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.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 60 pages, 39.1 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
JICC Publishing Bureau / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1982 edition of this wonderful, very early collection of artworks by Japanese artist Katsu Yoshida (1938—2002). Bold, expressionist and homo-erotically charged, Yoshida's illustration work defined the new wave of 1980's Tokyo. "Portfolio" is packed cover to cover with full-bleed, over-sized reproductions of his sensational, sensual colour brushwork that was to become iconic through the pages of Japanese underground magazines such as SM Sniper and through his collaborations in the world of fashion with Issey Miyake.
Good copy with some chipping to the spine edge of covers, tanning to extremities of newsprint stock.
1973, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24.8 x 19.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Herd Publishing / NSW
$70.00 - In stock -
" ... IS CHARIS, SO NAMED BY A FATHER WHO COLLECTED DEAD LANGUAGES. BORN IN STAWELL 1939, SPENT A DREAMY VICTORIAN GIRLHOOD, TRAINED AS NURSE AND MIDWIFE. WAS IN LOVE WITH JESUS TILL THE AGE OF 21 WHEN SHE DISCOVERED MEN. WENT LOOKING ELSEWHERE FOR HER BLUE PRINCE. HE CAME ACROSS HER IN ANDALUSIA. SPENT SOME YEARS THERE BEFORE TRAVELLING THE EAST AND THE AMERICAS. SETTLED IN AUSTRALIA 1969. COLLABORATES WITH HUSBAND SCHWARZ IN PRODUCING FILM, PHOTO, AND PROSE. IS TRUE SCORPIO, HAS ALWAYS DRAWN HERSELF OUT, HAS NO FORMAL ART TRAINING. IN EUROPE HER WORK IS DESCRIBED AS INDICATIVE OF 'PERFECTLY BALANCED SCHIZOPHRENIA'. HER AMBITION IS TO LIVE FROM THE FRUIT OF HER IMAGINATION."
Very rare sealed copies of Australian artist Charis (Schwarz)'s one and only book of erotic drawings, published by Herd Publications in Sydney, run by Gustav Herstik and his wife, who operated the Love Art sex shops. Herd Publishing was a publisher of a variety of pornographic magazines, including some of the earliest Australian-produced homosexual porn magazines, Stallion and Apollo. A rare early example of the decadent and sensuous artistic output of Charis, one of the last survivors of bohemian Kings Cross and a life-long collaborator with her husband, the late George Schwarz. Producers of poetic works of film, photography, print and prose, simultaneously erotic, taboo, progressive, liberated, too provocative/evocative for the Australian art establishment, Charis and George were the creators of the first Australian hardcore sex films to be passed by the censors (and also refused classification).
"We are witness to depictions of female desire not seen before in the history of Australian art. There are hints of mythologies and magic rituals. Everything is in flux, animals and humans merge and decouple. Mirror images double and distort, orifices, chakras and pleasure points are the keys to reading the images. [...] the gamut of human sexual expression. Amongst the bravura flourish of penmanship the images depict fetish, animalia, group, same sex and single sex desire. There are mythic lovers, imperious duenna, self-possessed and knowing schoolgirls. Hair, flowers, fans, mirrors, umbrellas and candles are recurring motifs. Seemingly simple but infinitely complex, these drawings are important because they reveal a hitherto hidden aspect of female experience and imagining. Within the reams of art history the drawings have echoes of the heady syncretism of Jan Toorop (1858-1928) and Alastair (Baron Hans Heming Voight) (1857-1969), but more importantly they reveal the zeitgeist that also informed other more well-known women artists of the period including Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) and Mary Beth Edelson (1933-2021)."—Craig Judd, from Power Paradise: The Art of George Schwarz & Charis
Highly recommended.
As New dead-stock, still sealed, but with varying degrees of age to stock and plastic bags, occasional small damages from insects or storage.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 108 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Mainichi Newspapers / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
First edition of this 1969 collection of female nude photography from three of Japan's leading photographers — Tetsuya Ichimura, Eikoh Hosoe, and Shunji Okura. Lavishly printed in gloss and photo-gravure, in stark b/w contrasts and rich colour kodachrome, across different paper stocks, featuring many of the most iconic erotic images from Tokyo 1969! Lovely examples from all photographers, including some of Eikoh’s most famous work. Published by The Mainichi Newspapers.
