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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2001, English
Hardcover (w. galssine dust jacket), 254 pages, 22.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of California / Berkeley
International Centre of Photography / New York
$140.00 - In stock -
First 2001 hardcover edition of Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer, Therese Lichtenstein's highly original book studying the the life-size, adolescent-girl dolls created by German artist Hans Bellmer in the 1930s.
Disturbing and controversial, Bellmer's dolls with their uncanny, fragmented bodies and eroticized poseswere just as shocking during Bellmer's time as they are today. Until now there has been little available in English about Bellmer's dolls, and Lichtenstein's book will be welcomed for its fresh interpretation of the artist's work and his place in European modernism. Eighty striking photographs accompany the text. Working during a time when Nazism was on the rise, Bellmer created several dolls with fragmented bodies that could be dismantled and arranged in various configurations. Using a narrative format, he then photographed the dolls in a range of grotesque, often sexual, positions. The images he conveyed were of death and decay, abuse and longing, in stark contrast to Nazism's mythic utopian celebration of adolescence.Lichtenstein interprets Bellmer's complex expressions of eroticism as a protest against the Nazis and also against his father, a cold and repressive Nazi sympathizer. At the same time, she says, by hyperbolically flaunting a passive femininity in a theatrical manner, Bellmer's images allow us to consider how cultural representations can affect the formation of identity and alternative possibilities.
"Behind Closed Doors reveals the complex structure behind these photographs of violated female adolescence, a structure in which sadism, masochism, hermaphroditism, fetishism, utopianism, and nostalgia all play a role. Above all, Lichtenstein's study makes clear the political aspect of these transgressive images: the way in which they served to question and undermine the contemporary authoritarian Nazi image of sexual 'normalcy' by recourse to a violent return of the repressed." -Linda Nochlin, author of Representing Women "Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer is a compelling gathering of the narratives around psychoanalysis, visual culture, biology, and gender. Therese Lichtenstein rigorously examines Bellmer's picturing of the body as the site of desire, confusion, and sudden disaster, and in doing so produces a telling tale of history's secrets and lies."—Barbara Kruger
Therese Lichtenstein has taught art history and museum studies at New York University, Rice University, and Mount Holyoke College.
Very Good copy in Good original glassine dust jacket with some light wear.
1984, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 100 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sanwa / Tokyo
$190.00 - In stock -
Very rare special August 1984 issue of Flower Slave, with cover feature "Namio Harukawa's World". This gorgeous, over-sized gloss cult fetish magazine published by Sanwa, Tokyo, is devoted entirely to "The Queen", sadistic mistresses and dominatrix goddesses of femdom enlightenment — packed from cover to cover with saturated full-colour photographic Japanese femdom shoots of many varieties, including western reproductions, Japanese queen profiles, illustrated fetish stories, video features, and amazing pictorial instructional male torture articles. This special issue is also a major early publication celebrating the world of femdom master illustrator Namio Harukawa, including his original cover and dust jacket artwork and lavish colour fold-outs of his incredible illustrations. The whole magazine embodying Harukawa's erotic fantasy world, this title has become an important part of his published history.
Namio Harukawa (1947—2020), a pseudonymous Japanese fetish artist best known for his masterful pencil works depicting female domination ("femdom"), with erotic asphyxiation through facesitting appearing as a frequent subject of his art. Born 1947 in Osaka, Japan, Harukawa’s distinctive penname combines the name of film actress Harukawa Masumi with an anagram of Naomi, the sadistic heroine in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel "Chijin no ai / A Fool’s Love". While in high school, Harukawa began contributing work to the readers’ column of leading postwar Japanese SM pulp magazine "Kitan Club". Since then, Harukawa’s drawings of male masochism have lovingly portrayed noble, voluptuously beautiful women and the men who serve them as human furniture. An extraordinary and prolific artist who remained committed to the regime of “absolute Ganmen Kijo Shugi (facesitting principle)” throughout his artistic life, Namio Harukawa passed away on April 2020, he was 72 years old.
Very Good copy in illustrated dust jacket.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 250 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$40.00 - In stock -
SM Kitan September 1977 issue. A cult classic of vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage), SM Kitan was the SM magazine published by the great Sun Publishing house, and was formerly known as S&M Abhunter (changing its name to SM Kitan from August 1975). Heavy with wonderful artwork galleries in colour and bw, glossy bondage photo-features, illustrated fetish fiction, manga, fold-outs, and much more. This issue features the work of some of the best names in Japanese SM art. Regular contributors included Ran Akiyoshi, Sotaro Aki, Tadao Chigusa, Namio Harukawa, Yoko Ozuma, Reiko Kita, Akiyoshi Akiyoshi, Hakuzan Shiraishi, Shoji Oki, Namio Harukawa, Akira Kasuga, and Gekko Hayashi (Gojin Ishihara).
