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.
1996/2003, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 176 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$300.00 - Out of stock
The second volume of Toshio Saeki's erotic nightmare masterpiece, "Chimushi II" was published in 1996 by Treville, only available in Japan, and now very collectible in every edition. A lavishly illustrated book collection of every darkest sexual depravity rendered in vibrant colour by Japanese master of Ero guro, Toshio Saeki, published by Treville and Pan-Exotica, here in the 2003 softcover edition. In the introduction, Timothy Leary writes, "We salute the style and grace with which you tease our secret sensualities. And teach us how our dark, twisted images and fearful fantasies are created by our own minds."
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.
Good—Very Good copy, with light wear/bumping to cover extremities, interior Fine. With Average obi inserted.
1997, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Last Gasp / San Fransisco
$60.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 English-language edition of Erich von Gotha's A Very Special Prison, published by Last Gasp, San Fransisco. Dark and disturbing Sadean sadomasochistic masterpiece of bandes dessinées érotiques, first published in France in the 1980s.
Adults only!
Erich von Götha (b. 1924, Wimbledon, London) is the pseudonym of the British illustrator, comic book artist, aconteur, and English gentleman Robin Ray. Robin Ray has gained fame with his erotic and, above all, sadomasochist content. He studied drawing and painting for four years at St Martins art school in London and enjoyed a career in London advertising agencies as designer and copywriter. He took time off for three years to teach graphic design at Ealing School of Art. A chance meeting with the English human rights activist, sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and adult model Tuppy Owens led to the "Sex Maniac's Diary", a remarkable and successful publication which amazingly sold mainly to women, for which EvG became the illustrator from 1975 to 1984. His relationship and ongoing friendship with Tuppy was enormously influential and helped lead to his artistic contributions to erotic publications. But it is "Torrid", entirely conceived and realised by EvG, that is the substantial overture to the comic strip (Bande Dessinée) extravaganza that was to follow. This ground-breaking publication, carried by the creative freedom of the 1970's sexual revolution of the 1970's, and pushing the legal boundaries in its path, spanned 1979 to 1986, all while EvG was running a successful advertising firm. However, his most famous work is The Troubles of Janice, set in the time of the Marquis de Sade. It has appeared in four albums; the first album appeared in 1980, and they represented a close collaboration with the French campaigning writer, historian and collector Bernard Joubert. A luxury edition of all four was published in 2008 by Dynamite. English versions of "Janice" and "Twenty", his other 'serial' story were published in the Noughties by the Erotic Print Society. Since the 80s he has produced many erotic paintings for friends and fans and has several books published by "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris. He continues to produce prints and execute commissions of an erotic nature usually with a mythological theme. He has had solo exhibitions in the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Bologna, titled Sweat Tears & Reflections and In "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris on the publication of "The Secret Notebooks of Janice".
VG copy.
1999, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Last Gasp / San Fransisco
$60.00 - Out of stock
First 1999 English-language edition of Erich von Gotha's The Troubles of Janice Part 1, published by Last Gasp, San Fransisco. The first book of von Gotha's classic story set in the time of the Marquis de Sade, and a masterpiece of bandes dessinées érotiques, first published in France in 1980.
Adults only!
Erich von Götha (b. 1924, Wimbledon, London) is the pseudonym of the British illustrator, comic book artist, aconteur, and English gentleman Robin Ray. Robin Ray has gained fame with his erotic and, above all, sadomasochist content. He studied drawing and painting for four years at St Martins art school in London and enjoyed a career in London advertising agencies as designer and copywriter. He took time off for three years to teach graphic design at Ealing School of Art. A chance meeting with the English human rights activist, sex therapist, consultant, campaigner, writer and adult model Tuppy Owens led to the "Sex Maniac's Diary", a remarkable and successful publication which amazingly sold mainly to women, for which EvG became the illustrator from 1975 to 1984. His relationship and ongoing friendship with Tuppy was enormously influential and helped lead to his artistic contributions to erotic publications. But it is "Torrid", entirely conceived and realised by EvG, that is the substantial overture to the comic strip (Bande Dessinée) extravaganza that was to follow. This ground-breaking publication, carried by the creative freedom of the 1970's sexual revolution of the 1970's, and pushing the legal boundaries in its path, spanned 1979 to 1986, all while EvG was running a successful advertising firm. However, his most famous work is The Troubles of Janice, set in the time of the Marquis de Sade. It has appeared in four albums; the first album appeared in 1980, and they represented a close collaboration with the French campaigning writer, historian and collector Bernard Joubert. A luxury edition of all four was published in 2008 by Dynamite. English versions of "Janice" and "Twenty", his other 'serial' story were published in the Noughties by the Erotic Print Society. Since the 80s he has produced many erotic paintings for friends and fans and has several books published by "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris. He continues to produce prints and execute commissions of an erotic nature usually with a mythological theme. He has had solo exhibitions in the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Bologna, titled Sweat Tears & Reflections and In "Larmes d'Eros" in Paris on the publication of "The Secret Notebooks of Janice".
