, reorienting it toward the artworks of his final years. This volume collects all three of Artaud’s major writings on his artworks. “The Human Face” (1947) was written as the catalog text for Artaud’s only gallery exhibition of his drawings during his lifetime, focusing on his approach to making portraits of his friends at the decrepit pavilion in the Paris suburbs where he spent the final year of his life. “Ten years that language is gone” (1947) examines the drawings Artaud made in his notebooks—his main creative medium at the end of his life—and their capacity to electrify his creativity when language failed him. “50 Drawings to assassinate magic” (1948), the residue of an abandoned book of Artaud’s drawings, approaches the act of drawing as part of the weaponry deployed by Artaud at the very end of his life to combat malevolent assaults and attempted acts of assassination. Together, these three extraordinary texts—pitched between writing and image—project Artaud’s ferocious engagement with the act of drawing.
French dramatist, poet, essayist, actor, and theater director Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) is one of the seminal figures of twentieth century writing, art and sound experimentation, known especially for his work with the Surrealist movement, his performance theories, his asylum incarcerations, and his artworks which have been exhibited in major exhibitions, at New York's MoMA and many other art-museums.
1973, English
Softcover, 235 pages, 28.5 x 21 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Dover / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
1973 Dover edition of Walter L. Strauss' The Complete Engravings, Etchings and Drypoints of Albrecht Dürer, a classic collection on the artist and still in print to this day.
Albrecht Durer's 96 engravings, six etchings, and three dynamic drypoints are counted among his finest and best-known works. By the very nature of the medium, each fine line of an engraving is controlled by the artist and is dependent upon the pressure of the burin in his hand. In the engravings, Durer was therefore able to achieve an unprecedented intricacy of detail, subtlety of line, and three-dimensionality.All 105 of Durer's works in these three mediums are reproduced in this edition. Among them are his most famous works, ""Knight, Death and Devil,"" ""Melencolia I,"" and ""St. Jerome in His Study""; also portraits of his contemporaries, including Erasmus of Rotterdam and Frederick the Wise, popular and religious subjects sold by Durer's wife at fairs, ""Adam and Eve,"" the Engraved Passion (15 subjects), and ""The Virgin with the Dragonfly."" Many of these show him even more charming and subtle than do the comparative woodcuts. Reproductions of experimental impression offer the opportunity to study Durer's working method. Durer's subjects range from scenes of the New Testament and the life of the Saints to portrayals of peasant personalities and representations of portentous events, such as ""The Four Witches"" and ""Sol Justitae,"" done in 1499 in anticipation of the Final Judgment that was widely predicted for the end of the century. The engraving ""The Monstrous Sow of Landser,"" a pig born with one head, four ears, two bodies, eight feet, on six of which it stood, and with two tongues,"" similarly recorded in event that was regarded as an ill omen.In the present edition, by means of shooting in most instances directly to lithographic film from the finest impressions, the engravings, where possible, have been printed so that even under a magnifying glass Durer's exact lines can be seen. Likewise, except in a very few cases, the sizes have been kept exactly to the originals, complete with border-lines where indicated. Walter L. Strauss has prepared the commentary for this edition with references to major catalogs, a summary of the statements of earlier commentators, and background material on the engravings, on Durer, and on the subjects of the works. If you are interested in Durer, a copy of this edition of the engravings is a must.
Good copy, with wear and age to covers. Ex-libris (small previous owner's name) to top of first blank, some marking.
