World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
1972, Japanese
Softcover (w. illustrated slipcase), 34 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$450.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, complete first edition of this cult work by ero-guro master Toshio Saeki (1945—2019), an absolute favourite, published in 1972 in this over-sized slipcased edition by the legendary Haga Shoten. The most famous work by Toshio Saeki, Red box (Akai Hako) brings together over fifty illustrations drawn by Toshio Saeki in 1972, sublimely reproduced as large-format double-page spread artworks, captivating in their mania and gorgeous, vivid colour printing on matte stock. A stunning book to behold. A masterpiece! A must!
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy with light wear/age, usual print buckling, VG—G slipcase with some light wear/age/marking.
1989, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 22 x 28 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Gay Men's Press (GMP) / London
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$190.00 - Out of stock
1989 printing of one of the finest collections of the great Tom of Finland, published by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, and The Gay Men's Press (GMP), London.
Preface by Tom of Finland with appreciation by Dennis Forbes and Fred Bisonnes. This book covers Tom of Finland's work from 1946 to 1987, depicting page by page throughout his iconic and impeccable erotic graphite drawings of macho leathermen, bikers, cowboys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers and sailors, all in all their glory.
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 light cover/edge wear.
1991, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$150.00 - Out of stock
First printing of Retrospective II, another of the finest collections of work from the great Tom of Finland, published in 1991 by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles.
Preface by Tom of Finland. This book covers Tom of Finland's work dating back to 1944, depicting page by page throughout his iconic and impeccable erotic graphite drawings of macho leathermen, bikers, cowboys, cops, lumberjacks, hardhats, soldiers and sailors, all in all their glory.
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 light cover/edge wear.
1995, English / German
Softcover (staple-bound), 62 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tom of Finland Foundation / Los Angeles
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of Tom of Finland Exhibition 1994-95, published in 1995 by the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition held in 1994 and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany. Profusely illustrated with many unseen works, as well as photographs and documents tracing the life and work of Touko Valio Laaksonen (1920—1991), best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images"(—Joseph W. Slade). Every period accounted for, from Tom's early commercial work to his most hardcore gay erotica, his sketch-books, his prints to his very last work. An incredible insight into this prolific artist of enduring influence. Texts throughout in English and German by president of Tom of Finland Foundation Durk Dehner and German art critic Wolfgang Max Faust, amongst others, plus chronology,
“Sometimes the attraction of the uniform is so powerful in me that I get the feeling that I am making love to the clothes and the man inside is just there to hold them up and give them shape, sort of like an animated department store dummy.”
Very Good, well preserved copy with light bump top of spine, crease to bottom front cover.
1972, French
Harcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 28 x 21.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Eric Losfeld / Paris
$140.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol's Dessins Érotiques, published by Eric Losfeld in 1972. Beautifully illustrated throughout with Poumeyrol's incredible erotic drawings, "the techniques and ideas behind each of the finely drawn, lewd and Surrealist paintings of cult erotic French artist Jean-Marie Poumeyrol (b.1946) are explained by French Surrealist author and filmmaker Raymond Borde." In these, his early works, Jean-Marie Poumeyrol was recognized as a master of erotica, and often associated with the fantastic realism movement, combining hallucinogenic and macabre imagery in an unparalleled manner. Upon graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux he already had a four year old son to support, and so began his illustrious career as a teacher of mechanical draftsmanship, before his educational career was cut short by the system. Art teachers had to pass tests given by the board to determine if they were skilled enough to teach drawing. At the same time that Poumeyrol’s erotic works were first seeing print and sought out avidly by collectors, he failed his art teacher’s exam—being given an ‘F’ for nude drawing. Encouraged by this failure, he dedicated himself to painting and drawing full time, eventually creating a large body of erotica which have marked him ever since (along with Sibylle Ruppert) as one of France’s greatest artists in this domain.
