World Food Books

Comme des Garçons / Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) #25
2013—14 Autumn—Winter

2013, English / Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), various pagination, 28.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Comme des Garçons / Tokyo

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Copies of the infamous printed collaboration between Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons and legendary manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo, best known as the creator of Akira, both the original 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film adaptation. Issued as mail-outs privately by Comme to announce the arrival of their 2013—14 Autumn—Winter collection, and not commercially available, these gorgeous, elaborate leaflets designed by CDG founder Rei Kawakubo, showcase Otomo’s Akira artwork in a series of collages put together and coloured by Kawakubo herself, with fold-outs, inserts and die-cut illustrations have become highly desirable, for obvious reasons. Surprisingly Otomo is the first Japanese artist to feature in Comme’s mail outs, so this collaboration was very special for fans of both.

Fine, preserved copy of no. 25 of 28 volumes (issued separately) and now becoming very scarce.

File under: Katsuhiro Otomo Rei Kawakubo Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons / Tokyo Fashion Out-of-print / Rare Objects / Ephemera / A/V Posters / Prints Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Film / Video

Jeroen de Rijke & Willem de Rooij

2007, English
Softcover, 118 pages, 25.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by JRP Ringier / Zürich

$60.00 - In stock -

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Text by David Bussel, Sven Lütticken, Beatrix Ruf, Jan Verwoert, Onno Ydema.

Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, collaborators since 1994, had just represented the Netherlands at the 2005 Venice Biennale and opened their first New York solo show at Friedrich Petzel Gallery when de Rijke died traveling in Africa. This representative sampling of films, photographs and bouquets documents their time together.

Jeroen de Rijke (1970-2006) and Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) have worked together since 1994. Their work revolves around representation problems relating to artistic and media images, cultural-historical artefacts and socio-political forms. The two artists produce films and photographs, using the "beauty" of familiar compositional and formal principles and the tempting projection surface this provides for us. de Rijke/de Rooij's images are always disturbing because they usually concentrate on a single take, action or object; reduced image distillations intensify doubts over "the image", initiating a discourse about our culturally driven readings of phenomena, about how we use images and how they affect us.

De Rijke/de Rooij mingle images and composition principles from painting history, and also from cinema and video, with pictorial worlds from the commercial image industry, and formal-aesthetic elements of contemporary art. Their films are shot using professional film industry resources. They are not shown in the cinema, but exclusively in art venues. Here the artists insist on the best possible cinema setting, controlling the way their works are perceived down to the last pictorial, sound or installative detail. The exhibition space is treated like a sculpture, defined by the technical apparatus and the seating, a hybrid space somewhere between a cinema and an exhibition; it is present as a minimal sculpture, even when the film is not being shown. The artists also structure the audience's experience of time, choosing to avoid the endless loops generally used for exhibitions, with their associated arbitrary availability of the images / films for the public: performances take place at precisely stated times, or by request. But de Rijke/de Rooij are not interested in the cinema's traditional narrative forms: in fact they make the qualities of cinema and film available as moving image aggregates: experience of space and time, dialogues, sound, light, focus are "performers" in their own right and develop their own qualities in parallel. Often slowness is a key feature of their films. It reinforces something that is essential to an artist's work, which would not be possible without it: slowly revealing the ambivalence of an image, a scene, of something presented. So their films often start as an abstract or darkened image, which gradually turns out in the film's own time to be an object, a condition.

The hybrid manifestations of our present are central to the artists' content, transforming their abstract, beautiful works into socio-political pieces, as they convey culturally different identities and realities. As residents in a former colonial state, de Rijke / de Rooij experience the cultural adaptation phenomena and problems as powerful identity generators; as cosmopolitan citizens they experience them as a globalized theme for living together in an age of migration and hybridized cultural identity. Here de Rijke / de Rooij address what is one's "own" and what is "alien" as a refinement of the differences that demand more intensive attention to difference as such. Thus for example an early work called "Of Three Men" (1998) shows the interior of a neo-romanesque church in Amsterdam that is now used as a mosque. Picture details and camera angles are reminiscent of church interiors by the painter Pieter Saenredam. Elements of the action include changing light, a low-hanging chandelier circling slowly and rare movements by three men sitting on the floor. Or "Bantar Gebang" (2000): a single long-shot take in the transfigured pictorial manner of Pieter Breughel the Elder shows daybreak in a slum outside Jakarta; the image becomes increasingly dubious. The familiarity of the pictorial and compositional references - and the beauty of the compositions - are always over-determined in the artists' work and tip representation into critical presence: flowers, ideal love, the cinema, the central-perspective long shot, the numinous quality of a landscape/of nature, the representation of non-commensurate social realities come into conflict with the images of their representation.