Mature audiences (18+) only.
Very Good copy. Light cover wear/age.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 250 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$40.00 - In stock -
SM Kitan October 1977 issue. A cult classic of vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage), SM Kitan was the SM magazine published by the great Sun Publishing house, and was formerly known as S&M Abhunter (changing its name to SM Kitan from August 1975). Heavy with wonderful artwork galleries in colour and bw, glossy bondage photo-features, illustrated fetish fiction, manga, fold-outs, and much more. This issue features the work of some of the best names in Japanese SM art. Regular contributors included Ran Akiyoshi, Sotaro Aki, Tadao Chigusa, Namio Harukawa, Yoko Ozuma, Reiko Kita, Akiyoshi Akiyoshi, Hakuzan Shiraishi, Shoji Oki, Namio Harukawa, Akira Kasuga, and Gekko Hayashi (Gojin Ishihara).
Mature audiences (18+) only.
Very Good copy. Light cover wear/age.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 250 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$40.00 - In stock -
SM Kitan November 1977 issue. A cult classic of vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage), SM Kitan was the SM magazine published by the great Sun Publishing house, and was formerly known as S&M Abhunter (changing its name to SM Kitan from August 1975). Heavy with wonderful artwork galleries in colour and bw, glossy bondage photo-features, illustrated fetish fiction, manga, fold-outs, and much more. This issue features the work of some of the best names in Japanese SM art. Regular contributors included Ran Akiyoshi, Sotaro Aki, Tadao Chigusa, Namio Harukawa, Yoko Ozuma, Reiko Kita, Akiyoshi Akiyoshi, Hakuzan Shiraishi, Shoji Oki, Namio Harukawa, Akira Kasuga, and Gekko Hayashi (Gojin Ishihara).
Mature audiences (18+) only.
Very Good copy. Light cover wear/age.
2010, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 80 pages, 20.8 x 24.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
First 2010 hardcover edition, long out-of-print. Brown's art book published by Treville on the occasion of the Alice Exhibition with Trevor Brown and doll artist Yuriko Yamayoshi, 31 March-11 April 2010 at the Bunkamura Gallery, Shibuya, Tokyo. This collection of Brown's uniquely perverse, disturbing and now iconic paintings revolves around the theme of Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Published only in Japan, where the English artist has resided since 1994.
Trevor Brown (b. 1959) is an illusive and prolific artist who's work explores paraphilias, such as lolicon, ero guro, BDSM, and other fetish themes. Innocence and violence collide in Brown's confronting images. Early features on his art appeared in Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture II, Shade Rupe's Funeral Party 2, and in Jim Goad's ANSWER Me! zine, garnering him wide notoriety across the provocative underground publishing scene of the 1980s—90s. He's contributed artwork to many album covers of Whitehouse, Coil, John Zorn, and many more, illustrated for Coup de Grace, an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's Der Antichrist, the covers of Timeless magazine, and more recently illustrated the cover of the Gothic & Lolita Bible (a subculture in which Brown has many dedicated fans) in Japan, where the the artist has lived since 1994 and where his work has been published in many art book editions.
VG copy, some light wear, block-edge markings.
Alice Exhibition with Yuriko Yamayoshi
http://www.bunkamura.co.jp/gallery/100331alice/index.html
31 March-11 April 2010 at the Bunkamura Gallery, Shibuya, TOKYO
Trevor Brown: Alice Paperback – 1 March 2010
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (2)
Or $53.09 /mo (12 mo). View 2 plans
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Print length
80 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Editions Treville
Publication date
1 March 2010
Dimensions
20.8 x 24.8 x 1.4 cm
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Product details
Publisher : Editions Treville
Publication date : 1 March 2010
Language : English
Print length : 80 pages
ISBN-10 : 4309908683
ISBN-13 : 978-4309908687
Item weight : 466 g
Dimensions : 20.8 x 24.8 x 1.4 cm
2002, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. die-cut dust jacket and boards), unpaginated, 26.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
First 2002 limited hardcover edition of celebrated Japanese doll artist Ryo Yoshida's Articulated Doll artist's book, with the original die-cut dust-jacket and cloth boards to reveal the eyeball. Lavishly illustrated with Yoshida's exquisite dolls, this unique book explores the anatomy of ball-jointed dolls through the eyes of the artist and author, who, like the practices of Simon Yotsuya and Hans Bellmer before him, creates elaborate and beautiful photographs of the dolls in various poses. Like fellow contemporary Japanese doll artist Katan Amano, Yoshida's fetishistic and macabre 1990's work is steeped in gothic and decadent reference. The photographs are divided into the following themes: Good Friends, Young Kimono-Clad Girls, Girls, Nightmare, The Anatomy of Beauties, Alice's Adventures, Siesta, Girl in the Case, Fetish, Belle de Jour, Articulated Girl, Masochists, Captive, Femme Fatale, Nymphomania.