Raymond Borde (1920-2004) is a French film critic, film maker and essayist, co-founder and curator of the Cinémathèque de Toulouse. Associated with the surrealist movement and André Breton, he contributed to Positif and Premier Plan and published around twenty books.
Éric Losfeld (1922 - 1979) was a Belgian-born French publisher who had a reputation for publishing controversial material and was as often sued as Jean-Jacques Pauvert. A publisher who despised profit, he boasted that he had been, throughout his life, "in debt like a mule". When the creditors and the prosecutors gave him a little respite, he who defined himself as a "free editor" had only one principle: to be faithful to his tastes and unfaithful to his disgusts. "The only literature that touches me," he proclaimed, " is literature written with passion, or rather passionate literature." Thus, for thirty years, Losfeld created, at Arcane Editions, Le Terrain Vague, and under his own name, an invaluable and often clandestine catalog of Babouvist and hallucinated principality, and where he gathered all his preferences. For surrealism, eroticism, anarchism, romanticism, fantasy, black humor, jazz and comics. The world according to Losfeld, was that of Artaud, Mandiargues, Druillet, Sade, Vian, Peret, Allais, Jarry, Gbe, Sternberg, Forneret, Bealu, Topor, Arrabal, Peellaert or Klossowski. He was the publisher of Emmanuelle (1967), surrealist magazines ("Bief") and cinematographic magazines ("Midi Minuit Fantastique" and "Positif"), and the Barbarella science fiction comic book created by Jean-Claude Forest, amongst many other titles. Losfeld's tombstone inscription reads, "Tout ce qu'il éditait avait le souffle de la liberté." ("Everything he edited had the breath of freedom.").
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket.
1981, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 33 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Galerie Bijan Aalam / Paris
Editions Natiris / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol — Peintures et Dessins, published by Éditions Baal-Natiris in association with the great Galerie Bijan Aalam, Paris, in 1981. Beautifully illustrated throughout with the visionary drawings and paintings of Jean-Marie Poumeyrol (b. 1941), this over-sized limited edition volume includes text by author Jean-François Reverzy and a conversation between the artist and author. Reverzy's text is fittingly entitled "The Haunting", introducing a remarkable period of Poumeyrol's work from 1973—1980 that matures from his early, complex, fantasy erotic work into his unique, finely-rendered depictions of scarred and haunted liminal spaces, ensnaring the viewer in his forensic scenes of obsession. Poumeyrol's dark architectural Wunderkammers are heavy with disturbance. What has happened, what is to come, what is desired, what is feared. Located out of time, yet littered with curios and trompe-l'œil portholes to many different time-places, Poumeyrol masters the familiar and gentle sensibility of mid-century European still-life/landscape painting with one-hand, whilst luring the viewer into an alien and unsettling pyscho-sexual dread with the other. Often associated with the fantastic realism movement, Poumeyrol combines hallucinogenic and macabre imagery in an unparalleled manner. Upon graduation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bordeaux he already had a four year old son to support, and so began his illustrious career as a teacher of mechanical draftsmanship, before his educational career was cut short by the system. Art teachers had to pass tests given by the board to determine if they were skilled enough to teach drawing. At the same time that Poumeyrol’s erotic works were first seeing print and sought out avidly by collectors, he failed his art teacher’s exam—being given an ‘F’ for nude drawing. Encouraged by this failure, he dedicated himself to painting and drawing full time, eventually creating a large body of erotica which have marked him ever since (along with German born Sibylle Ruppert) as one of France’s greatest artists in this domain.
Fine copy in Fine dust jacket.
1968, Japanese
Hardcover in hard slipcase, unpaginated, 19 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$160.00 - In stock -
Scarce hardcover, slipcased volume on the "Art of Eroticism", published only in Japan in 1968. An amazing history of humanity that collects erotic masterpieces from around the world. With illustrated slipcase by Japanese artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko, this book functions as a separate visual volume to Ove Brussendorf and Poul Henningsen's celebrated History of Eroticism, depicting sexual customs from ancient times to the present day with 700 illustrations reproduced on glossy stock.