Near FIne copy.

File under: Jeroen de Rijke Willem de Rooij Jeroen de Rijke & Willem de Rooij David Bussel Sven Lütticken Beatrix Ruf Jan Verwoert Onno Ydema JRP Ringier / Zürich Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Photography Conceptual Art Film / Video

Film As Film: Understanding and Judging Movies
by V. F. Perkins

1972 / 1974, English
Softcover, 198 pages, 18 x 11 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Pelican / London

$15.00 - Out of stock

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1974 print of 1972 first edition.

"As late as 1947 the Observer's reviewer decided that films were nothing but 'bits of celluloid and wire', and thus felt 'ready to declare categorically that films are not an art'. Since then the cultural status of the cinema has been recognized and film criticism, so longer on the defensive, is now free to explore its particular possibilities.

In Film as Film V. F. Perkins, himself a film critic, sets out to define what makes a 'good' movie, and to posit some criteria for our judgement of film. He relates theoretical argument to detailed examples from films which achieved both popularity and excellence, including Hitchcock's Psycho, Preminger's Exodus and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, and discusses, in each case, the aims and achievements of the director.

In this challenging and provocative study of an area frequently neglected by the critics, V. F.
Perkins shows how a synthetic theory can shape raw cinematic experience and create a framework for constructive criticism."

Victor Francis Perkins (b. 1936), usually cited as V. F. Perkins, was an English film critic, best known for his work on film aesthetics and interpretation. He was born in Devon.

Very Good copy, light general wear to covers/spine, toning to page.

File under: Alfred Hitchcock Sergei Eisenstein Otto Preminger V. F. Perkins Pelican / London Film / Video Art Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay

Film As Art
by Rudolf Arnheim

1957 / ?, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 18 x 11.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of California / Berkeley

$35.00 - Out of stock

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In the fall of 1957 the University of California Press expanded Arnheim’s 1933 book Film by four essays and brought that landmark work back into print as Film as Art, a book continues to occupy an important place in the literature of film. Arnheim’s method, provocative in this age of technological wizardry, was to focus on the way art in film was derived from that medium’s early no sound, no color, no three-dimensional depth.

"This is a book of standards, a theory of film. The greater part of it is an adaptation of Film als Kunst, first published in 1932 in the original German and in English by Faber and Faber in 1933—an edition long out of print but still in demand because it raises fundamental questions that the intervening years have by no means answered.

Arnheim's provocative thesis is that the peculiar virtues of film as art derive from an exploitation of limitations of the medium: the absence of sound, the absence of color, the lack of three-dimensional depth. Silent-film artists made virtues of these necessities and were on their way to developing a new and distinctive art form. Mechanical advancement has led to greater realism and a corresponding loss in artistry.

The four essays which make up the rest of the book are supplementary in nature. The final one discusses the general aesthetic rules for the combination of different media-word, image, and sound—and leads to an evaluation of the talking picture as a medium for artistic expression."

"More than half a century since its initial publication, this deceptively compact book remains among the most incisive analyses of the formal and perceptual dynamics of cinema. No one who cares about film can afford to remain ignorant of its insights and wisdom. As digital technology fundamentally alters motion pictures, the lessons of Film as Art commend themselves as excellent insurance against reinventing the wheel in the new media landscape and hailing it as progress."—Edward Dimendberg author of Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity

"After more than eight decades, Rudolph Arnheim's small book of film theory remains one of the essential works in defining film art, understanding film less as reproducing the world than as opening up new possibilities for formal play and unexpected imagery. Anyone serious about film, whether scholar, filmmaker or simply a lover of cinema, must take Arnheim seriously."—Tom Gunning, author of The Films of Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film

Rudolf Arnheim (1904–2007) was a German-born author, art and film theorist, and perceptual psychologist. He learned Gestalt psychology from studying under Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler at the University of Berlin and applied it to art. His magnum opus was his book Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954). Other major books by Arnheim have included Visual Thinking (1969), and The Power of the Center: A Study of Composition in the Visual Arts (1982). Art and Visual Perception was revised, enlarged and published as a new version in 1974, and it has been translated into fourteen languages. He lived in Germany, Italy, England, and America. Most notably, Arnheim taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan. He has greatly influenced art history and psychology in America.