Average—Good copy with foxing to covers and some page edges, some pinches to spine, general light wear as is common to old magazine-format books.
1998, English
Softcover, 334 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1998 edition of Jack Hunter's essential "pink" film reference book and the first of its kind in English.
SEX: The history of "pink" movies, from Daydream to Ai No Corrida and beyond, including the pop avant-garde violence of Koji Wakamatsu: Violated Angels, The Embryo Hunts In Secret, Violent Virgin and others. Bondage and S/M from Moju and Captured For Sex to Kinbiken rope torture. The New Wave pink films of Hisayasu Sato: The Bedroom, Naked Blood, Private Torture Of Uniforms: Thrust It In!, and much more.
BLOOD: From Shogun Assassin and Psycho Junkie to the killing orgies of Guinea Pig and Atrocity; from the "pink horror" nightmare Entrails Of A Virgin to the post-punk yakuza bloodbaths of Kei Fujiwara's Organ and Takashi Miike's Fudoh.
MADNESS: Homicidal psychosis, hallucination, mutation: Tetsuo, Death Powder, the films of Shozin Fukui: Pinocchio 964, Rubber's Lover. Post-punk excess, nihilism, violence, suicide: Burst City, Labyrinth Of Dreams, Squareworld, Tokyo Crash.
Eros In Hell examines all these movies and many more besides, is profusely illustrated with rare and unusual photographs, and contains illuminating interviews with Japanese film-makers Koji Wakamatsu and Takao Nakano; comprising a unique guide to the most prolific, fascinating and controversial underground/alternative cinema in the world.
VG copy with bump to top corner, some light edge wear.
1996, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$55.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition.
Twins George and Mike Kuchar were born in the Bronx in 1942. As teenage cinephiles, both began producing films based on their own version of Hollywood movies, going on to produce a string of low budget classics such as: 1 Was A Teenage Rumpot, Pussy On A Hot Tin Roof, Mike's Sins Of The Fleshapoids and George's infamous Hold Me While I'm Naked.
Baltimore-born John Waters was profoundly and irreversibly affected by the visionary, trashy aesthetic of the '60s underground, especially the Kuchars, who Waters insists "...made me want to make films. THEY are the reason". His films were also influenced by the low budget exploitation pictures of directors like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Like his predecessors, Waters used a regular cast of friends, which included Divine, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller, all to become trash stars/icons. He is the director of such trash classics as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living; his more recent films have included Hairspray and Serial Mom.
Camp America includes interviews not only with John Waters, but also with members of his notorious entourage; plus extensive interviews with George & Mike Kuchar and a comprehensive assessment of their career and influence as well as a unique feature on underground actress Marion Eaton, star of Curt McDowell's Thundercrack! The book has many rare photographs, plus a filmography and index, and not only documents a fascinating period of extreme underground film-making, but contextualises it firmly within the social fabric of the times, bringing the New York, Baltimore and San Francisco underground/sleaze film scenes of the '60s and '70s vividly to life.
Good copy with crease to back cover, wear to corners, thumb marking to block edge.
1989, English / German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 392 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
$165.00 - In stock -
Absolutely essential reference work on the artists associated with the Vienna Actionism group, the second volume of an exhaustive account of Viennese Actionism, this book covering the later years of the movement—1960 through 1971.
Viennese Actionism was the most extreme artistic project of the 1960s, mostly preceding and always surpassing the other performance art, body art and happenings in terms of sheer violent excess. Though never officially a group, Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler shared a similar reaction to the restrictive political and cultural climate of the Austrian art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. They established the body as a site of exploration, and its blood, sweat and excrement as art material: performance as the transgression of both social and religious taboo, and art itself as a violent, tragic recognition of brute fact.
Volume two of an exhaustive two-volume exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Wien, March—April 1989 that traveled to Museum Ludwig, Köln, August—September 1989. This handsome volume presents a vast collection of images and essays about Viennese Actionism between 1960—1971, focusing on work produced after 1964, particularly work involving process and performance. Includes essays by Hubert Klocker, entitled "The Dramaturgy of the Organic" and "The Shattered Mirror"; an essay by Konrad Oberhuber entitled "Thoughts on Viennese Actionism" ; biography, action chronology, and related images for artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler; bibliography.