Very Good copy with general age and some wear to slipcase. Book well-preserved!
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 325 pages, 23 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Andre De Rache / Brussels
$300.00 - In stock -
First edition of the best, most comprehensive reference book on the work of French—Belgian Surrealist artist Felix Labisse, and one of the only publications on the artist in the English language. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, including many photographs of Labisse's life and artistic circles, with extensive accompanying essays by the great Surrealist biographer and author Patrick Walberg, including chapters: Gayant's child; The Ostend clan; The Wizard of Families; Behind the Scenes of the Party; Devil's Transvestites. Highly recommended.
Félix Labisse (1905—1982) was a self-taught French Surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer. He was born in Marchiennes. He divided his time between Paris and the Belgian coast from 1927. In Ostend he met James Ensor, with whom he became friends for life. In 1927 he set up his own studio there, influenced by his contact with the Ostend artists Ensor, Constant Permeke and Léon Spilliaert. Labisse mainly worked with oil on canvas. Beginning in 1931 he designed extensively literature and for the theater. In 1951 he staged the play Le Diable et le Bon Dieu by Jean-Paul Sartre at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris and in 1954 he staged the play Les Mystères de Paris by Albert Vidalie under the direction of Georges Vitaly at the Theater La Bruyere in Paris. Labisse's work was also influenced by Paul Delvaux and René Magritte. Describing his own work as 'libidoscaphes', his paintings depict fantastical hybrid creatures, heavy with motifs of eroticism and Freudian themes. He painted the first of a series of his iconic blue women in 1960; among them is the Bain Turquoise. He was the subject of a film by Alain Resnais, Visite à Félix Labisse (1947). In 1966 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 1973 his paintings were shown in a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. He died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1982.
Patrick Waldberg (1913—1985) was a Franco-American art critic known for his profiles of Surrealist artists. Born in Santa Monica, California, Waldberg moved to Paris as a child with his family. In 1932, and while still a student (age 19), he joined Boris Souvarine's Democratic Communist Circle. There he met Georges Bataille and his friends Michel Leiris and André Masson, and was initiated by them into a wild night life. 1937 saw him back in California to take care of "family matters", however, a letter from Georges Bataille reached him there, urging him to return to Paris in order to take part in a Nietzschean secret society Bataille was then forming, called Acéphale ("headless"). Waldberg heeded the call in September 1938, and he says this permanently changed his life. From 1938 to 1940 Waldberg would serve as the secretary of Bataille's "official" group, the College of Sacred Sociology. In 1959 he left Paris to move to the French village of Seillans, where his second wife Line Jubelin was from. Max Ernst and his own second wife Dorothea Tanning joined him there. Their houses are now a Max Ernst museum and a Maison Waldberg museum.
Very Good in VG dust jacket — copy, light wear/age only.
1966, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 214 pages, 21 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Something Else Press / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover English edition, published in 1966 by Something Else Press, New York, of "An Anecdoted Topography of Chance", arguably the most important and entertaining "Artist's Book" of the post-war period. A unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the FLUXUS and Nouveau Realisme movements, Daniel Spoerri, Robert Filliou, Emmett Williams, and Roland Topor.
What is the Topography? Hard to explain an idea so simple yet so brilliantly executed. Following a rambling conversation with his dear friend Robert Filliou, 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, anecdotes; not only from the original author, but from his friends as well: a beguiling creation was born. Many of the principal participants of FLUXUS make an appearance (and texts by Higgins, Jouffroy, Kaprow, Restany, and Tinguely are included, among others). It is a novel of digressions in the manner of Tristram Shandy or Robbe-Grillet; it's a game, a poem, an encyclopaedia, a cabinet of wonders: a celebration of friendship and creativity.
The Topography personifies (and pre-dates) the whole FLUXUS spirit and constitutes one of the strangest and most compelling insights into the artist's life. From out of the banal detritus of the everyday a virtual autobiography emerges: of four perceptive, witty and eloquent members of the human species.