Very Good copy of the 1957 edition in later paperback reprint (year unknown).

File under: Rudolf Arnheim University of California / Berkeley Film / Video Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Art

Film And Reality: A Historical Survey
by Roy Armes

1974, English
Softcover,‎ 256 pages, 17.8 x 12.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Pelican / London

$30.00 - In stock -

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First 1974 edition of Film And Reality: A Historical Survey by Roy Armes.

"Most contemporary film criticism does not take into account the relationship between artistic achievement and the historical context. Film and Reality sets out to redress the balance by offering both a broad outline of the cinema's development and a framework within which critical judgements can be made. Roy Armes explores in this book the varying relationships between image and reality in films from Lumière to the present.

The author first looks at film realism - from the early documentaries of Vertov and Flaherty to cinema-verité - and at the progress of fictional realism - from Stroheim's silent masterpiece, Greed, to the films of Renoir, Rossellini and the television work of Kenneth Loach. In the second part of his book he considers Hollywood and film illusion, showing how The work of Griffith and Chaplin finally gave place to a formalized system of studios, stars and genres. The book concludes with a discussion about the growth of film modernism and demonstrates how film, as a new and important twentieth-century art form closely related to such movements as Expressionism and Surrealism, has found its place as a genuinely new form of expression alongside the novel and the theatre."

The cover shows a still from Buñuel's 'Un Chien Andalou'

Roy Armes (b. 1937) is a British professor emeritus and film scholar who has written numerous books on the history of filmmaking and select filmmakers. He wrote a treatise on the film Omar Gatlato and books on Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais.

Good copy, average wear to covers and spine, toning to pages.

File under: Louis Lumiere Kenneth Loach Robert J. Flaherty Luis Buñuel Roberto Rossellini Alain Robbe-Grillet Alfred Hitchcock Walt Disney Dziga Vertov Erich von Stroheim Jean Renoir Michelangelo Antonioni Pier Paolo Pasolini Joseph Losey Charlie Chaplin Sergei Eisenstein Roy Armes Pelican / London Film / Video Art Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Surrealism

In Danger : A Pasolini Anthology
Edited by Jack Hirschman

2010, English
Softcover, 250 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by City Lights Books / San Francisco

$40.00 - Out of stock

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Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. "In Danger" is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a generous selection of his poetry. Against the backdrop of post-war Italy, and through the mid-'70s, Pasolini's writings provide a fascinating portrait of a Europe in which fascists and communists violently clashed for power and where journalists ran great risks. The controversial and openly gay Pasolini was murdered at the age of fifty-three; "In Danger" includes his final interview, conducted hours before his death.

Jack Hirschman (1933 – 2021) was an American poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry. Dismissed from teaching at UCLA for anti-war activities in 1966, he moved to San Francisco in 1973, and was the city's present poet laureate. Hirschman translated nine languages and edited The Artaud Anthology.

File under: Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini Jack Hirschman City Lights Books / San Francisco Art Film / Video Fiction / Poetry Theory / Essay

The Divine Mimesis
by Pier Paolo Pasolini

2014, English
Softcover, 106 pages, 20.32 x 12.7 cm
Published by Contra Mundum Press / New York

$34.00 - Out of stock

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Written between 1963 and 1967, The Divine Mimesis, Pasolini's imitation of the early cantos of the Inferno, offers a searing critique of Italian society and the intelligentsia of the 1960s. It is also a self-critique by the author of The Ashes of Gramsci (1957) who saw the civic world evoked by that book fading absolutely from view.

By the mid-1960s, Pasolini theorized, the Italian language had sacrificed its connotative expressiveness for the sake of a denuded technological language of pure communication. In this context, he projects a 'rewrite' of Dante's Commedia in which two historical embodiments of Pasolini himself occupy the roles of the pilgrim and guide in their underworld journey. Densely layered with poetic and philological allusions, and illuminated by a parallel text of photographs that juxtapose the world of the Italian literati to the simple reality of rural Italian life, this narrative was curtailed by Pasolini several years before he sent it to his publisher, a few months prior to his murder in 1975. Yet, many of Pasolini's projects took the provisional form of "Notes toward..." an eventual work, such as Sopralluoghi in Palestina (Location Scouting in Palestine), Appunti per una Oresteiade africana (Notes for an African Oresteia), and Appunti per un film sull'India (Notes for a Film on India). The Divine Mimesis has a kinship to these filmic works as Pasolini himself ruled it 'complete' though still in a partial form. Written at a turning point in his life when he was wrestling with his poetic 'demons, ' the true center of gravity of Pasolini's Dantean project is the potential of poetry to teach and probe, ethically and aesthetically, in reality. "I wanted to make something seething and magmatic," Pasolini declared, "even if in prose."