VG copy.
2022, English / French
Hardcover (clothbound), 96 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$95.00 - In stock -
‘In Steel Grey Armour’ consistis of the complete reproduction of an infamous and mysterious collage book created by Genesis P-Orridge in 1979 and entrusted to his friend Yves Adrien,
a regular columnist of French music magazine ‘Rock’n’Folk’. It also explores the friendship between the 2 individuals with reproductions of some letters, photos and other artworks that Gen and Yves used to exchange. The book closes with a few words from the wise collector and current owner of the actual book, recounting his first encounter with the original Genesis collage book thanks to Jacques Noel, warden and smuggler-in-chief at Un Regard Moderne bookshop in Paris.
Artist, performer, musician and writer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 1950-2020), leader of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, was a major, pioneering, radical and subversive figure in British industrial and experimental music.
Yves Adrien (born 1951) is a French writer, best known for his articles in Rock & Folk magazine from the early 1970s onwards, for his subsequent theorization of post-punk, and for his first book Novövision.
2022, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 192 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Timeless Edition / Paris
$95.00 - In stock -
Personal correspondence between Genesis P-Orridge and Jean-Pierre Turmel over a fifteen-year period.
This book pays tribute to one of counter-culture's single most iconic figures of the past fifty odd years, someone who has over the course of he/r career influenced countless fellow artists and theorists. Comprised of an exclusive unpublished interview with the artist conducted by Nicolas Ballet in 2016, theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-Pierre Turmel.
Comprised theoretical texts on he/r work, and archival documents from the personal collection of Jean-Pierre Turmel. The Last Slogan offers a completely new perspective on the work of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.The book collects multiple letters sent by Genesis to Jean-Pierre Turmel from the mid-1970s till early 1990s. These unique personal archives provide an unequaled insight into Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's life-long journey via a deeply intimate correspondence with a close friend and associate, an intellectual sparring-partner of sorts, in which the artist discusses he/r inner thoughts, strategies, doubts and plans without any of the usual control filters.
Artist, performer, musician and writer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson, 1950-2020), leader of COUM Transmissions, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, was a major, pioneering, radical and subversive figure in British industrial and experimental music.
Jean-Pierre Turmel (born 1947 in Rouen, France) is co-founder of the legendary Sordide Sentimental label, which since 1978 has pioneered industrial, new wave and gothic music, producing Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division, Tuxedomoon, The Durutti Column, Savage Republic, Monte Cazazza, Davie Allan & The Arrows, etc.
Contributions by Genesis P-Orridge, Jean-Pierre Turmel, Nicolas Ballet.
2012, English
Softcover, 278 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 cm
Published by
Palgrave Macmillan / UK
$65.00 - In stock -
Mighty Lewd Books describes the emergence of a new, home-grown English pornography as seen in flagellation novellas which burst to the fore in the 1770s. Prior to this, English erotica had included a particular style of bawdy material marked by its euphemisms and double entendres. Through the examination of over 500 pieces of British erotica, this book looks at sex as seen in erotic culture, religion and medicine throughout the long eighteenth-century, and provides a radical new approach to the study of sexuality.