Translated from the French and further anecdoted by poet Emmett Williams.
First 1966 hardcover edition in Very Good condition, with Good dust jacket, some wear and tear to edges, light fading to spine, preserved in mylar wrap.
Couldn't be more highly recommended.
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 176 pages, 31 x 24.1 cm
Published by
Skira / Milan
$95.00 - In stock -
Published on occasion of the exhibition Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy: Ring of Iron, Ring of Wool curated by Dr Victoria-Noel-Johnson, Marzina Marzetti (Director of the Helly Nahmad Gallery) in collaboration with Derek Des Islets and Matthew Foster, Helly Nahmad Gallery, New York, this hardcover catalogue explores the work of Kay Sage (American, 1898—1963) and Yves Tanguy (French-American, 1900—1955), two eminent Surrealist artists who married in 1940. Particular attention will be given to Sage's fascinating life and extraordinary work, which has long been obscured by her relationship with the better-known Tanguy, a key figure of French Surrealism. As such, the publication will analyse the various stages of Sage's life and career in Italy and Paris before returning to New York in 1939, parallel to Tanguy's own exceptional work of the late 1920s—early 1950s, with the aim of highlighting how their personal and professional trajectories affected their respective work and careers thereafter. Sage's dedication to promoting and safeguarding Tanguy's legacy following his premature death in 1955 will also be explored.
1979, Spanish
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 143 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ediciones Polígrafa / Barcelona
$65.00 - Out of stock
Jorge Camacho is born in 1934 in Havana (Cuba). In 1952, he abandons his law studies and begins painting, driven by an inner strength that still remains for him mysterious. In Mexico, in 1959, he meets the painter Jose Luis Cuevas, with whom he begins a long journey to the sources of pre-Columbian cultures (Teotihuacan, Olmec, Maya, Aztec) that defines a new direction in his painting. Camacho moves to Paris in 1959, where he finds his friend the sculptor Augustin Cardenas. His first solo...
1981, English
Die cut folded exhibition card, 18 x 14.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Nigel Greenwood Inc. / London
$90.00 - In stock -
Rare die-cut folded exhibition card produced by Marc Camille Chaimowicz on the occasion of the exhibition Macquettes… at Nigel Greenwood Inc, London, 10 December, 1981—30 January, 1982.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1981, English
Fold-out booklet, 20.4 x 22.6 cm (folded), 72 x 22.6 cm (unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$50.00 - In stock -
Rare 1981 fold-out booklet published to accompany Marc Camille Chaimowicz's performance of Partial Eclipse… at the Tate Gallery, London in September, 1981.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Fine copy.
1983, English / French
Softcover (w. 2 fabric swatches tipped in), 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Comportement Environnement Performance / Lyon
$240.00 - In stock -
Rare artist's book and catalogue designed by Marc Camille Chaimowicz, 12 Décors Textiles, published in limited edition in 1983. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, reproducing the designs of 12 textile patterns created by the artist, including two hand-printed fabric sample swatches tipped in. Accompanied by text by Hubert Besacier in English and French.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Good copy, with general wear/age to edges/spine, moisture stain to bottom corner, at worst on front board, with associated page rippling. Some markings to covers.
1988, French
14 illustrated prints in illustrated cardboard folio, 30 loose leaf pages, 21.5 x 26.5 cm
Ed. of 150,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Pour l’Art Contemporain / Bourbon-Lancy
$800.00 - In stock -
Exquisite and extremely rare artist's portfolio, Chemin de Croix (Stations of the Cross), 14 drawings made by Marc Camille Chaimowicz at the Leighton Artists Colony, Parish of St Mary’s, Banff, during Easter 1988. Published in an edition of 150 copies and printed in full colour on warm, heavy paper stock, housed in illustrated cardboard folio, printed in Dijon on the presses of l'imprimerie Dips on behalf of the artist and Le Coin du Miroir, Dijon A Priori, Lyon Pour l'art contemporain, Bourbon Lancy. The 14 drawing series was created to be exhibited in the church of Lesme in Saône-et-Loire at the request of the association Pour l’Art Contemporain, Bourbon-Lancy, from July 1988—July 1989.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Very Good copy, with light age and corner/edge wear. Prints beautifully preserved within. Small chipping/closed tear to soft folio corners.