In this first English translation of Pasolini's La divina mimesis, Italianist Thomas E. Peterson offers historical, linguistic, and cultural analyses that aim to expand the discourse about an enigmatic author considered by many to be the greatest Italian poet after Montale. Published by Contra Mundum Press one year in advance of the 40th anniversary of Pasolini's death.

In the history of twentieth-century poetry, there is no other poet besides Pasolini who has more tenaciously interrogated his own 'I, ' more persistently contemplated it, admired it, examined it, analyzed it and dissected it in order then to show its suffering entrails to the world, as they beg for understanding, affection, and pity. - Giorgio B rberi Squarotti *

File under: Pier Paolo Pasolini Thomas E. Peterson Pier Paolo Pasolini Contra Mundum Press / New York Film / Video Sociology / Politics Socialism / Communism / Capitalism

Joan Jonas
Works 1968-1994

1994, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Catalogue published on the occasion of Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994, curated by Dorine Mignot, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, May 31–June 19, 1994. Joan Jonas’s 1994 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, cemented her position as a key performance and video artist of her generation. As one her first retrospectives outside of the United States, the show highlighted the artist’s popularity in Europe in the 1990s—especially in the Netherlands and Italy—where she would continue to work late into her career. Jonas and Stedelijk curator Dorine Mignot worked in close curatorial collaboration to organize the retrospective around a selection of the artist’s pieces that most accurately represented her practice of drawing on various mediums. Aiming to translate a selection of her live performances into installations, she and Mignot chose appropriate video and audiotapes, as well as selections of props, drawings, costumes, and slides for each gallery.

Profusely illustrated throughout with accompanying texts.

Fine copy.

File under: Joan Jonas Dorine Mignot Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam Film / Video Performance / Dance / Theater Art Out-of-print / Rare

Výstava Jana a Evy Švankmajerových : Film a jeho okolí

2011, Japanese / Czech
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 180 pages, 23 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Access / Japan

$90.00 - In stock -

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Scarce exhibition catalogue surveying the work of Czech Surrealist artists Jan and Eva Švankmajer, published to accompany a major retrospective in Japan in 2011. Eva Švankmajerová (1940 – 2005, b. Eva Dvořáková in Kostelec nad Černými lesy), was a renowned painter, ceramicist, and writer active in the Czech and Slovak Surrealist Group who's poetry and prose regularly appeared in the journal Analogon. Švankmajerová was married to the Surrealist filmmaker Jan Švankmajer (b. Prague, 1934) and collaborated on many of his award-winning animated masterpieces, including Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996) and Otesánek (2000). Lavishly illustrated throughout, this catalogue includes chapters on Jan and Eva Švankmajer's independent and collaborative works, spanning painting, objects, collage, ceramics, poetry, graphics, and their highly acclaimed animated film works. Also includes Jan Švankmajer's collaboration with Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe. Includes detailed history, list of works and accompanying texts, alongside production insights and studio photography.

As New copy.

File under: Jan Svankmajer Eva Švankmajerová Jan Švankmajer Eikoh Hosoe Access / Japan Art Painting Drawing Film / Video Out-of-print / Rare Sculpture / Installation Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Surrealism

Artificial Gut Feeling
by Anna Zett

2019, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.9 x 21.6 cm
Published by Divided Publishing / London

$39.00 - Out of stock

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If winning can only occur in a competition between equal opponents, someone who isn’t equal will need to adopt a different strategy and let go of the promise, or the curse, of victory. Anna Zett takes up the challenge in this collection of personal science fiction, registering the traces systems of power leave in the body, in its locomotory, nervous and digestive systems. Zett’s voice appears in several textual guises, addressing authority, resistance, trauma and the physicality of language. Dedicated to the feminist revolution, the post-socialist subject of Artificial Gut Feeling questions logocentric and capitalist beliefs about the economy of meaning. This book gathers together fists, guts and brains to gain a deeper understanding of the non-verbal roots of dialogue.