Includes bilingual (Japanese/English) biography and essay "Dissection Play" written by Ryo Yoshida.
Fine—As New copy.
2002, Japanese
Hardcover in slipcase w. illustrated paste-on, unpaginated, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seirin Kogeisha / Tokyo
$250.00 - In stock -
First, limited number-stamped edition of "The Earliest Works of Toshio Saeki" by the Japanese master of Ero guro, published by Seirin-Kogei-Sha in 2002 and long out-of-print. Before Saeki worked in his later palette of bright flat colours, he expressed the darker and more chaotic aspects of unbridled eroticism in stark black and white, with the occasional and dramatic splash of a single primary colour. In this lavishly illustrated book, Saeki's disturbing iconography reveals links to the past and simultaneously indicates the even more bizarre twists his work would take in the future. The Earliest Works also shows the early inspirations of Toshio Saeki, Tomi Ungerer's effect being a most clear one. Broken into three chapters: Earliest Works, Uncollected Works, and Unpublished Studies from 1969, the book also includes a chronological record and notes by Yuji Yamashita. An incredible book!
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.
Perfect fine hardcover copy housed in fine slipcase, beautifully preserved.
1995, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 164 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$390.00 - In stock -
His erotic masterpiece, "Chimushi" is the first comprehensive collection of Toshio Saeki's erotic nightmare artwork, published in 1995 by Treville, only available in Japan, and now very collectible in every edition, but especially in this first hardcover edition. One of his most popular books, and certainly his most demented and sexually graphic, each page of Chimushi sees every darkest sexual depravity rendered in vibrant, explicit colour by the unmistakable hand of Saeki, all impeccably printed in Japan by Treville Editions. Although almost entirely packed with full-page and double-page artworks, the book includes a biography and several crucial essays in Japanese by Suehiro Tanemura, Teruhiko Kuze, Masami Akita, Suehiro Maruo, Keiji Ueshima, Shuji Terayama and Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (!!!)
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—Near Fine copy, same dj, same obi. Light wear only.
2012, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket + obi + postcard), 128 pages, 30.5 x 22 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$130.00 - In stock -
Revised 2012 hardcover edition of infamous Ero-guro master Suehiro Maruo's New Century SM Pictorial, a large format book first published in 2000, packed to the brim with Maruo's dark and surreal artworks, masterfully detailed and explicitly grotesque. This beautifully produced book collects so many of his iconic artworks in lush colour, it also contains a 26-page manga created by Maruo printed in black, white and red, photos of Maruo's personal manga & movie poster collection, a lot about Maruo obsession with movies, approximately 36 pages of monochrome artwork (blue/white or black/white), an article with many photographs (including a few rare pictures of Maruo himself), and a list of all works included, plus contributions by Japanese horror and mystery fiction author Katsuhiko Takahashi, legendary SF manga creator Kazumasa Hirai, Uchida Masaru, and a conversation between master Japanese manga artist Jiro Kuwata and Suehiro Maruo!
Includes Suehiro Maruo postcard insert.
Fine copy in F dust jacket with F obi. A most complete and preserved copy.
2014, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 28 x 21.59 cm
Published by
Creation Books / London
$48.00 - In stock -
The modern era of underground doll-making in Japan began in the late 1960s, with the experiments of Simon Yotsuya and Nori Doi. Directly inspired by the Surrealist Doll constructed by Hans Bellmer in 1932, Simon Yotsuya created a series of ball-jointed, life-sized dolls which featured in his ground-breaking "Eve In The Past And The Future" exhibition in Tokyo, in 1973.
Simon Yotsuya's work inspired a new wave of avant-garde Japanese doll-making, headed by artists such as Ryo Yoshida and Katan Amano, which has continued to flourish to the present day. SECRET DOLL UNDERGROUND, presented by Yuichi Konno, features dolls by fifteen artists, from Simon Yotsuya onwards, with over 80 full-sized colour photographs never before published outside Japan. It also includes Konno's introductory history of the underground doll in Japan.
Yuichi Konno is the editor of Yaso, an independent arts and culture publication founded in 1979.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, only light cover wear/tanning.
