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, English
Hardback, 256 pages, 20.9 x 29.9 cm
Published by
Art Institute of Chicago
$110.00 - In stock -
This generously illustrated catalogue explores the history and significance of the Hairy Who, a group of six Chicago artists who transformed imagery from popular culture into highly personal works of art in a variety of media. New scholarship based on documentary materials—including exhibition checklists, installation views, and artist-made ephemera—reconstructs the group’s six exhibitions, held between 1966 and 1969, and offers a reassessment of the Hairy Who’s idiosyncratic place within the cultural and political context of its time and place.
Insightful essays examine the distinctive features of the Hairy Who’s art and collaboration, explain how the group’s work diverges from contemporaneous movements such as Pop and Funk, and provide biographical information on the artists themselves. Contributions from acclaimed contemporary artists Richard Hull and Laura Owens reflect on the Hairy Who’s sources and influence, exploring how the group remains relevant in today’s art world in significant and unexpected ways.
Edited by Thea Liberty Nichols, Mark Pascale, and Ann Goldstein; With contributions by Tyler Blackwell, Ann Goldstein, Richard Hull, Lydia Mullen, Thea Liberty Nichols, Laura Owens, Mark Pascale, and Antonia Pocock
Thea Liberty Nichols is a researcher, Mark Pascale is Janet and Craig Duchossois Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Ann Goldstein is deputy director and chair and curator of modern and contemporary art, all at the Art Institute of Chicago.
2003, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 24 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
David Nolan Gallery / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published with the exhibition: Jim Nutt Drawings & Paintings - October 24 - November 26, 2003.
James T "Jim" Nutt (b. November 28, 1938) is an American artist who was a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as the Chicago Imagists, or the Hairy Who.
Edited by David Nolan
Conversation with Jim Nutt by Carroll Dunham
1992, English
Softcover, 70 pages, 30 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Matthew Marks / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
First collectable edition of Ellsworth Kelly's Plant Drawings, published in 1992 to accompany Kelly's first solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, Plant Drawings, New York that year. Long out of print and re-editioned multiple times, "Ellsworth Kelly: Plant Drawings" features 30 plates of drawings made by Kelly between 1960 and 1992, this edition with the text by John Ashbery. Kelly made these gorgeously economical line drawings from life, sometimes barely lifting the pencil as he translated each plant’s contours to paper. Focusing on direct visual impression—“nothing is changed or added,” as he put it—Kelly used the natural forms of the plants to explore some of his painterly fixations, like the effects of volume, negative space and overlapping planes. Despite the immediacy of their execution and their representational content, the most striking surprise of Kelly’s plant drawings is how much they share with his abstract paintings and sculptures.
Ellsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York.
Very Good copy with light edge wear/toning.
1974, English
Softcover, 60 pages, 18.5 x 17.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales / NSW
$28.00 - Out of stock
Scarce exhibition catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Two masters of the Weimar Bauhaus: Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack", held at the AGNSW and NGV in 1974, and published by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Compiled, designed and introduced by organiser Nicholas Draffin, with additional text by Lyonel Feininger. Illustrated throughout with examples of works in colour and bw by both Lyonel Feininger and Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack, with detailed captions in English, including collections. Also features a brief bibliography.
Lyonel Charles Feininger (1871–1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a successful caricaturist and comic strip artist, working regularly for magazines and newspapers in the USA and Germany. He was born and grew up in New York City, traveling to Germany at 16 to study. At the age of 36, he started to work as a fine artist. He was a member of the Berliner Sezession in 1909, and he was associated with German expressionist groups: Die Brücke, the Novembergruppe, Gruppe 1919, the Blaue Reiter circle and Die Blaue Vier (The Blue Four). When Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Germany in 1919, Feininger was his first faculty appointment, and became the master artist in charge of the printmaking workshop. He taught at the Bauhaus for several years. He also produced a large body of photographic works between 1928 and the mid 1950s, but he kept these primarily within his circle of friends. He was also a pianist and composer, with several piano compositions and fugues for organ extant.
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack (1893-1965) was a German/Australian artist. His formative education was 1912–1914 at Debschitz art school in Munich. He studied at the Bauhaus from 1919 - 1924 and remained working there until 1926 where, along with Kurt Schwerdtfege, he further developed the Farblichtspiele ('coloured-light-plays'), which used a projection device to produced moving colours on a transparent screen accompanied by music composed by Hirschfeld Mack. It is now regarded as an early form of multimedia. Music and colour theory remained lifelong interests, informing his art work in a number of media, and it was the inspiration for his well-respected and influential teaching.
Good copy with two internal library stickers not affecting contents.
