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.
2006, English / French
Softcover (french folds), 208 pages, 24 x 20 cm
Published by
Halle Saint-Pierre / Paris
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this wonderful Unica Zürn monograph, published by Publisher Éditions du Panama to accompany a major survey exhibition in Paris in 2006—2007 at the Halle Saint Pierre, curated by Martine Lusardy and Sepp Hiekisch-Picard. Lavishly illustrated, this important catalogue, now long out-of-print, includes a large number of illuminating texts by scholars in bi-lingual English/French, including: "Unica Zürn: designs so dense" by Roger Cardinal; “Du wirst dein Geheimnis sagen (“You will tell your secret”). The anagram in the work of Unica Zürn" by Victoria Appelbe; "The magical encounter between writing and image" by Barbara Safarova; "The work of Unica Zürn, genesis and reception" by Sepp Hiekisch-Picard; "Read Unica Zürn: the contagion of the void" by Jean-Louis Lanoux; "Unica Zürn (July 6, 1916 – October 19, 1970): biographical references" by Rike Felka and Erich Brinkmann. An important, heavily illustrated reference of Zürn's life and work.
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 with small tears to spine tips and light waving to book block.
1978, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase, unpaginated, 22 x 16 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gentosha / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
1978 edition of Japanese illustrator Ken Katayama's masterpiece artbook, Beautiful Days, originally issued in this same hardcover, slipcased form in 1969 in a limited edition. Beautiful Days is the most crystallised embodiment of one of the most unique artistic visions of fantasy illustration one could ever find, and the first collection ever published by the artist, when, after discovering the erotic works on the fringe of Surrealism he gave up becoming a painter and gave himself over to the obscene impulses of drawing. "There, so to speak, masturbation became a picture. Until then, I never thought that masturbation could become a painting"—excerpt from Ken Katayama's postscript. Katayama's magnificently, obsessive graphite-rendered world-making is, like those of Lewis Carroll before him, made up almost entirely of children; children in states of blank-faced entrancement, possession and naked abandon; groping, lost and frozen in a psychosexual schoolhood theatre. Unlike anything else, aspects of Katayama's bewildering, often sadomasochistic, fairytale visions recall the tales of de Sade, Bataille, Klossowski, Carroll's Alice; the unconscious pictures of Balthus, Hans Bellmer, or Leonor Fini; the architectural dreamscapes of Delvaux or the Metaphysical painters; even the dark psychological renderings of fellow Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi — a haunted landscape of eroticised adolescent memories with recurring motifs of free flowing urination and defecation, violently strewn newspapers, urinals, and apparitions of cat-people. Nothing like it! The work even inspired an experimental film of boyhood memories directed by the provocative film-maker Nakamura Masanobu in 1970.
"If you
keep your hands in your pockets
in your pocket
what are you hiding
that's how I got it
darkness in my pocket, days of dust
I opened the old album and showed
beautiful days other days"
Virtually unknown outside his native Japan, Katayama (b. 1940, Tokyo) studied at the Musahino Art University and in the 1960s and 1970s begin contributing illustrations to underground art and literary magazines such as Black Notebook, Featured Story and fetish magazines such as SM Select, amongst many others. He published art books such as Angel Hour, Lost Child's Top, Match Taker, The Cat in Boots, and many more, and went on to become a successful children's story book illustrator, publishing many works throughout the 1980s—90s.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved in Very Good slipcase.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 154 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
First 1997 edition collection of "The Early Works" by the Japanese master of Ero guro Toshio Saeki, published by Treville in 1997 and long out-of-print. An extensive collection of incredible works gathered from his first major book in 1970, his acclaimed 1971 Red Book, the panel-by-panel replication of an early Saeki manga story, and much more. Texts by Akira Uno, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Timothy Leary.
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket and obi, light wear.