2007, English
Softcover, 60 pages, 26 x 23 cm
Ed. of 3000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Knoedler & Company / New York
$290.00 - In stock -
Now out of print, this wonderful monographic catalogue on Lee Bontecou was published a limited edition in 2007, focussing on a particular group of works from her incredible oeuvre. In her essay for this concise catalogue of Lee Bontecou's early transparent vacuum-formed fish and flora sculptures and associated works on paper, the esteemed curator and art historian Elisabeth Sussman writes, "From a standpoint 40 years later, as sculptors everywhere seek to marry form, expression, observation, social context and modern materials in single objects and in groups of objects, or installations; when making materials function in individual, idiosyncratic, expressive ways is a mark of distinction; Bontecou's fish and plants of the late 1960s and early 1970s now appear highly prophetic." Bontecou's early summers in Nova Scotia imbued her with a lifelong fascination with nature and the sea. After studying at the Art Students League in New York (1952-55) and spending a year in Rome on a Fulbright Fellowship (1956-57), Bontecou settled in New York's Lower East Side, and then Soho. In the late 1960s, however, she began to spend part of each year in the mountains of rural Pennsylvania, where she immersed herself in an evocative inner world of natural forms derived from fish and plants. Using a vacuum-forming machine invented by an artist friend, Bontecou created the haunting, lightweight translucent sculptures gathered here for the first time in one book.
Very Good copy of this now collectible volume.
2003, English / Spanish
Softcover (w. wax dustjacket and die-cuts), 428 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Fundacion Cisneros / Venezuela
$490.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare, most comprehensive monograph illuminating the work of one of the most innovative and influential Latin American artists of the twentieth century, Gego (1912–1994). Long out-of-print, this heavy, detailed catalogue raisonne of work prepared by the Fundación Museo de Bellas Artes, with the collaboration and assistance of the Fundacíon Gego on the occasion of the exhibition Gego 1955—1990 that was presented at the Museo de Ballas Artes in Caracas from November 2000 to April 2001. The German-born Venezuelan artist created spare and unequivocally abstract drawings, prints, three-dimensional works, hanging net pieces, and wire constructions of extraordinary quality. Gego used lines as conceptual and visual tools to create in-between spaces within her works. Whether drawing lines on paper or projecting them into space, the artist sought to “make visible the invisible.” She believed that line could express what is not physically present in nature––including thought, intuition, and emotions. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w throughout with documentation of Gego's work and life, accompanied by important texts by art critics and the most serious scholars of Gego's work, Mónica Amor, Ruth Auerbach, Guadalupe Montenegro, Josefina Núñez, Luis Pérez-Oramas, and Iris Peruga, plus full chronology, biography, bibliography, and much more. "Rarely do we have the opportunity to see such intellectual generosity united: the best photographic reproductions of a work that requires the greatest rigor to find the greatest subtlety, the genius of the best graphic design embodied by Alvaro Sotillo, the greatest editorial effort on the part of our teams ." An extensive and exhaustive reference on the artist, beautifully printed and bound with die-cut chapter markers and translucent wax dust jacket in homage to Gego's sensibility. The designer of this publication was awarded the 2005 Gutenberg Prize.
Co-published by Fundacion Cisneros, Fundacion Gego, and Faundacion Museo de Bellas Artes.
Very Good—Near Fine copy. Light buckling in the translucent white wax dust jacket (as usual), otherwise As New with only light tanning to edges.
2007, English / Spanish
Softcover, 256 pages, 27 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Museum of Fine Arts / Houston
Malba Colección Costantini / Argentina
$100.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first printing limited to 1250 copies, printed on the occasion of the exhibition at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Fundacion Eduardo Constantini, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and long out-of-print. An incredible, comprehensive book on Latin American artist Gego (1912–1994), who produced a vast range of line-based abstract work, including drawings, prints, and wire sculptures. Focusing on a rare series of monotypes from the early 1950s, drawings and prints, and “drawings without paper” and “tejeduras” (woven paper pieces) of the late 1970s and 1980s, this fascinating book traces Gego’s exploration of line and space. Gego used lines as conceptual and visual tools to create in-between spaces within her works. Whether drawing lines on paper or projecting them into space, the artist sought to “make visible the invisible.” She believed that line could express what is not physically present in nature––including thought, intuition, and emotions. By manipulating the density of the lines or by interrupting them, she brought light, shadow, and feeling into her linear works.
Profusely illustrated throughout with accompanying texts in both English and Spanish by Mari Carmen Ramirez, Josefina Manrique, Catherine de Zegher, and Gago, plus bibliography, biography and index.
Very Good—Fine copy.