2009, Czech
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 54 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie výtvarného umění v Náchodě / Brode
$65.00 - Out of stock
Lovely, scarce, limited edition Jana Švábová catalogue published in 2009 by Galerie výtvarného umění v Náchodě, seemingly the only publication on the artist's work.
Jana Švábová (1939-2017) was a self-taught Czech painter, actress, and life partner of Czech sculptor Mojmír Preclík (1931-2001). Since the late 1970s, they lived in a wooden house with a plum grove in the village of Kryštofovo Údolí, their natural sanctuary for twenty years where they both worked and raised their daughter. Since the 1970s she had been exhibiting, occasionally illustrating, most often poetry and fairy tales. Švábová's soft, enigmatic abstractions of washed-out ink, watercolour, and dry pastel, sometimes tinted with coffee or wine, are intimately rendered through human touch, exploring phenomena, inner and outer life, in the form of symbols, colour, and line, moving dream-like between drawing and painting. "On paper, a stage, with abstract artistic scenery, something is born between the beginning, the story, the feeling of destiny, the end - a vale of life experiences, memories, inspirations, feelings, thoughts and visual clues (sun, gate, bird, pebbles, conch, chair, ladder, musical instrument, fence, etc.) emotionally rendered in pastel." In her later life she became ill and ceased to make work, forgetting that she had ever been a painter.
Illustrated throughout in colour with works spanning the 1980s-2009, with photographic portrait, biography, exhibition list and accompanying texts in Czech.
Very Good, VG dust jacket.
2019, English / Polish
Hardcover, 64 pages, 19.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Wydawca / Olszanica
$24.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of this new volume dedicated to the drawings of Zdzisław Beksiński (1929–2005). Profusely illustrated throughout, with an introduction by art historian Wiesław Banach.
"Since early childhood, drawings had been the artist's main means of communication. "Usually, when I explain something to others, I like to draw it on a piece of paper", he would say. In fact, he left thousands of drawings, usually sketches, sometimes even notes reflecting the way he thought and rendered the original idea into a complete work of art. Due to its nature, this album merely presents a selection of his works that mark various stages of Beksinski's artistic activity, starting from his 1946 youthful self-portrait, to pieces from his final years." - Wiestaw Banach
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
According to Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro "In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust."
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" H.R. Giger
1983, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 151 pages, 20.5 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Orion Press / Tokyo
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare, exquisitely designed and produced book dedicated entirely to the photography of the German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 1975), 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)."
Produced in French by Editions Filipacchi, Centre Georges Pompidou, and Musee National D'art Moderne in Paris in 1983, this very scarce Japanese printing (produced and printed in Japan that same year) features a different cover, with translations to the Japanese language of the introductory essay and texts. Densely illustrated with amazing and beautifully printed colour and black and white photography of Bellmer's dolls, many studies of the female nude, and photography of objects and sculptural assemblages, this book is a wonderful volume capturing an important Surrealist visionary of our time through his stunning photography.
Very good copy in dust-jacket, age tanning to edges/cover.
1980, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 25.5 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Le Sphinx / Paris
$140.00 - Out of stock
First 1980 hardcover edition of Le Trésor Cruel de Hans Bellmer, published by Le Sphinx, Paris. With texts by French author André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Hans Bellmer himself, this volume is made up of countless drawings and paintings of the Surrealist visionary, including many preliminary sketches for well-known graphics, and many seldom seen pieces. A beautiful collection on various stocks and reproduced in both colour and b/w. All texts in French.
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 Good-VG dust jacket (small closed repair and some wear). Minimal previous library stamps. Perfectly preserved interior and binding.
1992, Japanese
Hardcover (clothbound), 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition C / Zürich
$150.00 - In stock -
"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"!"
The second volume of this oversized and visually overwhelming collection takes us further through the incredible history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. Reproducing Giger's award-winning work for the film ALIEN, his paintings, environments, sculptural works, his work for "The Tourist", collaborations with Blondie's Debbie Harry, his "New York City" series from the late 1970's and much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. Also includes interviews, texts, biography. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries.
First hardcover Japanese edition, published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1992. Light foxing/splitting/bumping to spine top and bottom, one semi-split from binding on endpaper, otherwise perfectly preserved throughout.
2016, English / Japanese
Hardcover, 364 pages, 24.6 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The National Museum of Modern Art / Wakayama
The National Museum of Modern Art / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of the most exhaustive (now out of print) volume on the work and life of Japanese artist and father of the sōsaku-hanga movement, Onchi Kōshirō, published on the occasion of a major retrospective at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, 2016.
The most comprehensive monograph ever produced on Onchi Kōshirō, this book beautifully captures the entire oeuvre of one of the most innovative figures in twentieth century Japan. Largely considered the creator of the first abstract painting in Japan (c. 1915), this profusely illustrated volume presents colour reproductions of his prolific modern print and photographic work, as well as his oils, watercolours, drawings, and countless historical book designs spanning over 350 pages. An exhaustive chronology, biography and catalogue are accompanied by major essays in both English and Japanese, as well as many seldom seen photographs of Onchi throughout his life.