'Long overdue, an assessment of English pornography needs to pay attention to context as well as content. Peakman's book is rich with detail and she presents texts that have long been hidden from view. A must read.' - Margaret C. Jacob, UCLA, USA
'When [Julie Peakman] started out, the topic of erotic writings was a largely uncharted and under-theorized field. To a considerable degree she has had to carve out the boundaries of the topic for herself and work out her own intellectual framework... well-researched, well-documented, well-argued and coherent... makes a substantial contribution to scholarship' - Roy Porter
'It is now generally agreed that the creation of new sexual stereotypes and forms of self-identity in the eighteenth century is central to the creation of 'modernity'. Part of this process was the emergence of new, and newly domesticated, forms of pornography and erotic writing. Mighty Lewd Books gives us a readable, engaging and conprehensive account of the history of eighteenth-century pornography and erotica. By exploring the history of this artefact of sexual behaviour at the moment when modern sexualities were created, Peakman provides a new and important understanding of both the meaning of dirty books, and the origins of modernity.' - Tim Hitchcock
'This...fascinating and intelligent survey shows how an explosion of obscene literature immediately followed the wild success of pioneering (but largely non-pornographic) fictions by Defoe, Swift, Richardson and their imitators...Porn's strongest selling point were that it was sexy, unrespectable and forbidden, of course, but Julie Peakman shows that it had other attributes, not always connected directly with sex. It popularised new scientific ideas in botany, anatomy and electricity. It stoked the fires of anti-Catholicism with its lecherous monks and nuns, and it encompassed radical ideas in politics.' - Financial Times
'Drawing heavily on the contents of what the British Library quaintly terms its Cupboard, better known as the Private Case, plus a vast bibliography of secondary sources, she [Peakman] displays the whole world of Eighteenth-century erotica/porn and offers explications of both practice and theory.' - Erotic Review
'...fascinating book...well-written and researched...this book offers intriguing new insights into a hidden area of gender history, challenging many preconceptions about the c18th century.' - BBC History Magazine
'This is a serious work for those with serious interest in the theme, but given the rollicking nature of that theme, there is reason to smile frequently.' - Rob Hardy, The Dispatch
1972, Japanese
Softcover (french folds w. slipcase), approx 150 pages, 19 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Rosicrucian Society / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
First 1972 Japanese slipcased edition of Roland Topor's classic collection 'Les Masochists', published by Rosicrucian Society, Tokyo, and edited by renowned Japanese critic, author, scholar of demonology, and translator Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. First published in Paris in 1960 by controversial Belgian-born French publisher Éric Losfeld (Éditions Le Terrain Vague), 'Les Masochistes' presents one of Topor’s most acclaimed early collections of illustrations of people engaged in acts of masochism. A perfect precursor to the dark humour that Topor would make a fantastic career of. A beautiful production of this series, this Japanese edition in illustrated cardboard slipcase features the full 'Les Masochists' series plus a further Topor masterpiece collection of incredible works that followed 'Les Masochistes' and were the feature of his first art books, all edited together with an afterword by Shibusawa. Includes introduction by Jacques Sternberg, translated from French to Japanese.
Roland Topor (1938—1997) was one of the most unique and versatile French artists of the second half of the 20th century, working prolifically as a provocative and spirited illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, playwright, film and TV writer, filmmaker and actor, and much more. A founder of the Panic Movement, an art collective formed by Fernando Arrabal, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and Roland Topor in Paris in 1962, Topor was known for the surreal and absurdist nature of his work.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy in VG slipcase, some tanning to spine edge.
2024, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 29.8 x 21.4 cm
Published by
Cultural Traffic / London
$69.00 - In stock -
Cultural Traffic presents PRELUDE: Transgression In The UK, by Toby Mott. This visual archive explores the UK’s fetish and transgressive scenes from the 1980s onwards, featuring material from Mott’s collection. The book includes pre-internet items, club flyers, posters, and fashion catalogues, documenting this underground movement.
PRELUDE highlights the influence of publications like Skin Two magazine and clubs such as Torture Garden, where fashion, music, and art combined. Mott’s collection traces how leather, latex, punk, and goth subcultures moved from Soho to mainstream fashion.