2014, Japanese / English
Hardcover, 96 pages, 15 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Third / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of 'Le Principe de la Constitution' by Yoshifumi Hayashi, published in 2014 and now out-of-print. ‘Eroticism is to establish order, or in other words the principle of constitution, and not to destroy’ Yoshifumi Hayashi says. This latest collection of self-taught Hayashi's masterfully rendered obsessive visions of grotesque, disembodied eroticism continue his unique and highly original exploration of graphic art. Profusely illustrated throughout, this book follows-on from the comprehensive "La Jeune Marieè d'un Materialiste Enceinte de Cerveaux" monograph (mid 1970s-mid 1990s) illustrating Hayashi's pencil work throughout the 2000s. Includes a very rare essay by Hayashi, who first studied philosophy, discussing his theories about science and eros, tracing his childhood interest in astronomy through to his understanding of eroticism through dynamics.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
As New copy including Hayashi promotional postcard.
1989, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 19 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Arts Club of Chicago / Chicago
$150.00 - In stock -
Seldom seen, rare exhibition catalogue, Paintings, Works on Paper and Notebooks 1970—1988, published in conjunction with the exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago, December 3 1998—January 23 1999. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with essays by Kathy Cottong and Michael Klein. Also contains extensive chronology of Thek's life. This archive copy includes an inserted multi-page, stapled gallery press-release, plus a review clipping from the Chicago Reader of the exhibition.
VG—Near Fine copy.
1989, English / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 30 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Delano Greenidge Editions / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
First 1989 hardcover edition of this seminal and now rare English-language Palermo monograph, published by Delano Greenidge Editions, New York. This gorgeous book, personally our favourite Palermo book, is profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white, surveying this great German artist's entire career, accompanied by texts from Franz Dahlem, Evelyn Weiss, Max Wechsler, and a bibliography by Aurel Scheibler, plus list of exhibitions. Includes many portraits, installations and studio photographs, also. Edited by Erich Maas and Delano Greenidge. All texts are in both English and German.
Blinky Palermo (1943—1977), born Peter Schwarze, Heisterkamp his foster surname, was a German abstract painter. He adopted his outlandish name in 1964, during his studies with Bruno Goller and Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1962 and 1967, in reference to Frank "Blinky" Palermo, an American Mafioso and boxing promoter who managed Sonny Liston. In 1969, Palermo moved to Mönchengladbach and set up a studio he would share with Imi Knoebel and Ulrich Rückriem. After a stay in New York in the early 1970s, he moved into Gerhard Richter's former Düsseldorf studio. Over the course of his 14-year artistic career Palermo tirelessly probed the limits of abstract painting. Having begun his brushwork on more traditional surfaces, he shifted his activity to less conventional supports, experimenting with diverse materials and forms, exploring the relationships that can exist between the wall and the space delimited by the painting. Under Beuys, he became increasingly interested in the organized spatial relationship between form and colour, a polarity which is manifest throughout the rest of his oeuvre. In the mid 1960s, Palermo moved away from conventional rectangular canvases and increasingly opted for surfaces such as the circle, triangle, cruciform, totem pole and even the interior walls of buildings. Between 1964 and 1966, Palermo produced a small series of paintings on canvas in which he experimented with constructivist principles of order. Over the course of his short life, Palermo participated in more than seventy exhibitions worldwide, including Documenta in 1972 and the Venice Biennale in 1975. Blinky Palermo died in 1977, aged 33, during a trip to the Maldives.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket, bumping to hardcover corners not affecting pages, light wear and tear to DJ.