2007, English
Hardcover (pressed cloth w. plastic sleeve), 218 pages, 21 x 26.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Zürich
$1000.00 - Out of stock
One of the great artist books of our time, Marc Camille Chaimowicz's The World of Interiors disappeared from existence immediately after its publication, becoming a book of legend.
Awarded "The Most Beautiful Swiss Book" in 2007, The World of Interiors was conceived and realized by Chaimowicz (b. post-war Paris) on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. In the guise of a perfectly reproduced copy of an issue of the famous World Of Interiors magazine, the artist conceived this publication as a reference monograph and a source catalogue, ranging from his first post-Pop scatter installations to works realized in the 1990s. Looking back over nearly 30 years of work, this issue of World Of Interiors is beautifully détourned by Chaimowicz through inserting and collaging his own work (drawings, designs, paintings, photographs of installations, sculptures, his own domestic interiors, furniture, objects), personal writings, clippings from other magazines, references to Cocteau, Proust, Flaubert, Grey, Genet, Giacometti, and texts by contributing writers throughout its glossy pages. Legend has it (and we have this from the best sources) that the publishers received a 'cease and desist' letter from World Of Interiors' publisher Conde Nast immediately after its release and the majority of the print-run was destroyed, making this a very scarce and sought after book. The perfect follow-up Chaimowicz book to his gorgeous "Café du Reve" from 1985.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present. His works are in the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum collections.
A fine example of a very collectable and special book, wrapped in original rose cloth hardcover, protected under mylar wrap..
2010, English / German / French
Folio of five looseleaf pattern sheets, a letter in facsimile, and catalogue, colour offset printed, 21.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Secession / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print and collectible artist’s portfolio by Marc Camille Chaimowicz with five pattern sheets, a letter from Chaimowicz in facsimile, and an illustrated catalogue with essay by Silvia Eiblmayr (German/English and French/English). Produced by the Secession in a limited edition and published in cooperation with Musée La Piscine, Roubaix.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Like New copy.
2022, English
Flexcover (clothbound), 248 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$72.00 - In stock -
Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Marc Camille Chaimowicz – Zig Zag and Many Ribbons… at MAMC Saint-Etienne in 2022—2023, this reference monograph revisits the conceptual and sensorial developments pursued by the artist since the 1970s.
Includes a ribbon drawn by the artist as an inserted bookmark. Edited by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Anna Clifford. Text by Marie Canet. Designed by Zak Kyes.
Born in the aftermath of World War II (in 1947 in Paris) of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.
Marie Canet is a French art critic, independent curator and professor of aesthetics at the Villa Arson (Nice).
1977, German
Softcover, 128 pages, 33 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Belser Verlag / Stuttgart
$68.00 - Out of stock
Softcover edition of this wonderful over-sized publication on the unique collaboration between German artist Paul Wunderlich and photographer Karin Székessy, one of Germany's most important female photographers, who were married to each other. Published in Switzerland in 1977, this volumes collects an abundance of these iconic 'transpositions,' evocative, experimental nude photographs by Szekessy juxtaposed with Wunderlich's versions, or replies, in the form of paintings and prints. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w, the result is a fascinating dialogue of unconventional nude form. German literary critic Fritz J. Raddatz's illustrated introduction gives contextual and art historical references and background, accompanied by a full listing of works and exhibition history.
Good—VG copy with only light cover/edge wear.