From London’s Kensington Market to Manchester’s Affleck’s Palace, this book offers a look into the culture that shaped ideas of self-expression. PRELUDE marks a movement that continues to challenge norms.
Publisher: Cultural Traffic, London, 2024 Size: A4 - Pages: 32 Graphic Design: Nicolás Meza Printed by: Angel Press, UK Edition: First Edition, 300 copies Binding: Centre sewn and wrapped Printing: Digital print on 120gsm Stardream Silver, including insides and dust jacket
1998, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 15.24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cornell University Press / New York
$65.00 - In stock -
Scarce first paperback edition of Suzanne R. Stewart's Sublime Surrender : Male Masochism at the Fin-de-siècle, published in 1998.
When Heinrich Heine left his sick bed in 1848 and stumbled to the Louvre to fall before a statue of the goddess of beauty and lie in the pitying, cold glance she seemed to cast on his prostrate body, he defined a recurring motif of the second half of the nineteenth century, according to Suzanne R. Stewart. Directing her attention to the voice of the shriveled male body at beauty's feet, she investigates the discourse by and about men that took hold in the German-speaking world between 1870 and 1940 and that articulated masculinity as and through its own marginalization. Male masochism, she suggests, was a rhetorical strategy through which men asserted their cultural and political authority paradoxically by embracing the notion that they were (and always had been) wounded and suffering.
Stewart demonstrates and develops her contentions through close readings of the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Richard Wagner, and Sigmund Freud, in each case showing that the very act through which men sacrificed themselves to women comprised the essence of the new male subject "deeply penetrated by relations of political and sexual power." Masochistic scenarios, whether in literature, music, the visual arts, or medicalized diagnoses of the fin-de-siècle malaise, stage the male as one who submits, as Stewart explains, "to an aestheticized and eroticized gaze and voice."
Very Good copy with light general wear.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 224 pages, 29 x 29 cm
Published by
George Schwarz and Charis / East Sydney
$190.00 - In stock -
Powerful Paradise the Art of George Schwarz and Charis is an artists book, a collaboration between George Schwarz, his partner Charis, Linda Dement and Craig Judd. It is an introduction to a wonderful life and to beautiful, complex and intriguing art. Ernest Georg Schwarz and Charis Elizabeth McKittrick enjoy a unique partnership beginning 1964. The word collaborators in this case is an inadequate descriptor. In their presence one is witness to but a force of nature, a swirling vortex of creative mutuality. Simultaneously lovers, artists, apiarists, activists, authors, film and wine makers, 'Powerful Paradise' is a celebration and a legacy.
This extremely limited hardcover edition is the first survey of the couple's life in art, the last survivors of bohemian Kings Cross. Creators of the first Australian hardcore sex films to be passed by the censors (and also refused classification), George and Charis were ahead of the curve in every aspect of their practice. This volume features the only writing covering their film output, extensive photographic work and global travels. Simultaneously erotic, taboo, progressive, liberated; lives dedicated to their work and one another and perhaps too provocative/evocative for the Australian art establishment.
2025, English
Softcover, 16 silk-screened pages, 21 x 15 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$60.00 - In stock -
Screen printed A5 zine by Oriette Wood with writing from Anonymous woman #1 is an ode to all the transvestite/transsexual/crossdressing publications that had shone the light before. This collection of poetry and prints draws upon sissification, trans exultation, obscurity and playfulness. Although there is particular reference to Virginia Prince’s magazine ‘Transvestia’, there are so many others like it that shared stories, educated and connected people to the community.
Oriette Wood is a Naarm/Melbourne based transgender printmaker and seamstress, her works explore the erotics of trans bodies, taking inspiration from influential fetish artists, cross-dressing forums, and personal fantasies.
2025, English
Softcover (thread-sewn), 12 hand-bound silkscreened pages, 30 x 21.5 cm
Numbered Ed. of 11,
Published by
Self-Published / Naarm
$220.00 - In stock -
'Cats Versus Dogs' is hand bound and screen-printed zine collection of prints published in a numbered edition of 11, self-published by Laurette Chiappa (Bicy) and Oriette Wood. “After meeting at our local screen printing studio (Troppo), this collaborative work started as a personal joke as we had conflicting opinions on which of these two domestic animals was best, drawing scenes in defence and attack of one another. Each print guiding and questioning the roles each animal plays in our lives, while technically teaching us a lot about multi-colour overlays, layouts, and binding. Over the course of a month and a half we drew, printed and bound the books.”