Edited by Hubert Klocker.
Texts in both English and German.
Highly recommended.
Near Fine copy.
2003, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.5 x13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 2008 English-language print of The Lost Journals Of The Marquis De Sade.
The secret journal which the Marquis de Sade worked hard at maintaining, even when ill and ageing at Charenton asylum, reveals the shadowy life of an exceptional, strange man whose abuses are often legendary. The book takes us beyond the prisoner who once fled the Vincennes fortress; it also takes us beyond the prisoner of the Bastille whose imagination tortured him, both deliciously and cruelly, and who projected onto paper the burning and pitiable ghosts of his imagination with a desperate sensuality. This book contains the living, everyday presence of the old man, almost 67 years old when the "first notebook" begins of this once-lost journal.
He had seven years left to live in the "hospital-prison" of Charenton, where his days were slow and grim, full of everyday preoccupations, worries about money, nasty quarrels with the people around him - but were also lit up by the sordid, squalid episodes of a final erotic adventure: the last flames of his senile passion. At the Charenton asylum, where he was under a liberal regime of surveillance, Sade's death approached, darkening the colours of his life and tearing apart his feelings.
Only the first (1807-8) and fourth (1814) of these notebooks have been rediscovered, out of a series of four.
The Ghosts Of Sodom also includes a selection of Sade's letters from Charenton, as well as the working notes for his terminal novel "The Days At Florbelle" - a huge work deemed so pornographic that the only manuscript was burned by the police at the behest of Sade's own son.
1996, English
Softcover, 354 pages, 25.4 x 20.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cambridge University Press / Cambridge
$55.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition.
This book examines the evolution of Dalí's art during the 1920s and 1930s when he was associated first with the Catalan avant-garde and then with the Surrealist group in Paris. During this period, Dalí's painting style changed radically, a phenomenon which has never been fully accounted for in the extensive literature on this subject. Haim Finkelstein demonstrates that Dalí's writing, in which he explicated theoretical systems such as Paranoia-Criticism and other ideas adopted from Freud, were important for the active and critical role that they played in his development as an artist and often controversial figure. His 1996 study examines these writings in detail as the foundation for the evolution of Dalí's unique artistic vision.
' … this exuberant, well-focused study charts the metamorphosis of an unsure, neurotic Catalan painter into a dynamic, neurotic internationally famous (ex)-Surrealist.' Art Newspaper
'… certainly one of the better books on Dalí I have encountered … the text is an excellent exposition of what was within Dalí's horizon of expectations almost moment by moment. In this respect, the book is exemplary, going well beyond the tendency towards generalisation apparent in almost every other book-length work on the artist.' British Journal of Aesthetics
VG copy, light wear to extremities.
1990, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$50.00 - In stock -
First 1990 edition of Shock Treatment, the collection of Karen Finley’s most provocative and acclaimed performance monologues, essays, and poems, with “The Constant State of Desire,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “It's Only Art,” and “The Black Sheep.” Excoriating misogyny, homophobia, abusive families, greed, and state coercion of bodies and minds, Finley holds out hope for a world informed not by hate and fear, but by truth and unconditional love.
“If you haven’t read this book yet–buy it, take it home, and read it now! This is the work that made me get off my ass and actually do something, and it will inspire you, too.”–Kathleen Hanna, singer, Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin
“Finley’s Shock Treatment is more than just ‘art.’ It remains a searing and necessary indictment of America, a call to arms, a great protest against the injustices waged on queers and women during a time in recent American history where government intervention and recognition was so desperately needed. Twenty-five years on, Finley’s work continues to shock and provoke readers and audiences, demonstrating the powerful cultural and political impact her work has had on modern American art and performance art.”–Nathan Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books
No other artist captures the drama and fragility of the AIDS era as Karen Finley does in her 1990 classic book Shock Treatment. “The Black Sheep,” “We Keep Our Victims Ready,” “I Was Never Expected to Be Talented,”–these are some of the seminal works which excoriated homophobia and misogyny at a time when artists and writers were under attack for challenging the status quo. This twenty-fifth anniversary expanded edition features a new introduction in which Finley reflects on publishing her first book as she became internationally known for being denied an NEA grant because of perceived obscenity in her work. She traces her journey from art school to burlesque gigs to the San Francisco North Beach literary scene. A new poem reminds us of Finley’s disarming ability to respond to the era’s most challenging issues with grace and humor.