2002, English
Softcover, 312 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$49.00 - In stock -
Richard Bruce Nugent (1906—1987) was a writer, painter, illustrator, and popular bohemian personality who lived at the centre of the Harlem Renaissance. Protege of Alain Locke, roommate of Wallace Thurman, and friend of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the precocious Nugent stood for many years as the only African-American writer willing to clearly pronounce his homosexuality in print. Selections from his writings, paintings, and erotic art-deco drawings-mostly unpublished or scattered in rare and obscure publications-are collected here for the first time. A contributor to the landmark publication FIRE!! and resident of the notorious Niggeratti Manor, Nugent drew heavily upon his own experiences in his art. Nugent also appeared on Broadway in Porgy (the 1927 play) and Run, Little Chillun (1933).
Thomas H. Wirth, a close friend of Nugent's during the last years of the artist's life, has assembled a selection of Nugent's writings, including his best-known piece, "Smoke, Lilies, and Jade," and some of his poems and short non-fiction. The visual art selections include many of Nugent's sketches, as well as a number of his paintings. Wirth has written an introduction providing biographical information about Nugent's life and situating his art in relation to the visual and literary currents that influenced him. A foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. emphasises the importance of Nugent for African American history and culture. Outliving virtually all other Harlem Renaissance figures, Nugent became a valuable resource to historians during his later years and is quoted in many works about the Harlem Renaissance era. This book offers a trove of hitherto unavailable primary source material and original art.
"The list of gay and lesbian African Americans is impressive and long, but it is surely headed by Bruce Nugent...[Wirth] does us an immeasurable favor by bringing together this collection of Nugent's poems, stories, essays, and visual art, along with a biographical sketch and a thoughtful interpretation. One of the key figures in both the creative world of the Harlem Renaissance and the complex underground world of gay culture, Bruce Nugent at last speaks here for himself."-from the Foreword, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. "Nugent is one of the best-known unknowns of the Harlem Renaissance - widely quoted by its chroniclers and revered by people interested in black gay history. By restoring his place in history and making his work widely available for scrutiny, this book performs an invaluable service. Wirth's introduction also provides an extraordinary tour of the gay side of the Renaissance and vivid glimpses of bohemian life in Harlem and the arts circles Nugent moved in." - George Chauncey, author of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World
2018, English
Hardcover, 480 pages, 17.4 x 23.2 cm
Published by
Atlas Press / London
$65.00 - In stock -
Georges Bataille's secret society, long the stuff of legend, is now revealed in its texts, meditations, rules and prohibitions.
This book recounts what must be one of the most unusual intellectual journeys of modern times, in which the influential philosopher, cultural theorist and occasional pornographer Georges Bataille (1897-1962), having spent the early 1930s in far-left groups opposing the rise of fascism, abandoned that approach in order to transfer the struggle onto "the mythological plane."
In 1937, Bataille founded two groups in order to explore the combinations of power and the "sacred" at work in society. The first group, the College of Sociology, gave lectures that were intended to reveal the hidden undercurrents within a society on the verge of catastrophe. The second group was Acéphale, a genuine secret society and anti-religion whose emblem was a headless figure that, in part, represented the death of God. Until the discovery a few years ago of the group's internal papers (which include theoretical texts, meditations, minutes of meetings, rules and prohibitions and even a membership list), almost nothing was known of its activities.
This book is the first to collect a representative selection of the writings of Bataille, and of those close to him, in the years leading up to World War II. The texts published here comprise lectures given to the College of Sociology by Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris, essays from the Acéphale journal and a large cache of the internal papers from the secret society. A desperate narrative unfolds, wherein Bataille risked all in a wholly unreasonable quest--with a few fellow travelers, he undertook what he later described as a "journey out of this world."
Additional texts by Roger Caillois, Pierre Klossowski, Michel Leiris, and by Georges Ambrosino, Pierre Andler, Michel Carrouges, Jacques Chavy, Jean Dautry, Henri Dobier, Henri Dussat, Imre Kelemen, Jean Rollin, Patrick Waldberg.
And with drawings by André Masson
Highest recommendation!