Oriette Wood is a Naarm/Melbourne based transgender printmaker and seamstress, her works explore the erotics of trans bodies, taking inspiration from influential fetish artists, cross-dressing forums, and personal fantasies.
Laurette Chiappa (Bicy) is printmaker and tattoo artist from Toulouse, living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. Her works inquire what and where 'home' is using tattooing and ornamental design as reference.
Limited edition of 11 copies
1989, Japanese
Softcover, (w. dust jacket + obi), 240 pages, 40 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mother Brain / Tokyo
$550.00 - In stock -
Very collectible, rare first 1989 edition of Araki's provocative and poetic photo book masterpiece "Tokyo Nude", published by Mother Brain. Wonderful, most complete copy in original dust jacket and publisher's obi, seldom preserved. This large-format photo book by Nobuyoshi Araki was shot with a Pentax 6x7. “Each double-page spread juxtaposes a nude photograph and a fragmentary scene of everyday life in Tokyo. Turning the pages, the reader becomes enveloped in a sense of erotic travel within the womb.”—Iizawa, Araki: Self, Life, Death.
"Every diptych is divided into an image of a woman (left) and a Tokyo scene (right). Upon first glance, this juxtaposition may seem illogical. By photographing these two subjects and placing them next to each other, Araki explores them in the same light. Moreover, although he often features Tokyo in his work, "Tokyo Nude" exposes the city's more quiet and vulnerable side, and explores parts of the city that are not often displayed. The desolation of these urban pictures is complemented by the distressed, unnerving and often bold expressions worn by the female bodies on the left side of the diptychs. These architectural images thereby connect with the exposed women who stand beside them. By capturing similar feelings of desolation and abandonment from both Tokyo and its women, Araki causes them to meld into one composition. As a result, one forgets they are looking at two photographs joined together, but rather begins to understand the series of Tokyo revealed or Tokyo "Nude"."—Yoshii Gallery
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and VG obi, both light wear to extremities.
1996, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1996, Necronomicon: Book one continues the singular, thought-provoking exploration of transgressive cinema begun by the much-respected and acclaimed magazine of the same name. The transition to annual book format has allowed for even greater depth and diversity within the journal's trademarks of progressive critique and striking photographic content. Includes: Jean Rollin: The surreal and the sapphic Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Exploitation or modern fairytale Barbara Steele: Icon of S/M horror Frightmare: Peter Walker's psycho-delirium classic Marco Ferreri: Sadean cinema of excess Deep Throat: Pornography as primitive spectacle Dario Argento: Tortured looks and visual displeasure Last Tango in Paris: Circles of sex and death H P Lovecraft: Visions of crawling chaos Witchfinder General: Michael Reeves' classic of visceral violence Herschell G. Lewis: Compulsive tales and cannibal feasts Evil Dead: From slapstick to splatshtick * And much more....
VG copy.
1997, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 84 pages, 24 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First 1997 hardcover edition of Trevor Brown’s first major art book, published in Japan by Treville. This collection of Brown's uniquely perverse, disturbing and now iconic paintings revolves around girls/dolls and themes of "medical art", like his friend, Bazooka-artist and photographer, Romain Slocombe. Lots of cutesy, lolita-esque girls and girl-dolls in transgressive scenarios of fetishism, bondage, body modification, etc. Published only in Japan, where the English artist has resided since 1994.
This very popular book was also published to coincide with Brown's solo exhibition at Azzlo Gallery, who specialised in fetish wear, run by artist, costume designer and student of Kaneko Kuniyoshi, Yumi Azzlo. Invitation to the exhibition is included as an insert.
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—NF copy.