2011, English
Hardcover, 228 pages, 23.3 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MoMA / New York
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of long out-of-print important catalogue published to accompany the exhibition On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 21 Nov. 2010—7 Feb. 2011. On Line: Drawing through the Twentieth Century explores a radical transformation of drawing that began over a century ago and continues as a vital impulse in art today. In a revolutionary departure from traditional ideas of drawing, and from the reliance on paper as the medium's fundamental support, artists have pushed the line of drawing into real space, expanding its relationship to gesture and form and invigorating its links with painting and sculpture, photography and film, and, particularly notably, dance and performance. Through works by over 100 artists, and through essays by Cornelia Butler and Catherine de Zegher that illuminate both broad themes and individual practices, On Line presents a groundbreaking history of an art form. The great, recognized art movements, from Cubism and Futurism at the beginning of the twentieth century through Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Concretism, arte povera, Conceptualism, and many other approaches up to the diverse present, are shown from a new perspective, and are joined by a host of less familiar artworks that properly claim a place in this differently defined field. The exhibition and catalogue includes works by a wide range of artists, both familiar and relatively unknown, from different eras of the past century and from many nations, including Aleksandr Rodchenko, Alexander Calder, Karel Malich, Eva Hesse, Anna Maria Maiolino, Richard Tuttle, Mona Hatoum, and Monika Grzymala.
Very Good / As New copy.
1999, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 152 pages, 30.5 x 24.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
MOCA / Los Angeles
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of long out-of-print important catalogue published to accompany Afterimage : Draw Through Process, a major survey of conceptual / post-minimalist drawing at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, before travelling to Texas and Washington. Co-published by the MIT Press and MOCA.
The term "process art" describes a moment of radical, a formal experimentation in postwar American sculpture. Through the medium of drawing, Afterimage revisits process art in terms of the artists who defined the movement and suggests a transitional moment when many of its practitioners anticipated the feminist and post minimalist art of the 1970s.
The term "process art" describes a moment of radical, a formal experimentation in postwar American sculpture. Through the medium of drawing, Afterimage revisits process art in terms of the artists who defined the movement and suggests a transitional moment when many of its practitioners anticipated the feminist and postminimalist art of the 1970s. Nancy Grossman's use of language, for example, suggests a kind of material abstraction, and Nancy Holt's earth works and related drawings introduced content into a minimalist vocabulary. The book also explores the drawing as a residual object in works in which the process of making dictates the form of the drawing. Examples include Gordon Matta-Clark's stacked cuttings, Robert Morris' "blind time" drawings, and Sol Lewitt's folded construction drawings. Other works, such as those by Bruce Nauman and Robert Smithson, record a particular approach to body-based and process-oriented sculpture. The book, which accompanies an exhibition, contains an essay by Cornelia H. Butler on the historical ambiguity surrounding process art and one by Pamela M. Lee on temporality in work of the late 1960s.
The artists included in the book are William Anastasi, Richard Artschwager, Mel Bochner, Agnes Denes, Nancy Grossman, Robert Grosvenor, Marcia Hafif, Eva Hesse, Nancy Holt, Barry LeVa, Sol Lewitt, Lee Lozano, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Yvonne Rainer, Dorothea Rockburne, Alan Saret, Joel Shapiro, Robert Smithson, Michelle Stuart, Richard Tuttle, and Jack Whitten.
Very Good copy. Only very light wear to soft dust jacket, light tanning to edges.
2022, English
Softcover, 352 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
$120.00 - Out of stock
This comprehensive monograph on Vivian Suter (b. Buenos Aires 1949) ventures a look at her complete works, bringing together early drawings, painterly wall reliefs from the 1980s, and her latest work from her studio in the tropical rainforest of Guatemala: loose canvases hanging lightly from the ceiling in atmospherically dense installations. The richly illustrated catalog illuminates the interplay between unpredictable natural influences as the paintings are left outside open to the elements and purposeful artistic work in Suter’s practice. With a Japanese binding and fold-out cover, this book is a visual as well as tactile delight, evoking the sensual appeal of free-hanging intensely colored canvases. Contributions by Cesar Garcia-Alvares, Fanni Fetzer, Roman Kurzmeyer, Anne Pontegnie, and Adam Szymczyk.