1998, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 118 pages, 30.5 x 28.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Taschen / Cologne
$70.00 - Out of stock
First 1998 hardcover edition of Giger's unrealised film masterpiece. The Mystery of San Gottardo exhaustively collates illustrations, texts, photographs, letters, and notes from a covert, personal project that Giger had been striving to realise for over three decades. “A unique love story… about a man and his love for a freak of nature, Armbeinda, which is really a sentient limb combining an arm and a leg. It is the further development of a recurring image in my work over the last 30 years”, a concept that stemmed from a 1963 creation called "The Beggar," Giger's very first sketch, featuring a leg and an arm holding a hat.
From the publisher:
"The dark king of the horrific, fantastic and bizarrely erotic, Swiss artist Giger might have languished in obscurity, such is the uncompromising vision of his work. However, in the late Seventies Hollywood came calling and his legendary designs for the Alien trilogy propelled him towards international fame and an Oscar. But Allen's Face-hugger, Chestburster and the reptilian Xenomorph are only a few visitors from Giger's monstrous universe. This latest book exhaustively collates illustrations, texts, photographs, letters, and notes from a covert, personal project that Giger has been striving to realise for over three decades. In a story mixing disturbing body horror and old-fashioned adventure tales, Giger illustrates the surreal science-fiction of a dystopian Switzerland where man is rendered into three bio-mechanical life-forms at the age of 60. The sexually insatiable arm-leg creature which rampages throughout this volume must rate as one of Giger's most grotesque creations. After being distracted by Hollywood for far too long, in this book Giger presents his latest outlandish and extraordinary visual excursion, a death-driving nightmare that will continue to unspool in your head long after you've closed the covers."
Highly recommended.
VG copy in G dust jacket with tanning to spine edge a ding to back.
1981, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 40 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charles E. Tuttle / Tokyo
$150.00 - In stock -
Scarce first Japanese edition (entirely in English language), published in Tokyo by Charles Tuttle, of this beautifully produced over-sized 1981 book by H. R. Giger. Foreword by Timothy Leary.
In 1981, a year after being awarded the Oscar for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for Alien, the book H.R. GIGER N.Y. CITY was published. This series of post Alien works, the result of an intense period of non-stop painting, literally day and night, were inspired by Giger's trip to New York City and a template which his colleague Cornelius de Fries, brought back from one of his excursions into the electronic industry. The stencil was actually a sheet of scrap metal from which electrical components had been punched out. Alongside these incredible works are drawings, articles, press clippings, posters and polaroids from Giger's time in New York City.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good copy, tight binding with some corner cover wear, tanning to page edges and foxing to preliminary pages.
1969, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 92 pages, 20 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jean-Jacques Pauvert / Paris
$70.00 - In stock -
Excellent copy of the first monograph ever published on the work of Pierre Molinier, published by the great Jean-Jacques Pauvert in Paris, 1969. The only book published on his work while Molinier was alive. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, drawings, and much more. Features texts by Andre Breton and Emmanuelle Arsan, also bibliography and biography. Texts in French.
Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket, preserved under mylar wrap.
1993, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 210 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
World Comics / Japan
Kubo Shoten / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
Very rare original first Japanese book collection of the infamous cult classic eromanga "Bondage Fairies" by Kondom, published by Kubo Shoten way back in 1993. This is the first ever book collecting over 200 pages of the first of the original series from the early 1990s, in the original Japanese language, as they appeared in the pages of Kubo Shoten's Young Lemon magazine for the first time as "Bondage Fairies".
Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.
Near Fine copy in original NF dust jacket.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 162 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
World Comics / Japan
Kubo Shoten / Japan
$160.00 - Out of stock
Very rare original first printing Volume 2 Japanese book collection of the infamous cult classic eromanga "Bondage Fairies" by Kondom, published by Kubo Shoten way back in 1994. Volume 3 of the first ever book collection bringing together over 160 pages of the the original series from the early 1990s, in the original Japanese language, as they appeared in the pages of Kubo Shoten's Young Lemon magazine for the first time as "Bondage Fairies".
Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.
Near Fine copy in original NF dust jacket.
1995, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 164 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
World Comics / Japan
Kubo Shoten / Japan
$160.00 - Out of stock
Very rare original first printing Volume 3 Japanese book collection of the infamous cult classic eromanga "Bondage Fairies" by Kondom, published by Kubo Shoten way back in 1995. Volume 3 of the first ever book collection bringing together over 160 pages of the the original series from the early 1990s, in the original Japanese language, as they appeared in the pages of Kubo Shoten's Young Lemon magazine for the first time as "Bondage Fairies".