1982, Japanese
Softcover, 320 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tsukasa Shobo / Tokyo
$50.00 - In stock -
SM Fan Special Edition March 1982, published by Tsukasa Shobo, featuring Dan Oniroku, Gekko Hayashi, Tadao Chigusa, Juan Maeda, Kaname Ozuma (Yoko Ozuma), Takashi Kibe, Yuki Haruhiko, to name a few. Cult classic vintage Japanese BDSM and Kinbaku (Japanese bondage) magazine, each issue of SM Fan featured almost over 300 pages of Japan's most depraved fetish fiction, littered with illustrations unseen elsewhere, including many historical pieces, plus full-colour glossy bondage photo-features, artwork galleries of fanstastic erotic art and manga, fold-outs, articles, interviews, reviews, letters, classifieds, ads, and much more. SM Fan was at the forefront of showcasing the artwork and photography by some of Japan's biggest names in the field of erotic art, including Namio Harukawa, Kaname Ozuma, Gekko Hayashi, Yoshifumi Hayashi, Toshio Saeki, and Ken Katayama, alongside the likes of masters such as Yoshitoshi Tsukioka.
18+ ONLY
Good—VG copy with tanning.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 220 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Tsukasa Shobo / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
No. 32 (May 1997) of Bizarre Magazine, Japan's first glossy magazine devoted fully to all things "bizarre culture" and the new fetish subculture that exploded in the 1990's, published by manga (and SM Fan) publisher Tsukasa Shobo from 1990—2000s.
"Fetish, bondage, psycho eros, and body arts".
Profusely illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w photoshoots styled with fetish fashion materials and costume — models and Japanese AV/pink film idols in rubber, pvc, leather, boots, high heels, corsets, etc. covering all manner of fetishes and cos-themes from cyberpunk to medical, body art, cross-dressing, lesbianism, fem-dom, scene reports from around the world, dominatrix profiles and interviews, lots of manga, articles, stories, advice columns, DIY tutorials, and packed with wild ads for sex clubs, dungeons, bars, bookstores, video catalogues, toys, fashions, reviews of cult books and film, european imports, classifieds, all heavy with illustrations and hundreds, if not thousands of photographs. This issue includes contributions by ORGANIZER's Kyoshi Ikejiri, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Yokoyama Kouji, Mikio Tanaka, heavy metal artist Wes Benscoter, costume designer Yukiko, continued special feature on Japanese cyberpunk-horror film Rubber's Lover by Shozin Fukui (964 Pinocchio), plus hentai sex, diary of a female bondage artist, Practical Scat University, trans men, coverage of fetish film, fetish parties, brothels, bizarre photo galleries, etc. Much like SM Sniper, Bizarre Magazine favoured the exploration of new innovations of fetish and underground sex culture, emphasising the work of the models, stylists, make-up artists, and fashion designers, as much as the writers or photographers, encompassing the entire "new wave" of SM counterculture embedded in underground music, film, fashion and visual art at the dawn of the 90's.
Cover statement: "BIZARRE is not S&M. For the above reason, we produced this magazine. This magazine is the first magazine of BIZARRE in Japan. BIZARRE is based on FETISHISM. Bondage, too, is a kind of fetishism in the field of BIZARRE. Costume and material are the most important. For instance, they are leather, rubber, P.V.C. and satin corset, high heels, boots and so on."
18+ ONLY
Average copy due to some scunching to the lower par of the back cover and last few pages, otherwise Good copy rest.
1992, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 210 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shishobo / Tokyo
Tsukasa Shobo / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
May 1992 issue of Bizarre Magazine, Japan's first glossy magazine devoted fully to all things "bizarre culture" and the new fetish subculture that exploded in the 1990's, published by manga (and SM Fan) publisher Tsukasa Shobo from 1990—2000s. "Fetish, bondage, psycho eros, and body arts". Profusely illustrated throughout with glossy colour and b/w photoshoots styled with fetish fashion materials and costume — models and Japanese AV idols in rubber, pvc, leather, boots, high heels, corsets, etc. covering all manner of fetishes and cos-themes from cyberpunk to medical, body art, cross-dressing, lesbianism, fem-dom, scene reports from around the world, dominatrix profiles and interviews, lots of manga, articles, stories, advice columns, DIY tutorials, and packed with wild ads for sex clubs, dungeons, bars, bookstores, video catalogues, toys, fashions, reviews of cult books and film, european imports, classifieds, all heavy with illustrations and hundreds, if not thousands of photographs. Each issue was overseen by a rotating group of editors, this issue including material by Kinichi Tanaka, Junji Ito, Masami Akita (Merzbow), Nao Saejima, Seiu Ito, Domu Kitahara, Issei (Kobe Cannibal) Sagawa, Yukinori Fukushima, Ryuko Yano, Mika Mori, Hiroko Mugibayashi, and many more... Much like SM Sniper, Bizarre Magazine favoured the exploration of new innovations of fetish and underground sex culture, emphasising the work of the models, stylists, make-up artists, and fashion designers, as much as the writers or photographers, encompassing the entire "new wave" of SM counterculture embedded in underground music, film, fashion and visual art at the dawn of the 90's.