Onchi Kōshirō (1891-1955) was a Tokyo-born, Japanese print-maker. The father of the sōsaku-hanga movement, Onchi is considered a leading figure in Japanese abstraction, credited with producing Japan's first purely abstract painting in 1915. Unlike traditional commercial woodblock printmakers, the sōsaku-hanga (creative print) movement artists were inspired by painting and carried out every stage of production themselves: designing, cutting, and printing, then circulating the finished works to a relatively small élite circle. Throughout his career he produced masterful single-sheet prints and designed over 1000 books, as well as being a poet, art theorist and photographer. Abandoning traditional school teachings, in 1911, under the influence of Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934), Onchi began to design books and quickly became involved in producing print and poetry magazines. He designed the first edition of Hagiwara Sakutarō's (1886-1942) innovative collection of poems Tsuki ni hoeru (Howling at the Moon, 1917). In 1939, he founded the First Thursday Society (一木会, Ichimokukai), which was crucial to the postwar revival of the sōsaku-hanga movement, providing aspiring young artists with resources and comradeship during the war years when resources were scarce and censorship severe. Onchi believed that artistic creation originates from the self and was more interested in expressing subjective emotions through abstract prints than in replicating images and forms in the objective world. He called his poetic and evocative print style 'lyrique'. Onchi's innovative prints incorporated the use of everyday objects such as fabrics, string, paper blocks, fish fins, and leaves. From around 1932, Onchi worked on the design of a number of books about photography and began using photography in the spirit of shinkō shashin, creating photograms and working with plants, animals and still-life objets. Onchi was sent to China in 1939 and later the same year returned to Tokyo and had an exhibition of his Chinese works. In 1951 he exhibited his photographic works but otherwise dropped out of photography. He died in Tokyo on 3 June 1955.
Fine, As New copy.
1997, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 22.6 x 30.5 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$55.00 - Out of stock
The American artist Arthur Dove (1880-1946), purportedly the first artist to have produced an abstract painting, has always occupied a central place in writings on early American modernism. This book accompanies the first major exhibition on Dove since 1974. The exhibition, organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art and the Phillips Collection, covers the period from 1908, the year after Dove took up painting, through 1946, the year of his death. It is comprised of approximately eighty paintings, collages, pastels, and charcoal drawings.
Along with Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin, Dove was touted for more than three decades by photographer and dealer Alfred Stieglitz as an American original, one whose work was prescient in its opposition to the materialism of a newly industrialized America.
Essays by Debra Bricker Balken, William C. Agee, and Elizabeth Hutton Turner discuss Dove's interactions with Stieglitz and others in his circle, including O'Keeffe, Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Paul Strand, and re-examine Dove in the context of early twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history. The book contains color plates of all the works in the exhibition: the essays are profusely illustrated with black-and-white images not included in the exhibition. Apart from an out-of-print catalogue raisonné, this book is the largest and most comprehensive publication to date on Dove's work.
Copublished with the Addison Gallery of American Art in association with the Phillips Collection
1985, German
Softcover, 255 pages, 32 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Diogenes / Zürich
$70.00 - Out of stock
One of the most splendid visual overviews published on Roland Topor's illustrated career, this over-sized book was produced on the occasion of the major survey exhibition of the great French illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, in 1985. Opening with Topor's illustration for Fellini's Casanova (1975) and closing with a portrait of Topor urinating by artist Pol Bury, this wonderful book encompasses everything between via the penmanship of one of Europe's greatest illustrators. Densely illustrated with examples of his personal and commercial work, for film, theatre, magazine, poster, and much more. Texts in German by Topor and others, including cartoonist/satirist Ronald Searle and fellow "Mouvement Panique" founder Fernando Arrabal.
Cover with crease and light wear, otherwise Very Good internally throughout.
Roland Topor was one of the most unique and versatile French artists of the second half of the 20th century, working prolifically as a provocative and spirited illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, and much more. Son of a Parisian painter and sculptor of Polish-Jewish descent, in 1941, Topor's father was arrested and sent to camp Pithiviers. Two years later, the family moved to Savoy, where they baptised their son to hide his real identity. After the war, he studied art at the Institute of Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered surrealism, Hieronymus Bosch and the scatological plays of Alfred Jarry, which would influence his work and his attitude to life in general.