Created by manga artist Teruo Kakuta under the pen name "Kondom", a multilingual pun, meaning "little insect" in Japanese and "condom" in English, Bondage Fairies is an erotic series about highly sexual female forest fairies, who work as police officers protecting the forest, whilst engaging in a wild array of anthropomorphized, inter-species sexual acts. The series began in Japan in 1990 as Insect Hunter, but it was quickly banned from sale by the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance. Under a new title, the manga was serialized in manga magazine Lemon Kids. The series is among the earliest sexually explicit manga (eromanga) commercially translated and published uncensored in the United States where the earliest editions date from 1994 (Venus Press). Eros Comix subsequently published a multi-volume series of the collected Bondage Fairies, and subsequent stories, now all very collectible. Translated to Swedish, German, French, and Italian, Bondage Fairies is one of the most popular underground adult Japanese comics outside Japan.
Near Fine copy in original NF dust jacket.
2005, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 80 pages, 19 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Blue Interactions / Japan
$120.00 - In stock -
Wonderful hardcover collection of Aquirax Uno's poster work dating 1959-1975.
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Near Fine copy with dust jacket and obi.
1972, Japanese
Softcover (w. illustrated slipcase), 34 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Haga Bookstore / Japan
$420.00 - In 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 for any Saeki library.
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, same dust jacket.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and original plastic wrap), 80 pages, 22.8 x 16.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of The World of Pierre Molinier, published in 1989 in Japan. An exquisite book of Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings, fittingly wrapped in "stocking" dust jacket, with texts by André Breton, translated from French to Japanese by Kosaku Ikuta, imagery from "Molinier" (1966) film by Raymond Borde, beautifully designed and printed in Japan where Molinier's artworks had a particular resonance.
Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.
Very Good copy in original plastic jacket.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Issue No.28 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty bookshop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980—90s. Each issue covers different themes and features, heavy on fetishism.
Issue No.28, the "Fetishism" issue features collected writings and images around the theme of fetish by John Willie, Bizarre Magazine, Pierre Molinier, Irina Ionesco, Bernard Faucon (his incredible Summer Camp series), Irwing Klaw, Centurians Publishing Inc. bondage catalogues, Andy Warhol and much more... What's more, this issue comes complete with a green synthetic feather to kickstart your own sensual adventures.
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
2004, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Atelier Peyotl / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
"Doll" Special Feature Issue of cult Japanese underground magazine Yaso, published in 2004, edited by Yuichi Konno and Atelier Peyotl (publishers of Night Vision/Yaso/Peyotl/Wave/Silvester Club...). Heavily illustrated with texts in Japanese with in-depth profiles, interviews and essays on leading artists that work with dolls, including contemporary Japanese masters of doll art, Koitsukihime, Katan Amano, Etsuko Miura, Yoshiko Hori, Yogu, Simon Yotsuya, Ryo Yoshida, Akiyama Mahoko, Mari Shimizu, influential Gothic Lolita illustrator Mitsukazu Mihara, Nori Doi, legendary Czech artist and animator Jan Švankmajer, Polish artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor, Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi, film-maker Floria Sigismondi, Louise Bourgeois, Slawomir Rumiak, Nori Doi, and a fantastic illustrated book guide of doll-related art books and literature, from Mary Shelley to The Surrealists, Hans Bellmer, Ken Katayama, Pierre Mollinier, Makoto Aida, Irina Ionesco, H.R. Giger...
Very Good copy with some wear to cover extremities.
2014, Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi), 64 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Atelier Third / Japan
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of Japanese artist Toru Nishimaki’s first art book, “Pollen of the Rocaille”, published in Japan in 2014 and long out-of-print. 13 years since his first solo exhibition, Toru Nishimaki (b. Tokyo, 1964), has been committed to what the artist has dubbed "black caricatures," using his pencil to bring the viewer deep into a world of densely rendered, transgressive eroticism. Nishimaki's unique works depict cherubic, often genderqueer, boys/girls/hermaphrodites engaging in all kinds of unadulterated erotic and immoral behaviour (sitophilia, emetophilia, coprophilia) amidst an enchanted gothic setting of period train-compartments, children's toys and tea cakes — a "utopia where everyone is happy to drown in their fetish". An extraordinary vision that brings to mind scenes from Věra Chytilová's Daisies (1966) or Dusan Makevejev's Sweet Movie (1974)! Also includes fantastic prose from the artist (in Japanese) that leads the viewer further into the narrative of this unique world.
As New copy! With obi (not pictured).