2024, English
Softcover (saddle stiched w. dust jacket in glassine sleeve), 28 pages, 15.2 x 28 cm
Published by
no more poetry / Naarm
$35.00 - In stock -
no more poetry presents nmp.19
Hobbyist
the debut books of artworks by Cosi
Kill ! kill ! let there be fresh meat…
— W. Carlos Williams Spring and All
"In the lingering impression, or, print one might be urged to place their finger on the pure substance of an uninhibited adult imagination — to which the writer rejects — obviously, such imagination is deeply habitual, rendered in ink & pencil, in The Knowledge of a practice so innate, or rich, that to disinherit from the author, or the author from it, would represent an absolute undoing, a total annihilation of an apparatus, so far from rudimentary, that it becomes simply (or quite complexly) the image of an entire self. this collection of some twenty-eight artworks, being automatic, incongruent — graphite, charcoal, ink — rigid, finite and complete — convey an underestimated and complex sense of play, by which the author — simply Cosi (as if distilling the self in a single word could be conceived as simple) — becomes a diagrammatic example of a brilliant and full-cream adult, so disinterested in the conformity of adulthood that more difficulty is placed within the absurd notion itself. a self professed Ideas Guy, Cosi shows us the fantastic spaces that so often fight against the drab mundanity of adult existence, illuminating it so justly that it is impossible not to be absorbed by the light, in this way, these drawings are a love story, not only to the author herself, but also to the de-husked onlooker (you). in this congress, this made up thing, that we have accumulated, and labelled: a life, there are rules which can be reduced to a fine coating, and that, like in our homes, we need not clean, but rather, let gather. thrust open your windows to whatever world surrounds you, fill the minimal prison with particles of life! forget banality…they will not build park benches in your name, you mustn't want that, you: sweet reader deserve a life worth living, and here, in this collection, you are offered the exact guide."—Joshua Edward, editor nmp, on nmp.19 Hobbyist by Cosi.
2024, English
Hardcover (cloth bound), 240 pages, 22 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$95.00 - Out of stock
It was not before the 1990s that Louise Bourgeois won global recognition for her artistic achievements, becoming famous for her monumental spider sculptures and room-sized cells. But it was in her early oil paintings that the artist first developed the formal vocabulary and defined the thematic concerns that she would continue to explore.
This catalogue accompanies the first major solo exhibition of Bourgeois’ early paintings in Europe, placing them in dialogue with a selection of later sculptures, installations, drawings and prints.
Edited by Stella Rollig, Sabine Fellner, and Johanna Hofer.
Text by Louise Bourgeois, Bice Curiger, Ulf Küster, and John Yau
1993, Russian / English / German
Softcover, 192 pages, 29 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Artograph Verlag / Düsseldorf
$90.00 - Out of stock
1993 monograph published on the occasion of the first Russian exhibition of works by leading representative of the "Vienna School of Fantastic Realism", the artist, poet, and philosopher Ernst Fuchs (1930 – 2015). Fantasia is lavishly illustrated throughout with bold colour examples and details of Fuchs fantastic paintings, drawings, graphics, sculptural and architectural works, surveying his entire life and career chronologically, including many photographic portraits of the artist, studio and home documentation, biography, with texts in English, Russian and German by Igor Jassenjawsky and Joseph Kiblitzky.
Ernst Fuchs (1930 – 2015) was an Austrian artist and draughtsman of Jewish descent, engraver and sculptor, architect and stage designer, master of visionary painting and book illustration, as well as a composer and poet. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1945), he met Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Fritz Janschka, Wolfgang Hutter, and Anton Lehmden, together with whom he later founded what has become known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He was also a founding member of the Art-Club (1946), as well as the Hundsgruppe, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer. Between 1950 and 1961, Fuchs lived mostly in Paris, and made a number of journeys to the United States and Israel, his work informed by the sermons of Meister Eckehart, the symbolism of the alchemists and Jung's Psychology of Alchemy, along with the paintings of the Symbolists and the Old Masters. In 1958 he founded the Galerie Fuchs-Fischoff in Vienna to promote and support the younger painters of the Fantastic Realism school. Fuchs was a important influence on younger generations of artists including his student in Paris, Australian artist Vali Myers. Painters Mati Klarwein and H.R. Giger were also devoted followers of his work, Giger once saying "If I had not seen his work when I was young, I would never have begun to paint myself."
Very Good copy with light wear.
1973, German
Softcover, 68 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Baukunst / Köln
$45.00 - Out of stock
1973 Ernst Fuchs catalogue published on the occasion of the major exhibition at Baukunst-Galerie in Köln, February-March 1973. Illustrated throughout with examples of Fuchs fantastic paintings, graphics, sculptures and rarely seen furniture pieces, all reproduced in vivid colour and black and white, including fold-out spreads. Portrait, biography, list of exhibited works and introductory text by Gustav René Hocke.