In 1958, he published his first work in magazines such as Bizarre and later Elle. Three years later, he joined the anarchic group of artists who created the controversial magazine Hara-Kiri, publishing his surreal juxtapositions of people, animals, plants and objects. Topor seldom used words in his illustrations, leaving all power to the visual. In February 1962, Topor, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Olivier O. Olivier, Jacques Sternberg, Christian Zeimert, Abel Ogier and Fernando Arrabal founded the "Mouvement Panique" ("Panic Movement"). This collective focused on creating absurd and bewildering performances to reject the commercialization of surrealism. The founders created many provocative and surreal works in the next decade before Jodorowsky dissolved the movement in 1973. However, Topor continued making scandalous plays afterwards, including 'Le Bébé de Monsieur Laurent' (1975) and 'Vinci avait raison' (1976).
In print, Topor's history is legendary. In 1964 Topor published his debut novel 'Le Locataire Chimérique' ('The Tenant', 1964), a psychological horror story about a man moving in an apartment where he is gradually pestered into madness by the other inhabitants. The work was adapted to film in 1976 by Roman Polanski and both the book as well as the picture are cult classics to this day. His 1980s pamphlet '100 Bonnes Raisons Pour Me Suicider' ('100 Good Reasons To Commit Suicide') is another example of his taste for black comedy. The most unique and unusual book in Topor's oeuvre must be 'Souvenir' (1972), a kind-of Fluxus obscurity featuring a text with all the sentences scratched out to the point of being unreadable. When the artist was interviewed on Dutch television by Adriaan van Dis to read some extracts from it Topor accepted the request by holding his hand in front of his mouth and mumble through it. In 1966 Topor illustrated 'Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard' (Anecdoted Topography of Chance) by Swiss assemblage artist Daniel Spoerri. Following a rambling conversation with his friend Robert Filliou in 1961, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories and anecdotes from both the original author and his friends Filliou, Emmett Williams, Dieter Roth and Roland Topor. Considered a "quasi-autobiographical tour de force", incredible book was published in 1966 by the Something Else Press in New York City. Topor added sketches of each object. Acknowledged as one of the most important and entertaining artists’ books of the postwar period, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance is a unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme movements.
Topor also had an interest in film. He designed the posters of movies such as 'L'Ibis Rouge' (1975), 'Ai no borei' ('The Empire of Passion', 1978) and 'Die Blechtrommel' ('The Tin Drum', 1979). His drawings can also be seen during the opening titles of Fernando Arrabal's experimental film 'Viva La Muerte' (1971) and during the magic lantern sequence in Federico Fellini's 'Il Casanova di Fellini' (1976). He also worked as an actor, appearing in Dusan Makavejev's 'Sweet Movie' (1974) and as Dracula's assistant Renfield in Werner Herzog's horror remake of 'Nosferatu' (1979). The latter film has also immortalized his notorious hysterical and chilling laugh.
Together with René Laloux, he created the animated shorts 'Les Temps Morts' (1964) and 'Les Escargots' ('The Snails', 1965) and the full length animated feature 'La Planète Sauvage' ('Fantastic Planet', 1973). The latter work was based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel 'Oms en Série' and takes place on a surreal planet where gigantic blue aliens treat humans as pets. 'La Planète Sauvage' won the special jury prize at the Festival of Cannes and has achieved cult status over the years.
Topor was a frequent guest in the philosophical radio show 'Des Papous dans la tête' (1984) at France Culture. Together with his good friend and playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, he wrote scripts for the satirical TV sketch series 'Merci Bernard' (1982-1984) on France 3 and 'Palace' (1988-1989) on Canal +. They wrote the theatrical play 'Batailles' (1983) about people of different social classes stranded on a raft, which was a satirical allegory of capitalism. Another collaborative project was the comedy film 'La Galette du Roi' (1985). In 1975 he recorded an album with his Belgian friend Freddy De Vree called 'Panic (The Golden Years)'. It features Topor being interviewed by De Vree on the Flemish public radio channel BRT 3. Apart from talking he also recites some nonsensical songs, including the Dutch nursery rhyme 'Iene miene mutte' and the tongue twister 'De kat krabt de krullen van de trap.' Topor also wrote two songs, 'Je m'aime' and 'Monte dans mon ambulance', which were set to music by François d'Aime and recorded by Japanese singer Megumi Satsu in 1980.
In the 1980s, Topor published in Le Petit Psikopat Illustré, an alternative review, and also teamed up with Belgian film director Henri Xhonneux to create the cult children's series 'Téléchat', a news show featuring anthropomorphic animals and objects and marionets presenting news. The program received various awards, including the 1984 award for best French broadcast for children and adolescents at the Festival of Cannes. It was also nominated for an Emmy in 1985.
Topor and Xhonneux joined forces again in 1989 to create the film 'Marquis', which was loosely based on the life and work of the notorious Marquis de Sade. The actors performed in animal masks and De Sade's penis was made into a separate puppet with a human face and the ability to talk. Due to the unusualness of its execution it became a cult favorite.