KAREN FINLEY’s raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Karen Finley (b. 1956) is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator. Her raw and transgressive performances have long provoked controversy and debate. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity.Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
VG copy.
1981, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$15.00 - In stock -
1981 Penguin paperback edition of Angela Carter's 1979 classic The Bloody Chamber, a feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling.
From the lairs of the fantastical and fabular and from the domains of the unconscious's mysteries...
Lie the brides in the Bloody Chamber — Hunts unwillingly the Queen of the Vampires — Slips Red Riding Hood into the arms of the Wolf — Pimps our Puss-in-Boots for his lustful master...
In tales that glitter and haunt – strange nuggets from a writer whose wayward pen spills forth stylish, erotic, nightmarish jewels of prose – the old fairy stories live and breathe again, subtly altered, subtly changed.
"She writes a prose that lends itself to magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality...dreams, myths, fairy tales, metamorphoses, the unruly unconscious, epic journeys and a highly sensual celebration of sexuality in both its most joyous and darkest manifestations"—Ian McEwan, author of The Child in Time
"The boldest of English women writers"—Lorna Sage
"The most stylish English prose writer of her generation"—John Mortimer
Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, 1940—1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
Very Good copy.
2008 / 2012, English
Softcover, 242 pages, 23.4 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Crescent Moon / Kent
$30.00 - In stock -
Walerian Borowczyk (known as 'Boro') is one of cinema's one-offs. Quite simply, there is no filmmaker quite like Borowczyk. Borowczyk's films have an astonishing, magical quality. They reach a place very rare in contemporary cinema, and are quite unlike the films of any other auteur. Borowczyk's films create their own space, with imagery, sounds and music of a really exceptional power.
Jeremy Robinson discusses each Borowczyk film in detail, sometimes going through scenes shot by shot.
Fully illustrated, with stills from Borowczyk's movies, and from the history of erotica, a bibliography, filmography.
2000, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 14 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
Out-of-print English edition of the erotic masterpiece Philosophy in the Bedroom (La philosophie dans le boudoir), a 1795 book by the Marquis de Sade written in the form of a dramatic dialogue. Though initially considered a work of pornography, the book has come to be considered a socio-political drama and perhaps the most representative of the Marquis de Sade's work and philosophy on religion and morality. Dedicated to "voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex", it tells of a young virgin ruthlessly stripped of virtue and schooled in the ways of sexual perversion and libertine philosophy. This revised adn expanded edition is coupled with The Lusts of the Libertines, a brand new, unexpurgated and explicit translation of the 447 complex, criminal and murderous lusts of the Libertines as documented by de Sade in his accursed atrocity Bible The 120 Days of Sodom, a catalogue of debaucheries, cruelties and perversions as yet unequalled in print.
Taken from the forward by James Havoc: The Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814) was a self-proclaimed libertine. His doctrine of libertinage as expounded in "Philosophy in the Boudoir" - his masterpiece - now reads like a blueprint for those manifestos drawn up will over a century later by Andre Breton; indeed "Philosophy in the Boudoir" has often been regarded as being amongst the first Surrealist texts - the others also being works by De Sade. In the course of this book - erotic, comical, and terrifyingly bleak in turn - he contrives to heap scorn on Christianity, God, and the Church, religion in general, history, marriage and the nuclear family, morality, all love other than sexual love, faith, hope and charity, parenthood, vaginal sex; i.e. all forms of humanity and virtue. At the same time, he advocates atheism, murder and reflexive crimes, torture, cruelty, abortion, all kind of sexual perversion, incest, adultery, self-abuse, ad infinitum; his sexually violent visions mark him as a precursor of modern psychology.
The modern imagination starts here.
VG copy with light wear.
2025, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 22.2 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$55.00 - In stock -
DRIVING THROUGH FAMINE ZONES IS NOTHING SHORT OF EUPHORIC.