Ernst Fuchs (1930 – 2015) was an Austrian artist and draughtsman of Jewish descent, engraver and sculptor, architect and stage designer, master of visionary painting and book illustration, as well as a composer and poet. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1945), he met Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Fritz Janschka, Wolfgang Hutter, and Anton Lehmden, together with whom he later founded what has become known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He was also a founding member of the Art-Club (1946), as well as the Hundsgruppe, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer. Between 1950 and 1961, Fuchs lived mostly in Paris, and made a number of journeys to the United States and Israel, his work informed by the sermons of Meister Eckehart, the symbolism of the alchemists and Jung's Psychology of Alchemy, along with the paintings of the Symbolists and the Old Masters. In 1958 he founded the Galerie Fuchs-Fischoff in Vienna to promote and support the younger painters of the Fantastic Realism school. Fuchs was a important influence on younger generations of artists including his student in Paris, Australian artist Vali Myers. Painters Mati Klarwein and H.R. Giger were also devoted followers of his work, Giger once saying "If I had not seen his work when I was young, I would never have begun to paint myself."
Very Good copy with light handling/corner wear.
2024, English
Softcover (spiral-bound), 52 pages, 20.5 x 16.5 cm
Ed. of 250,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
Emerging from the 1990s New York fashion scene, Susan Cianciolo (b. 1969) garnered a cult like following for her label RUN. Since exiting the fashion world in the early 2000s, Cianciolo has become renowned for making art that delves into memory and the spiritual. Fusing the language of textiles, painting, drawing and craft with the natural world she simultaneously conjures both the humble and the huge.
In this artist book, Cianciolo documents her love of trees and the land amround Lovewell Lake and other lush areas that are particularly close to her and her family.
Spiral bound w/ green wire, French flaps and gatefolds throughout.
edition of 250
2024, English
Softcover (w. hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper), 470 pages, 27.8 x 20.6 cm
Ed. of 50 signed and numbered by the artist,
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$180.00 - In stock -
André Piguet (b.1986) is influenced by an ever expanding field of interests; perhaps most simply filed under “WORLD”. He has a long held interest in making books.
For nearly two decades in the late 19th Century, the Swiss filigranologist, Charles-Moïse Briquet systematically visited 235 paper archives and manuscript collections, as well as libraries for about a thousand printed items. He examined 30,840 volumes, as well as 1,432 documents in unbound form, from which he made a total of 44,000 tracings and recorded 65,000 references to the same. This Herculean feat of historical scholarship culminated in the publication of Briquet’s four volume encyclopedia of European paper watermarks, LES FILIGRANES (1907).
A watermark is a small image that appears in paper when held up to light source. In a method dating back to the 12th Century, these designs were bent out of thin strands of copper wire and sewn into a wire paper mould, supported by a wooden frame.
Ranging from the chaos, ferocity and social disruption of the 13th Century to the rise of humanism and clarity of the high renaissance, these images offer a small window into a Europe caught between ancient and modern; of a world where the mundane and mystic still co-existed.
SELECTED WATERMARKS 1282 – 1600 is a condensed 470 page bootleg photocopy edit of Briquet's 1907 publication. Eschewing any formal design or sequencing and stripping the source material to its bare formal elements, Piguet’s book is both an exercise in graphic deconstruction and an exploration into the possibilities and constraints of the photocopier.
Softcover with hand painted spine strip, ink on Japanese kozo paper, cold glue bound. edition of 50 Signed and numbered by the artist. All spine wraps are unique.
These books are entirely made by hand using archival materials.
Founded in 2020, TUTTO is an independent publisher based in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia with a focus on making artist books.
1983, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 380 pages (approx), 36 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Abbeville Press / New York
$980.00 - In stock -
Very rare, most handsome copy of the first 1983 Abbeville English hardcover edition of the ever mysterious Codex Seraphinianus by Italian artist and designer Luigi Serafini (1949—), a book like no-other. Ever since the Codex Seraphinianus was first published in Italy in limited edition by Franco Maria Ricci in 1981, the book has been recognized as one of the strangest and most beautiful art books ever made. This phantasmagorical visual encyclopedia of an unknown world written in an unknown language has fueled much debate over its meaning. Written for the information age and addressing the import of coding and decoding in genetics, literary criticism, and computer science, the Codex confused, fascinated, and enchanted a generation, including Roland Barthes and Italo Calvino. While its message may be unclear, its appeal is obvious: it is a most exquisite artifact. Blurring the distinction between art book and art object.