1994, German
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 144 pages, 21 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Gina Kehayoff / Münich
$55.00 - In stock -
The lovely German hardcover publication compiling Roland Topor's illustration and design work for theatre. In February 1962, Topor, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Olivier O. Olivier, Jacques Sternberg, Christian Zeimert, Abel Ogier and Fernando Arrabal founded the "Mouvement Panique" ("Panic Movement"). Since these early days Topor has been heavily associated with the theatre. The book opens with the script for his play "Winter Under the Table" and follows with his fantastic drawings for theatre productions, such as "Ubu Rex", "Ubu Roi", "Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena", "Antonius and Cleopatra", "The Magic Flute", "Le grand macabre", "Les Mamelles de Tiresias". Profusely illustrated throughout with over 100 of Topor's costume and set drawings in colour. Texts in German. Published in 1994 in Münich by Gina Kehayoff.
"It seems to me that Topor is the last representative of those real great illustrators who, like Blake and Daumier, Doré, and Carlo Chiostri, are capable of creating a complete universe that is designed down to the smallest detail. A "counterworld," a devilish world created out of contempt for ours, and one in which the numerous forms of literature that enter here inevitably change. Just like Don Quixote by Daumier, Dante von Blanke and Doré's Little Red Riding Hood." - Federico Fellini.
Fine copy.
Roland Topor was one of the most unique and versatile French artists of the second half of the 20th century, working prolifically as a provocative and spirited illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, and much more. Son of a Parisian painter and sculptor of Polish-Jewish descent, in 1941, Topor's father was arrested and sent to camp Pithiviers. Two years later, the family moved to Savoy, where they baptised their son to hide his real identity. After the war, he studied art at the Institute of Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered surrealism, Hieronymus Bosch and the scatological plays of Alfred Jarry, which would influence his work and his attitude to life in general.
In 1958, he published his first work in magazines such as Bizarre and later Elle. Three years later, he joined the anarchic group of artists who created the controversial magazine Hara-Kiri, publishing his surreal juxtapositions of people, animals, plants and objects. Topor seldom used words in his illustrations, leaving all power to the visual. In February 1962, Topor, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Olivier O. Olivier, Jacques Sternberg, Christian Zeimert, Abel Ogier and Fernando Arrabal founded the "Mouvement Panique" ("Panic Movement"). This collective focused on creating absurd and bewildering performances to reject the commercialization of surrealism. The founders created many provocative and surreal works in the next decade before Jodorowsky dissolved the movement in 1973. However, Topor continued making scandalous plays afterwards, including 'Le Bébé de Monsieur Laurent' (1975) and 'Vinci avait raison' (1976).
In print, Topor's history is legendary. In 1964 Topor published his debut novel 'Le Locataire Chimérique' ('The Tenant', 1964), a psychological horror story about a man moving in an apartment where he is gradually pestered into madness by the other inhabitants. The work was adapted to film in 1976 by Roman Polanski and both the book as well as the picture are cult classics to this day. His 1980s pamphlet '100 Bonnes Raisons Pour Me Suicider' ('100 Good Reasons To Commit Suicide') is another example of his taste for black comedy. The most unique and unusual book in Topor's oeuvre must be 'Souvenir' (1972), a kind-of Fluxus obscurity featuring a text with all the sentences scratched out to the point of being unreadable. When the artist was interviewed on Dutch television by Adriaan van Dis to read some extracts from it Topor accepted the request by holding his hand in front of his mouth and mumble through it. In 1966 Topor illustrated 'Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard' (Anecdoted Topography of Chance) by Swiss assemblage artist Daniel Spoerri. Following a rambling conversation with his friend Robert Filliou in 1961, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories and anecdotes from both the original author and his friends Filliou, Emmett Williams, Dieter Roth and Roland Topor. Considered a "quasi-autobiographical tour de force", incredible book was published in 1966 by the Something Else Press in New York City. Topor added sketches of each object. Acknowledged as one of the most important and entertaining artists’ books of the postwar period, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance is a unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme movements.
Topor also had an interest in film. He designed the posters of movies such as 'L'Ibis Rouge' (1975), 'Ai no borei' ('The Empire of Passion', 1978) and 'Die Blechtrommel' ('The Tin Drum', 1979). His drawings can also be seen during the opening titles of Fernando Arrabal's experimental film 'Viva La Muerte' (1971) and during the magic lantern sequence in Federico Fellini's 'Il Casanova di Fellini' (1976). He also worked as an actor, appearing in Dusan Makavejev's 'Sweet Movie' (1974) and as Dracula's assistant Renfield in Werner Herzog's horror remake of 'Nosferatu' (1979). The latter film has also immortalized his notorious hysterical and chilling laugh.