'There is a young woman writing in London who really doesn't care what you think. Her name is Audrey Szasz. She is easily the wildest writer going. Her prose is direct, fast, witty, hot, horny, and furiously honest. Insofar as I can see, she's the dark horse on the literary scene, a true thoroughbred in the stable of nags. Not for fame, but for influence. Originality. Sheer voice. Nerve.'
Her novels have been described as everything from abject filth to pure 21st century post-Sadeian feminism. Her poetic narratives are both political and personal - violent but triumphant - ghostly yet crystal clear - caustic streams of consciousness and gleeful perversity.
TELEPLASM charts the eerie emergence of a hostile new culture, where psychic liberation is the key.
2022, English
Softcover, 190 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$52.00 - In stock -
An hallucinatory SF novel painted in overloaded electronic prose and absolute poetic mayhem. Imagine William S. Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade contemplating the end of the world from a flophouse on 42nd Street. A bruising love letter to language and lysergic lycanthropy. AS SF is here.
Seismic shocks throughout the bigger cities of Earth. A plane crash in San Francisco. Sexology as detailed by American nymphomaniacs. Drugs manufactured from Hindu guidelines. Outdoor furniture burning on the lawns of Indianapolis. I take a deep breath. My filthy hand full of numerous ideas. They administer the medical treatments to Madhab. His skin smells burnt ... he is stabbed by unknown substances ... all rubber shuffling upon him. Tropical fruit eaten around campfires. Coyotes constructed from human bones. Carnal worlds involving shampoo and soiled beds. We strangle in the stairwells at night. We strangle in hotel rooms and on patios ... beneath bed sheets or brown paper. We invite the hotel staff to join us. The brutal lunge of a foam head. Soda bubbles as the blood drools. Index finger in the red mist. Dark-haired soldier with an unidentifiable accent. Madhab wears dark glasses and hangs out with big drug users. Madhab thinks that obedience is an adrenaline rush. He likes tugging off relief workers and U.N. peacekeepers in the toilet facilities. When I was fifteen I use to give back massages on East 14th Street. I’d lick the oil smells from Madhab’s underarms. Memories of the cool night air at the open swimming pavilion. The red lacquer corner pillars by the change rooms. Madhab gets me back to the hotel room. White shirt tight against his chest. I burn up. He opens his mouth. Moss and plaque. Dry toothpaste on lip. Dangerous gang members flood tribal areas. SWAT team in Kandahar. The gorgeous mountains of Afghanistan. Toadlike fingers over the strategic footholds. Negative forces infiltrate Madhab’s psychic energy. Machine guns against the dark blue sky. White stabs of lightning. The electrical world. Kidnappings and suicide bombings. Super-computers cancelling gene therapy programs. It is an early morning in Manhattan ...
Illustrated by Steven Purtill.
2003 / 2006, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 494 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shinchosha / Tokyo
$45.00 - In stock -
Lovely hardcover Japanese edition of this tremendous survey of Egon Schiele's Drawings & Watercolors, authored by Jane Kallir and edited by Ivan Vartanian, published in this translated edition in 2006. An almost entirely visual book, Schiele's works are lavishly reproduced across almost 500 pages in colour, with very minimal accompanying text in Japanese.
"Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele produced a prolific body of work before his early death at the age of twenty-eight in the flu epidemic of 1918. As well as a few hundred oil paintings, he created nearly 3,000 drawings and watercolours. Limited access to these fragile works and dispersion among several collections have made a comprehensive survey of his work a rarity. This volume assembles this master draughtsman's works on paper, providing a unique opportunity to study his rapid artistic development over the course of his brief twelve years of activity. Jane Kallir, the author of Schieles catalogue raisonne, introduces each year of the artists output, discussing his step-by-step progression from child prodigy to master of the human form and expression."
Near Fine copy in NF dustjacket.
2010, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 24 x 31 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
Mennour / Paris
$150.00 - Out of stock
The Molinier bible! A mammoth, crucial 400 page book on the method and genesis of Pierre Molinier's provocative, gender-bending photos and artwork. Beautifully printed and prodigiously illustrated with over 800 pictures, mostly unpublished, numerous documents, manuscripts and letters, a complete (nearly 100-page) chronology, a critical biography, and a text by Jean-Luc Mercié.Molinier. Essential publication on Molinier, the most comprehensive to date, and a must for any fan.