1978, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 20 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
Schirmer Mosel
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1978 edition of this gorgeous German book dedicated entirely to the magnificent photographic work of Wols. Lavishly illustrated throughout in b/w with a comprehensive collection of over 100 pages of his accomplished photography of still life object assemblages, portraits, the streets of Paris, interiors, and more, including an additional 120 pages of heavily illustrated in-depth biographical text on the artist, featuring many of his paintings, drawings, photographs and private photo-documents.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter, photographer, engraver, and graphic designer. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, Wols was close to Surrealism, and is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement, and of Informal art in Europe. He moved to France when he fled the Hitlerian regime, with a recommendation from the artist-teacher Moholy-Nagy. Illegal immigrant, he was considered as a deserter and a stateless person, arrested many times by the French police. In 1936, Wols received, with Léger and Rivière's help, a limited resident permit, working as a photographer — his unusual fashion and interiors photographs were sold as postcards and printed in many international fashion magazines. Immediately after the beginning of the Second World War, Wols was enprisoned with many Germans in different French internment camps, where Wols realized many surrealist drawings and watercolours that he is now well-known for. He spent most of the war trying to emigrate to the United States, an unsuccessful and costly enterprise that may have driven him to alcoholism. After the hype from the war had died down, he had his first exhibition of watercolors in December 1945 at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris, where despite the lack of commercial success he made an impression. His paintings represented a rejection of figuration and abstraction, and a projection into a metaphysical plane. In the years following the war, Schulze concentrated on painting and etching. His health declined severely towards the end of the 1940s; in 1951 he died of food poisoning at the Hotel Montalembert in Paris, after releasing himself from hospital against medical advice. After his death his works were shown at the Kassel documenta (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964).
Very Good with some cover wear/rubbing.
1959, French
Softcover (french-folds), 46 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gallery Europe / Paris
$70.00 - Out of stock
Beautifully designed catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Wols - Decembre 1959 - Fevrier 1960, Gallery Europe, Paris. Illustrated throughout with the paintings and drawings of German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols, mounted as plates in colour and b/w on raw black boards with accompanying texts/lyrics of Will Grohmann, Henri Miller and Wols in French printed on blue machine paper throughout. Closes with Oevres exposées. On of the loveliest Wols catalogues.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Very Good copy with some tanning to cover edges.
1998, German
Hardcover, 224 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Brinkmann & Bose / Berlin
Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst / Berlin
$280.00 - Out of stock
First limited edition hardcover edition of this wonderful Unica Zürn monograph. Published to accompany a major survey exhibition in Berlin in 1998, this beautifully produced catalogue, now long out-of-print, is still one of the most cherished and comprehensive collections of Zürn's artwork ever published.
The German artist and writer Unica Zürn (1916-1970) joined the ranks of Surrealism in the 1950s, after moving to Paris and taking up residence with fellow German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer. Already an accomplished author, Zürn was drawn to the Surrealist movement's espousal of automatic drawing and writing, Zürn pursued Henri Michaux's declaration that "the hand dreams," making a vocation of these techniques with her dense, otherworldly drawings and paintings that are labyrinthine in detail, as one form sprouts out of another. Also with her experimental anagrams, natural extensions of her established interest in hidden meanings and coincidences. Zürn produced most of her oeuvre during this intensive period in the 1950s and 60s, though one marked by her deteriorating mental health. Many of her works were made during periods of hospitalisation. In 1970, Zürn leapt to her death from the balcony of the Paris apartment she had shared with Bellmer. Upon his death in 1975, Bellmer was buried, at his request, next to Zürn in Paris’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery. Their grave is marked with the words Bellmer wrote for Zürn’s funeral wreath nearly five years before: “My love will follow you into Eternity.”
Zürn has left us an account of the sensation of automatic drawing: "After an initial moment when the pen 'swims' hesitantly on the paper, she discovers the place assigned to the first eye. It is only when she is being watched from the depths of the paper that she begins to get her bearings and, effortlessly, one motif is added to another."
Very Good copy, light wear.