Together with René Laloux, he created the animated shorts 'Les Temps Morts' (1964) and 'Les Escargots' ('The Snails', 1965) and the full length animated feature 'La Planète Sauvage' ('Fantastic Planet', 1973). The latter work was based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel 'Oms en Série' and takes place on a surreal planet where gigantic blue aliens treat humans as pets. 'La Planète Sauvage' won the special jury prize at the Festival of Cannes and has achieved cult status over the years.
Topor was a frequent guest in the philosophical radio show 'Des Papous dans la tête' (1984) at France Culture. Together with his good friend and playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, he wrote scripts for the satirical TV sketch series 'Merci Bernard' (1982-1984) on France 3 and 'Palace' (1988-1989) on Canal +. They wrote the theatrical play 'Batailles' (1983) about people of different social classes stranded on a raft, which was a satirical allegory of capitalism. Another collaborative project was the comedy film 'La Galette du Roi' (1985). In 1975 he recorded an album with his Belgian friend Freddy De Vree called 'Panic (The Golden Years)'. It features Topor being interviewed by De Vree on the Flemish public radio channel BRT 3. Apart from talking he also recites some nonsensical songs, including the Dutch nursery rhyme 'Iene miene mutte' and the tongue twister 'De kat krabt de krullen van de trap.' Topor also wrote two songs, 'Je m'aime' and 'Monte dans mon ambulance', which were set to music by François d'Aime and recorded by Japanese singer Megumi Satsu in 1980.
In the 1980s, Topor published in Le Petit Psikopat Illustré, an alternative review, and also teamed up with Belgian film director Henri Xhonneux to create the cult children's series 'Téléchat', a news show featuring anthropomorphic animals and objects and marionets presenting news. The program received various awards, including the 1984 award for best French broadcast for children and adolescents at the Festival of Cannes. It was also nominated for an Emmy in 1985.
Topor and Xhonneux joined forces again in 1989 to create the film 'Marquis', which was loosely based on the life and work of the notorious Marquis de Sade. The actors performed in animal masks and De Sade's penis was made into a separate puppet with a human face and the ability to talk. Due to the unusualness of its execution it became a cult favorite.
2019, English / Italian
Softcover (w. plastic dust jacket), 352 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
Corraini / Italy
$120.00 - Out of stock
Dieter Roth, one of the most prominent artists of the late 20th century and a key figure in the history of Artists’ Books, has poured his entire life onto countless pages. From his beginnings in the 1950s and throughout the years of his artistic practice, he produced over 230 books. Roth constantly took notes and wrote journals from which he drew the wide range of materials used in his works. Twenty years after his death, his work still represents today an endless source of inspiration for contemporary artists.
The volume Dieter Roth. Pages brings together for the first time all of his books, diaries and notebooks in one single publication—complete with images and technical descriptions—showing how, in every page, as well as in all his visual artworks, Roth followed a principle of inexhaustible variation. Starting from an original, often handwritten text, which he generally arranged in layers and complemented with writings and drawings, he developed a series of consecutive texts, each being fully shaped in a self-contained form, and yet providing the very reason and possible starting point for the following book. Roth and his series of copies and alterations narrate the journey of a 20th-century Self who, at every step, and with every development, is forced to observe his own gradual and inescapable disgregation.
The critical essay by curator Elena Volpato and the text by the artist’s son and collaborator Björn Roth on the production of the Copy Books, in which he personally took part, are accompanied by the writings of two internationally renowned artists, Lawrence Weiner and Pavel Büchler, who have paid their tribute to Dieter Roth, celebrating his revolutionary power and the founding value of his research.
2008, Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi strip), 267 pages, 23.4 x 30.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Hokkaido Shinbun-Sha / Sapporo
$90.00 - In stock -
Beautiful hardcover monographic catalogue on Japanese-French artist Léonard Foujita, considered "the most important Japanese artist working in the West during the 20th century", published 40 years after his death, on the occasion of the major travelling exhibition "Léonard Foujita" that toured across Sapporo, Utsunomiya, Tokyo, Fukuoka, and Sendai, 2008-2009.
First edition and now out-of-print, this comprehensive and heavily illustrated book covers Foujita's entire life and artistic career, through his years spent in France, Latin America and Japan, illustrating his many drawings, paintings, prints, ceramics, doll houses, furnishings, objects, and other works in great detail and across fold-out spreads illustrating his largest masterpieces, alongside chronology, biography, portraits of the artist and models, his home in France, atelier, materials, tools, cats, nudes, essays in Japanese and French by Tsutomu Shiba, Anne Le Diberder and others. A wonderfully in-depth book and expertly printed in Japan.
Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita (1886 – 1968) was a Japanese–French painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan, who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings. His Book of Cats, published in New York by Covici Friede, 1930, with 20 etched plate drawings by Foujita, is one of the top 500 (in price) rare books ever sold, and is ranked by rare book dealers as "the most popular and desirable book on cats ever published". He spent much of his life in France, where he met Amedeo Modigliani, Pascin, Chaim Soutine, and Fernand Léger and became friends with Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Foujita had his first studio at no. 5 rue Delambre in Montparnasse where he became the envy of everyone when he eventually made enough money to install a bathtub with hot running water. Many models came over to Foujita's place to enjoy this luxury, among them Man Ray's lover, Kiki, who boldly posed for Foujita in the nude in the outdoor courtyard. Within a few years, particularly after his 1918 exposition, he achieved great fame as a painter of beautiful women and cats in a very original technique. He is one of the few Montparnasse artists who made a great deal of money in his early years. By 1925, Tsuguharu Foujita had received the Belgian Order of Leopold and the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor. Throughout the 1930s-40s Foujita traveled and painted all over Latin America and returned to Japan, giving hugely successful exhibitions along the way, before returning to France to become a French citizen. His last major work, at the age of 80, was the design, building and decoration of the Foujita Chapel in the gardens of the Mumm champagne house in Reims, France, which he completed in 1966, not long before his death.
Fine copy with original printers obi-strip.
2019, English
Softcover, 20 pages, 16.5 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
Centre d’édition Contemporaine / Geneva
$28.00 - In stock -
Dorothy Iannone's "Eros Paintings", published by Innen Books, Zürich with Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, in 2019. First edition.
Eros Paintings is a collection of full colour erotic paintings by American artist Dorothy Iannone. Named after the Greek god of love (known as Cupid in Roman mythology), Iannone’s publication centers on work created over a three-year period between 1969 and 1971, all of which seek to affirm sexual pleasure, experience, and erotic love, through both visual and integrated text elements. Influenced by cultures and religions from the Asian, African, and European continents, Iannone’s work draws on various artistic sources, influencing form, medium, and subject. In one painting, I Begin to Feel Free (1970), Iannone depicts herself and former partner Swiss artist Dieter Roth as Antony and Cleopatra.
Dorothy Iannone is an American visual artist. Her autobiographical texts, films, and paintings explicitly depict female sexuality and "ecstatic unity." She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
"...For many years now, Dorothy Iannone has been investigating through her visual work, her books and her records, the world of love and loving-styles. In her original (re)-search, she skillfully blends imagery and text, beauty and truth. She is a freedom fighter, and a forceful and dedicated artist. Her aim is no less than human liberation." - Robert Filliou, 1975
2019, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Ed. of 100,
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - Out of stock
Melbourne artist Christopher LG Hill's "The world is it’s own feeble self", published in an edition of 100 copies by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2019.
Born 1980, Melbourne, Victoria; Christopher LG Hill lives and works in Melbourne. A co-founder of artist-run space Y3K, Hill has participated in, and organised, many exhibitions and music-related events and productions. Hill is editor and publisher of Endless Lonely Planet and co-founder of Bunyip Trax.
2019, English
Softcover, 24 pages, 14 x 20 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
Nieves / Zurich
$18.00 - Out of stock
Keiichi Tanaami's "Tears of dreams" is a new artist's book, published in 2019 by Innen Books and Nieves, Zürich. First edition.
The kaleidoscopically simmering works of Keiichi Tanaami interlink the American comic world, psychedelic nightmares and Japanese culture. The colourful compositions create a cosmos of their own and tell about war and disease in a surprisingly concrete way. As a child during the Second World War the artist experienced the US air attacks on Tokyo and these became important motifs in his art: roaring American bombers, Japanese searchlights, his grandfather's deformed goldfish.
Keiichi Tanaami is looked upon as the forerunner of Japanese Pop Art and is one of the country's most influential artists. Born in 1936 as the son of a textile wholesaler, he was nine years old when he experienced the bombing of Tokyo towards the end of World War II. He studied at the Musahino Art University, visited Andy Warhol in New York in 1969, worked with both Robert Rauschenberg and art critic Michel Tapié during their travels to Japan, and designed record covers for Jefferson Airplane and The Monkees. He maintained a successful career as an illustrator and a graphic designer throughout the 1960s and early '70s, and was appointed as the first artistic director of the Japanese edition of Playboy magazine in 1975. With an infinite artistic appetite, Tanaami continues working across all boundaries, embracing painting, sculpture, performance and film, as well as a professor on the Faculty of Information Design at the Kyoto University of Art and Design in Japan.
2017, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 100
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - In stock -
"Selected Works from 1950’s" is a limited edition publication dedicated to the work of German spiritualist/artist Margarethe Held, published in 2017 by Innen Books in Zürich in an edition of 100 copies only.