Rare English edition translated from the French by Edward Penwarden.
Pierre Molinier is an unknown of worldwide renown. Every book and every exhibition on the body, gender confusion or sexual excess seems to feature at least one work by this artist whose “genius” was acclaimed by André Breton in a memorable text published in 1956. But the bulk of his work has remained inaccessible. A number of pictures have never been shown and a corpus of only 160 prints has been published. The ensemble revealed by the artist's archives is much more extensive. It includes numerous proofs made to prepare his photomontages and working prints given to friends, but also notebooks and personal letters. Here, precise links emerge between his paintings, photographs and scandalous life. The myth carefully constructed by the artist begins to crumble before the reality of the work.
An inveterate seducer, thoroughgoing fetishist, unrepentant transvestite and inadvertent bisexual, to the very last Molinier remained haunted by two obsessions: pleasure, meaning immediate access to la petite mort, and “leaving a trace in the infinity of time.” This book charts the aesthetic incarnation of his passions. Its 819 photographs, most of them never published before, reveal the method, shed light on the procedures and give details of the origin and alchemy of his latent or composed images. Finally, an exhaustive chronology offers a new biography of Molinier, based on his letters: for it is in the intimacy of these writings that the shaman's heart beats closest to the truth.
In a career shared between the university (fifteen years) and publishing (twenty) Jean-Luc Mercié has written widely on painting and photography. This monograph is his fourth book about Pierre Molinier, the master from Bordeaux.
Born 1900 in Agen (France), Pierre Molinier, surrealistic painter and photographer, a precursor to body art, died in 1976 after having thought out radical and pornographic artwork.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate dust jacket), 128 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppan-sha / Japan
$190.00 - In stock -
First edition of the incredible book of Japanese doll artist Simon Yotsuya, Doll Love / L'amour des Poupées, shot by Kishin Shinoyama, published in 1985 by Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo. This stunning over-sized book is the finest photographic document of Simon's dolls created throughout his career, all dramatically shot by legendary Japanese photographer, and close friend of Yotsuya, Kishin Shinoyama, profusely illustrated in full colour gloss with each doll, including various angles, details, and display cases, accompanied by a section of Japanese texts by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yoshiaki Tono, Minoruyoshioka, Shuzotakiguchi, and Kunio Iwaya, illustrated in b/w with portraits of Simon Yotsuya in his studio, his drawings and graphic works. Our favourite book on this magical artist.
Simon Yotsuya (b. 1944, Tokyo) started making dolls as a child, visiting exhibitions of dolls, and reads all the books he can find on the subject. In his mid-teens he visited Puppe Kawasaki, a doll maker and animator he greaty admired, devoting himself to the craft and becoming a poor high school student. In the early '60s, while working at a jazz coffee shop in Shinjuku, Yotsuya earned the nickname "Simon" (pronounced “Simone”), after his love for singer Nina Simone. He befriends Kuniyoshi Kaneko (painter) and Junko Koshino (fashion designer) and joins in the arts and literary scene. In 1965, he discovers the work of German Surrealist Hans Bellmer through an article authored by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in the magazine “Shinfujin”, promptly abandoning his previous methods of doll-making to find his way as an artist, incorporating ball-joints into his dolls. Thereafter he becomes an admirer of Surrealism and immerses himself in the controversial Shibusawa's litterary works. In 1965, he also goes to see Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh Performance for the first time. In the late 60s—early 70s Yotsuya pursued a parallel career to his doll-making as an actor and member of Juro Kara's legendary underground theater company Jokyo Gekijo, Situation Theater, regularly portraying a female doll. He appears in the movie "Diary of a Shinjuku Thief" directed by Nagisa Oshima with the actors of the Situation Theater, but by 1971 he leaves the stage to concentrate on his own work. Simon exhibited at Expo 1970 in Osaka, the Tokyo Biennale in 1974 and by the end of the decade had opened his own doll-making school in Harajuku.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), the author of the influential Bellmer article (and novelist, editor, art critic, and translator of Bataille and Marquis de Sade), become a life-long friend of Yotsuya's and his most important advocate, editing the first major book of Yotsuya's work, entitled Pygmalionisme, in 1985. Devastated by Shibusawa's death in 1987, Yotsuya found it impossible to work for nearly two years. He eventually found solace in the Eastern Orthodox Church and was inspired to make a series of angels, which he dedicated to Shibusawa, and straightforward images of Christ. Having carved out his own masterful and unique form of expression, today Yotsuya enjoys international renown as the first ball-jointed doll maker in Japan.