Cover statement: "BIZARRE is not S&M. For the above reason, we produced this magazine. This magazine is the first magazine of BIZARRE in Japan. BIZARRE is based on FETISHISM. Bondage, too, is a kind of fetishism in the field of BIZARRE. Costume and material are the most important. For instance, they are leather, rubber, P.V.C. and satin corset, high heels, boots and so on."
18+ ONLY
Very Good copy.
1989, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), unpaginated, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppan-sha / Japan
$70.00 - In stock -
First 1989 bi-lingual (English/Japanese) edition of Hajime Sorayama's Hyper Illustrations, an excellent survey of works from the Japanese master of Gynoids, made famous the world-over with the publication of his Sexy Robot, 1983. Cover-to-cover full-page and double-page reproductions of some of his finest superrealist pin-ups, nudes and fetish works, and of course his Gynoids, plus much more. Includes a step-by-step tutorial from the artists, as well as an interview.
Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947 in Imabari, Ehime prefecture) has established his position as a legendary artist, both within Japan and internationally, for his extensive oeuvre that centers upon an ongoing pursuit for beauty in the human body and the machine. Best known for his precisely detailed, hand-painted portrayals of voluptuous women, obtained through an astoundingly artful use of a wide array of realistic expressional techniques, most prominently airbrush painting, the artist’s international recognition is inextricably tied to his signature series titled “Sexy Robot” (1978-) featuring erotic android figures clad in shiny chrome metal, and to AIBO, the award-winning robotic pet he designed for SONY in 1999.
Near Fine copy in Very Good dust jacket, light wear.
1980, Japanese
Softcover, 132 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sun Publishing / Japan
$500.00 - In stock -
Absolutely incredible, super rare, ultra collectible first edition of the first Namio Harukawa art book, published in Japan in 1980 by leading SM magazine SM Collector and their publishing house, Sun. An absolute treasure of vintage Namio Harukawa femdom works, released a full 20 years prior to his "Big Girl Love / My Fair Fat Lady" (2000) and 32 years before his late "Garden of Domina". By 1980 Namio was already a prolific master of fetish illustration, contributing to countless cult SM magazines. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with gorgeous reproductions on various paper stocks, including full-colour fold-out poster, this volume introduces so many early works never seen in any later monographs with a diverse array of "femdom" fetishes and narratives, including all his SM magazine work through to the establishment of his iconic face-sitting queens. A breath-taking, comprehensive collection that is a must for any fan of Harukawa or erotic illustration, period. Appropriately this "treasured art collection" was named "Chijin No Ai" ("A Fool’s Love") by Harukawa, after Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel featuring Naomi, the sadistic heroine whose name was adopted by Harukawa. Cannot recommend this book more.
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, beautifully preserved, only light cover wear.
1984, Japanese
Softcover, 208 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Gay / Tokyo
$60.00 - In stock -
Rare copy of the February 1984 issue 22 of Tokyo's The Gay, one of the best and lesser-known of Japan's gay magazine scene of the 1970s—1980s, with this issue including a special feature on the reality of the gay scene in New York Manhattan, New York interviews with editors of The Advocate, Christopher Street, and The National Gay Task Force Report (NGTF founded by gays rights activist Bruce Voeller in 1973), an exclusive interview with Japanese cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima, and much more, alongside explicit nude photo shoots of young Japanese men in colour and b/w, illustrations, gay fiction, news, movie reviews, ads, classifieds, articles, essays and other interviews. Packed!