Since her participation at documenta 14 in 2017, Vivian Suter’s (*1949, Buenos Aires) work has been exhibited in many of the most influential museums worldwide. The artist grew up and studied painting in Basel. Today, she lives and works in the remote wilderness of Guatemala, where she has made the great outdoors her studio.
1972, English
Softcover, 130 pages, 17.8 x 20.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Latimer / London
$300.00 - Out of stock
The very first 1972 UK edition of this historical publication by Cornelius Cardew, a key collection/collaborative manifesto of texts and scores by a group of British avant-garde musicians compiled and edited by the legendary experimental composer. Published by Latimer.
"Any direction modern music will take in England will come about only through Cardew, because of him, by way of him. If the new ideas in music are felt today as a movement in England, it's because he acts as a moral force, a moral centre."
This is Morton Feldman's assessment of Cardew's importance, an assessment that took on prophetic status when Cardew cofounded the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. This orchestra was a culmination of the ideals expressed in Cardew's own music in the 1960s when, working in almost total isolation from the musical establishment, he patiently drew together a large group of composers and performers into experimental music through his own compositional activities and through teaching. This group became the nucleus of the orchestra.
The draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra opens as follows: "Definition: A Scratch Orchestra is a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification).
"Note: The word music and its derivatives are here not understood to refer exclusively to sound and related phenomena (hearing, etc). What they do refer to is flexible and depends entirely on the members of the Scratch Orchestra.
"The Scratch Orchestra intends to function in the public sphere, and this function will be expressed in the form of—for lack of a better word—concerts."
This lively book on the repertory the orchestra created is as much graphic and visual as it is verbal and about aural events and happenings. After all, scratch music itself is meant to be perceived by the eye and all the senses—not just by ear—so the notation used in preparing the scores for performance might be graphic, collage, verbal, or musical. The scores in Scratch Music are composed of written words, photographs, maps, graphs, diagrams, musical flow charts, conventional musical notation, whimsical drawings, playing cards, crossword puzzles, and other devices. Contemporary musicians, artists, and critics have long recognized both Cardew's music and this text as hugely influential and significant. Scratch Music demonstrates the extraordinary richness of this particular compositional matrix, giving the reader some idea of what it is like to put on a scratch music event.
Contents: Introduction; Scratch Music—Early Outlines and Later Notes; Scratch Music; Key to Scratch Music; Scratch Music Catalogue; 1001 Activities; Appendix: Four Compositions (David Ahern, Greg Bright, Michael Chant, Roger Frampton).
Cornelius Cardew (1936 – 1981) was an English experimental music composer. A student at the recently established the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, Cardew served as an assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen from 1958 to 1960. Cardew was particularly prominent in introducing the works of American experimental composers such as Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Cage to an English audience during the early to mid sixties and came to have a considerable impact on the development of English music from the late sixties onwards. In 1966, Cardew joined the free improvisation group AMM as cellist and pianist, alongside Lou Gare, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe, and one of his first students at the Royal Academy Christopher Hobbs. Performing with the group allowed Cardew to explore music in a completely democratic environment, freely improvising without recourse to scores. Cardew's most important scores from his experimental period are Treatise (1963–67), a 193-page graphic score which allows for considerable freedom of interpretation, and The Great Learning, a work in seven parts or "Paragraphs," based on translations of Confucius by Ezra Pound. The Great Learning instigated the formation of the Scratch Orchestra. During those years, he took a course in graphic design and he made his living as a graphic designer at Aldus Books in London. While teaching an experimental music class at London's Morley College in 1968, Cardew, along with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons formed the Scratch Orchestra, a large experimental ensemble, initially for the purposes of interpreting Cardew's The Great Learning. He later rejected experimental music, his creative output from the demise of the Scratch Orchestra until his death reflected his political commitment as a member of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) in the 1970s, and in 1979 as co-founder and member of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
Very Good copy with some tanning and general wear.