Very Good copy with light edge wear to cover and publisher's jacket.
1980, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 114 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seven Sha / Tokyo
$550.00 - In stock -
Rare first edition of Kohei Yoshiyuki's cult classic photo book, Document: The Park (Document Park), published in 1980 by Seven Sha, Tokyo. Yoshiyuki's voyeuristic masterpiece, The Park is like no other photo book. A controversial volume of 74 photographs taken by the photographer using a 35mm camera, infrared film, and flash, Yoshiyuki documented a secret community of lovers and voyeurs who gathered in Shinjuku Park and Yoyogi Park between 1971 and 1973. His pictures document the people who gathered in these parks for clandestine trysts under the cloak of darkness, as well as the many spectators lurking in the bushes who watched—and sometimes participated in—these couplings. With their raw, snapshot-like quality, these images not only uncover the hidden illicit sexual encounters of their subjects, both homosexual and heterosexual, but they also serve as a chronicle of a Japan we rarely see. As Martin Parr writes in The Photobook: A History, Volume II, The Park is "a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo."
A beautifully printed book, with original dust-jacket. Includes two conversations with Kohei Yoshiyuki with Kenichi Matsumoto and Nobuyoshi Araki.
Kohei Yoshiyuki (b. 1946—2022) came to recognition in 1972 when material from his photo project “The Park” was featured in magazine Shukan Shincho, and a year later, in respected photo journal Camera Mainichi. However, it was the 1979 photo exhibition “The Park” at Komai Gallery and 1980 photo book “Document: The Park” that established him within the contemporary photographic landscape. Since then, Yoshiyuki was a recurrent fixture in Japan debauchery journal Super Photo Magazine along photographers: Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Keizo Kitajima and Seiji Kurata.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket with usual tanning to spine edge, wear to extremities, and dj corner tear hidden inside jacket fold (blank black area, not affecting any content). Otherwise a well preserved copy.
1981, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 17.5 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sunday Inc. / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
Rare first 1981 edition of Yoshiyuki's heavily illustrated instructional photobook, published the year following his voyeuristic masterpiece, Document Park (1980), a controversial volume of 74 photographs taken by the Japanese photographer using a 35mm camera, infrared film, and flash to document a secret community of lovers and voyeurs who gathered in Shinjuku Park and Yoyogi Park between 1971 and 1973. "This Is Infrared!" is Kohei's essential accompanying handbook for all those curious about his clandestine techniques that still amaze to this day, for many various reasons. Profusely illustrated with many of the infamous photographs from his Document Park book and many photograph collections that have not been published elsewhere, Kohei's D.I.Y. manual is a thorough analysis of his honed peeping techniques, camera equipment, various strategies (in the field and in the darkroom), technical specifications and aesthetic concerns, complete with manga illustrations, set-by-step guides and a sense of humour.
"My curiosity and lewdness were the starting point for peeping photos in the park. I used infrared film. Last May I published a photo book called "Park" (Documentary). It documents couples in parks, the peeping toms who flock to them, and the world of gays who gather in parks. Since I published this photo book, I've been asked a lot of questions like "What kind of camera is an infrared camera?" It's a bit tiring, as some of the people asking are quite knowledgeable about photography, and some are even professional photographers."—excerpt from Kohei Yoshiyuki's introduction
From "The Monroe-effect" (action photography on windy days...) to pigeon-cameras, "This Is Infrared!" goes beyond the night works to explore the many convictions of the determined peeping-tom. Nothing like it. Apart from those of Ikko Kagari... Fits right in the pocket.