Very Good copy.
1986, Japanese
Hardcover (w. plastic slipcase), 280 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Libro Port Publishing Co. Ltd. / Tokyo
$70.00 - In stock -
Incredible hardcover, slipcased anthology of essays, Biological Ruins Theory, by esteemed Japanese art historian and media theorist Toshiharu Ito, published in Tokyo in 1986. Housed in lavish screen-printed plastic slipcase and metallic silver engraved hardcover with various paper-stocks and films used throughout, Biological Ruins Theory collects Ito's diverse essays relating to the intersection of the biological human body and the machine — from robots to fascists to fetishists to body alchemy to freaks to abnormal electric babies to cargo cult to photographic violence and much more, lavishly illustrated and featuring Marcel Duchamp, H.R. Giger, Pierre Molinier, Hans Bellmer, Rudolf Schlichter, Cindy Sherman, Ed Paschke, Robert Longo, Lucas Samaras, Steven F. Arnold, Joel Peter Witkin, Francis Picabia, Jeffrey Silverthorne, Miron Zownir, Arnolf Rainer, Issey Miyake, and so many more. Ito wrote the introduction to Giger's Necronomicon Japanese edition, reproduced in full here with many of Giger's artworks,
Born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1953, Toshiharu Ito is an art historian, art and communication theorist and exhibition curator. He was professor at the Tama Art University of Tokyo from 1990 to 2001, and at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music since 2001. He is Artistic Director at the Intermedia Institute of Osaka since 1995, and from 1992 to 1998 curator at the Inter Communication Center of Tokyo; he worked as Artistic Director at Tokyo AAD Studio from 2000 to 2003. A selection of his published works includes the following titles: History of 20th Century Photography (Tokyo, Chikuma Shobo Pub., 1988); Machine Art (Tokyo, Iwanami Pub., 1991); Electronic Art (Tokyo, NTT Press, 1999).
VG—Near Fine copy.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 2 includes photographic features by Yasuhiro Yoshioka and Yoshihiro Tatsuki, the artwork of French decorator of department store mannequins and surrealist Sunday painter Clovis Trouille, Venus in Furs erotic photo shoot by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Yokoo Tadanori, Hans Bellmer, Leonor Fini, Alberto Martini, Félicien Rops, Rene Magritte, an incredible feature "Machine for Murder" with art by Hiroshi Nakamura, Tomi Ungerer, Koichi Tanigawa, Osamu Tsukasa, Tatsuo Ikeda, Marcel Duchamp, Seiichi Horiuchi, and others, an article on the erotica of Ukiyo-e with a fold-out colour three panel poster, the fully illustrated museum supplement on Demonology by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history, texts by Apollinaire, Burroughs, Mutsuo Takahashi, articles on laws pertaining to homosexuality, Kama Sutra, shoe fetishism, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.
1969, Japanese / French
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.
Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force.
Issue no. 3 (with cover by Bronzino, 1554) includes full-colour photographic feature by Kishin Shinoyama ("Virgin In Uniform" featuring models/artists Angela Asaoka, Akaji Maro, Yoko Ashikawa) and beautiful Shomei Tomatsu photo feature ("Scoptophilia"), the artwork of the great French cross-dressing painter-photographer Pierre Molinier, texts by Jirō Kawamura, Yumiko Kurahashi, Taruho Inagaki ("Memories of Hemorrhoids or "New Tsurezuregusa"), Akiyuki Nosaka ("Dear Penis, Goodbye"), Minoru Minamihara ("The Mystic Thought of Love in the Case of Jakob Böhme"), Takiji Kobayashi, The Fictitious Garden of Babylon by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Tsunekazu Murata ("Witch's Ax : Concerning Heresy in Medieval Europe"), translation of Franz Kafka "Metamorphosis" illustrated by Franco Gentilini, recent research on homosexuality by film critic Jin'ichi Uekusa, Kama Sutra, more Gay (Danshoku) Japanese Theater history, Marquise de Blancvilliers by Koji Nakata, and much more.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.
Very Good copy. Light general tanning/wear.