Beautifully preserved Near Fine—F copy of the first 1983 English printing in NF dust jacket, preserved in mylar wrap.
2023, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. slipcase and postcard), 176 pages, 31 x 21.5 cm
Edition of 1000,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Gallery Naruyama / Tokyo
$240.00 - Out of stock
Remarkable, comprehensive new book published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of Sadao Hasegawa (1945—1999) at Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, in 2023, divided into two periods for a span of six months. This lavishly produced and limited edition hardcover book (housed in gallery slipcase with removable cover sticker — a temporary censor for distribution purposes), reproduces all of his amazing homo-erotic artwork works in this extensive exhibition, making it the most comprehensive book on the artist yet. From his early romantic works drawn under the influence of psychedelic drugs, to works that interweave Hasegawa’s longing for foreign and exotic lands, erotic images of men created for magazines and manga, this book covers his vast array of styles, revealing many never before published sketches, preparatory drawings and graphic works. All works completely uncensored in their full glory — Hasegawa's unique blend of fantasy, Asian folklore, sado-masochism, and the homoeroticism of Yukio Mishima. Beautifully presented across many different paper stocks, with accompanying essay in English/Japanese. A must for any fan. This copy with illustrated exhibition invite laid in.
Inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima, beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in the self-taught Hasegawa’s work. His unique vision incorporates Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of men in acts of sado-masochism, juxtaposed with lush tropical flowers, strings of pearls, birds and animals that float through the margins of dreamy, ecstatic scenes. After Hasegawa’s suicide in Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999, his family was going to dispose of the artists archive but discovered a portrait of Mishima painted on a stone, accompanied by a note requesting that the works be bequeathed to Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, where the artist’s estate is today.
"When I was a child, I was alone with kūsō (daydreams and wild imagination). Always I went to the fields and the woods. I liked talking to animals and plants. In my imagination, I changed into birds and insects and flowers... These childhood experiences are the basis for my pictures." Sadao Hasegawa (In Touch for Men)
As New copy.
2022, English
Hardcover, 76 pages, 25 x 20 cm
Published by
Baron / UK
$70.00 - In stock -
Back in print! Baron is pleased to present the first posthumous book by Japanese artist Sadao Hasegawa (Jan 1945- Nov 1999), dedicated to Hasegawa’s rarely-published archive.
Hasegawa work is notable for incorporating Japanese, Indian, South-East Asian and African mythology, combined with homo-erotic depictions of hyper-masculine men, in acts of BDSM.
Beauty, eroticism and death are recurring themes in Hasegawa’s work; he was inspired by Nobel Prize nominee Yukio Mishima. After Hasegawa’s suicide in 1999, his family was going to dispose of the artists archive but discovered a portrait of Mishima painted on a stone, accompanied by a note requesting that the works be bequeathed to Gallery Naruyama, Tokyo, where the artist’s estate is today.
Whilst gaining acclaim in queer publications in the USA and Europe, with critics historicising Hasegawa’s work as an influence on contemporary Japanese queer culture, and the gay manga genre, Hasegawa's works have not been widely recognized: his only book is the highly collectable Paradise Visions (Kochi Studio, 1996).
The book also includes an essay by Dr Thomas Baudinette, author of Regimes of Desire: Young Men, Media and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021) and is designed by Sam Boxer, Art Director of Gut Magazine.
1989, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 40 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Michael Werner / Köln
$30.00 - In stock -
1989 catalogue published to accompany the exhibition A. R. Penck "Future of The Soldiers" at Michael Werner in Cologne. Published in an edition of 700 copies, this lovely catalogue reproduces in colour the drawings, paintings and sculptures featured in the exhibition, with texts in German.
Very Good, but National Gallery of Victoria ex-libris stamping to covers and first two pages.
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!
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.