Kohei Yoshiyuki (b. 1946—2022) came to recognition in 1972 when material from his photo project “The Park” was featured in magazine Shukan Shincho, and a year later, in respected photo journal Camera Mainichi. However, it was the 1979 photo exhibition “The Park” at Komai Gallery and 1980 photo book “Document: The Park” that established him within the contemporary photographic landscape. As Martin Parr writes in The Photobook: A History, Volume II, The Park is "a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo." Since then, Yoshiyuki was a recurrent fixture in Japan debauchery journal Super Photo Magazine along photographers: Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, Keizo Kitajima and Seiji Kurata.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1997, English / Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 37 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sakuhinsha / Tokyo
$190.00 - In stock -
First Japanese edition of Japanese master of erotic fantasy illustration Hajime Sorayama's classic NAGA, published in 1997. The long awaited arrival of the latest collection Sorayama's erotic illustrations, NAGA, which was completed after his previous best-seller, GYNOIDS. This lavish over-sized volume is illustrated cover-to-cover with 65 of Sorayama's works gathered on the central mythological theme of NAGA — the serpent gods. A celebration of feminine beauty, presented in dramatic, glossy full-colour throughout. This edition with beautiful production, including textured, patterned Japanese paper-stocks and incredible reproductions.
Hajime Sorayama is revered for his erotic airbrushed illustrations of humanoid robots that explore ideals of femininity and beauty. Drawing on pinup pictures, Sorayama published the first book of his signature “Sexy Robot” series of chromium-plated figures in 1983. Decades later, these striking works have sold for more than $500,000. Sorayama started his career in advertising before freelancing in Hollywood, where he helped to produce visuals for sci-fi films. His illustrations gained widespread attention in 1995, when Penthouse began featuring them in a monthly column. While Sorayama has enjoyed a particular cult status for his sensual cyborgs —who appear empowered rather than objectified —he has also received mainstream commercial attention. Sony enlisted him to produce the first designs for its robotic dog AIBO, which won the grand prize for Japan’s Good Design Award in 1999. Sorayama has also worked with fashion titans such as Thierry Mugler and Dior on projects that have extended his illustrations into the realm of wearables, sculpture, and performance.
Very Good copy.
2006, Japanese / French
Hardcover (w. slipcase), 26.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seirin Kogeisha / Tokyo
$350.00 - In stock -
Now very rare out-of-print collection "1970, Toshio Saeki" by the Japanese master of Ero guro, published in 2006 by Seirin Kogeisha. Published in this hardcover, slipcased, numbered edition of 2000 copies, "1970, Toshio Saeki" reproduces a fine selection of colour and b/w works of the erotic bizarre, accompanied by captions and postface by Saeki himself, in Japanese and French.
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 slipcase.
1986, Japanese
Softcover, 160 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$90.00 - 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.
1991, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket + obi), 128 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$65.00 - In stock -
Wonderful photo-book chronology of the world of Shūji Terayama (1935—1983) and his experimental theatre troupe Tenjō Sajiki (with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, Fumiko Takagi, ...), a major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene of the 1960s and 70s. Terayama's activities encompass a who's-who of the Japanese avant-garde arts and literature of the time. This book visually documents it all; the filmography, performances, installations, happenings, exhibitions, posters, publications, and all else that resonated from Japan’s most revered and provocative avant-garde film-maker and his collaborators. Profusely illustrated with hundreds of illustrations in colour, duo and b/w with Japanese commentary, biographies and chronology. A wonderful, visually mind-blowing reference for anyone interested in the work of Terayama, Tenjō Sajiki, Surrealist performance, or Japanese avant-garde underground (Angura) theatre.
Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. In 1967 Terayama founded Tenjō Sajiki with Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi, a Japanese experimental theater troupe. A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.
Very Good—Near Fine
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 334 pages, 32 x 22 cm
Published by
Centre Pompidou / Paris
$110.00 - In stock -
The defining book for the centenary of Surrealism. From September 2024 to January 2025, the Centre Pompidou will celebrate the 100th anniversary of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. For the next two years, their unprecedented Surrealist exhibition will tour the art galleries of the world, accompanied by this special catalogue.
Perhaps more than any other artistic movement, Surrealism had a cataclysmic effect on the modern mind, changing forever the way we think about experiencing the world. By rejecting the gross linearity that typified several centuries of preceding artworks, the legendary Surrealists Magritte, Ernst, Carrington, Dali, Tanning and so many others reached beyond the facade of that which is patently visible and found something more. Featuring original essays from leading academics and excerpts from the Surrealist Manifesto itself, this stands among the most essential Surrealist catalogues ever published.