Margarethe Held (born 1894 in Mettingen, Germany; Died 1981). In 1925 Margarethe Held entered in contact with the spirits and communicated with her deceased husband and her father. In 1950, at the age of 56, she began drawing : four hundred pastel drawings in four months – all dictated by spirits. Siwa ordered her to show to other mortals, through her compositions, that the universe contained secrets, that every being had a destiny and that nothing happened without a reason. Later on, the spirits made her write a book in which she described the messages she received, her travels to Jupiter and other planets.
The faces drawn by Margarethe Held have the appearance of masks, representing the dead, gods, spirits and elves. There are the "good dead", who possess a magical protective power, but also the "bad dead" who cause calamities and disasters. There are male or female elves, whose function is to help people in their work.
2017, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 100
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - Out of stock
Limited edition publication dedicated to the work of British visionary artist Magde Gill, published in 2017 by Innen Books in Zürich in an edition of 100 copies only.
Madge Gill, born Maude Ethel Eades in London, 1882, was an illegitimate child and spent much of her early years in seclusion. At the age of nine she was placed in an orphanage, and at nineteen worked as a nurse and lived with her aunt who introduced her to spiritualism. She married Thomas Gill in 1907 and had three children by him, one of whom died in infancy. Gill herself almost died while giving birth to a fourth, stillborn daughter in 1919, losing the sight in her left eye from the illness that followed.
It was in that year, at the age of thirty-seven, that she began to create art in a flurry of drawing activity that was guided by a spirit she called Myrninerest. She often worked on paper or rolled calico, unrolling only a section at a time and not viewing the composition in its entirety. Her drawings, some of which reach lengths of thirty-five feet, include patterns and designs that obsessively cover the surface. The figure of a young woman dressed in flowing robes appears thousands of times in her work, and it is unclear if it is Gill's spirit guide or perhaps her stillborn daughter. Gill exhibited her work rarely during her lifetime and never sold any of it for fear of angering Myrninerest.
1969, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Lakeside Press / Cambridge
$65.00 - Out of stock
Incredibly scarce issue of the little-known publication "Fantasy Art", from 1969. It is unsure if this is even a journal or a one-off publication. Entirely dedicated to the work of Raymond Bertrand, as a way of introducing the French artist to American audiences and promoting his debut book "Dessins Erotiques". Completely filled with reproductions of his drawings and paintings, some seldom seen in any other Bertrand publication, with short introductory text in French. Quite a mysterious and gorgeous publication, with stiff card covers and raw paper stock, similar to SF fanzines of the period.
Along with Leonor Fini, Raymond Bertrand became acknowledged as one of the major new artists dealing with the modern sexuality in a highly personal fashion in the late 1960s-early 1970s, a period that seemed to encapsulate the entire published work of this little-known artist. Bertrand's work became known through his incredible illustrations for French SF journals Fiction, Galaxie, illustrations for the erotic Emmanuelle novels, and Eric Losfeld published collections. Bertrand is a somewhat elusive and shadowy figure about whom it is hard to find biographical information, and it is sadly unknown whether he continued his work after this period.
Very Good copy.
1967, Japanese
Softcover, 6 page card fold-out w. insert, 23.8 x 23.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tokyo Gallery / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Incredibly scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the 1967 exhibition "19 Surrealists" held at Tokyo Gallery, Japan. Fold-out catalogue with insert, illustrated with the exhibited works (along with biographies in Japanese) by Enrico Baj, Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Wifredo Lam, Felix Labisse, René Magritte, Man Ray, Andre Masson, Roberto Matta, Joan Miro, Taro Okamoto, Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters, Max-Walter Svanberg, Yves Tanguy, Wols.
Very Good with light wear and mild spotting and a couple of pencil notations in Japanese. Preserved in sleeve.
1973, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 14 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Graphiques Gallery / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue issued on the occasion of the exhibition of Hans Bellmer's etchings and drawings, published by Editions Graphiques Gallery, London, in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Illustrated throughout with many of the 43 exhibited items, including his important series "à Sade", "Madame Edwarda" (Georges Bataille), and "Les Marionettes", amongst others, alongside detailed work list, and introductory text by Victor Arwas.
Very Good copy.
1971, French
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 88 pages, 25 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editions Filipacchi / Paris
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this great monographic book on the work of Surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer, published in 1971 by Editions Filipacchi, Paris. Heavily illustrated throughout with wonderful reproductions of Bellmer's incredible drawings, photography, sculptures, paintings, alongside texts in French, biography and bibliography.
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 copy in Good but worn dust jacket with tanning and a few small tears/wear. Very Good copy otherwise, with only edge tanning, preserved under Mylar wrap.