Anna Zett (b. 1983, Leipzig) is an artist, writer and filmmaker. Her work combines historical analysis and poetic form with playful embodied practice. In 2014 she released two videos dealing with extinct animals as emblems of colonial capitalism in the West, which were screened widely in the context of contemporary art. In recent years, her research into the cosmology of scientific modernism has focused on post-communist trouble, industrialism and the German heritage of violence. Formally, her artistic emphasis moves towards listening, voice and the human body’s capacity to improvise verbal and non-verbal group communication. Zett has written and directed two experimental radio plays for German public radio and (co-)hosted participatory formats of storytelling, discourse and choreography. Artificial Gut Feeling is her first book. She lives in Berlin.

“This being is able to transform movement into speech. It winds itself about inside me like a thick snake and I have to use all my strength to let it spin and do what it does. When I wilfully try to stop it, it begins to whisper words to me and that is even more unpleasant. If I were to associate this gut feeling with an emotion, I would say disgust. But this disgust is not directly linked to your name...” — Anna Zett

File under: Anna Zett Anna Zett Divided Publishing / London Theory / Essay Feminism Fiction / Poetry Art Film / Video

SALE2 No.43
Sexploitation Films issue

1992, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Fiction Inc. / Tokyo

$70.00 - In stock -

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Issue No.43 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. Each issue covers different themes and features, heavy on fetishism.

Issue No.43, the "Sexploitation Films" issue features "Biker Films, Beach Party Films, LSD Films, Women in Prison Films, Mondo Films...", a filmography from "A Taste of Flesh" (1967) to "The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield" (1968), a long interview with cult director Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer, plus Carlo Mollino, Pierre Molinier, John Willie, Guido Crepax, Irving Claw, Betty Page, Gilles Berquet, and periodicals such as Sweet Gwen's, Bizarre, Gwendoline, Rigorosa Disciplina, and much more...

Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.

File under: Herschell Gordon Lewis Russ Meyer Carlo Mollino Pierre Molinier John Willie Guido Crepax Irving Claw Betty Page Gilles Berquet Fiction Inc. / Tokyo Periodicals Eros Film / Video Out-of-print / Rare Photography Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées

The Grain of the Voice: Interviews 1962-1980
Roland Barthes

1991 , English
Softcover, 366 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by University of California Press / Berkley

$35.00 - Out of stock

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This book brings together the great majority of Roland Barthes's interviews, most of which originally appeared in France in Le Figaro Littéraire, Cahiers du Cinéma, France-Observateur, L'Express, and elsewhere. Barthes replied to questions on the cinema, on his own works, on fashion, writing, and criticism. Here we have Barthes in conversation, speaking directly, with all his individuality. His voice, transcribed here, illuminates the subject of his discourse with the brilliance of his vivid, speaking mina, addressing us directly from the page. These interviews provide an insight into the rich, probing intelligence of one of the great and influential minds of our time.

"As a first introduction to the work of Roland Barthes, The Grain of the Voice could not be bettered. Stimulated by generally intelligent questioners, Barthes here talks about the development of his thought, explains why and how he wrote his many books, and pays tribute to philosophers, linguists, novelists, poets, painters, and film-makers who have interested and inspired him. ... What comes across most vividly is the sheer gusto of a man who never stopped developing and changing, never stopped interacting with contemporaries of all ages and all tastes, and never stopped enjoying his intellectual activities and spiritual explorations."—S. S. Prawer, Washington Post Book World

"Perhaps the best introduction to date on Barthes and his work."—Scott Montgomery, The Bloomsbury Review

Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Rumania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor of the Collège de France until his death in 1980.

VG copy. Remaindered line to base, otherwise NF.

File under: Roland Barthes University of California Press / Berkley Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Film / Video Art Sociology / Politics

Phantom Communities: The Simulacrum and The Limits of Postmodernism
by Scott Durham

1998, English
Softcover, 258 pages, 23 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Stanford University Press / Palo Alto

$35.00 - In stock -

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Phantom Communities reconsiders the status of the simulacrum—sometimes defined as a copy of a copy, but more rigorously defined as a copy that subverts the legitimacy and authority of its model—in light of recent debates in literature, art, philosophy, and cultural studies.

The author pursues two interwoven levels of analysis. On one level, he explores the poetics of the simulacrum, considered as a form that internalizes repetition, through close readings of a number of exemplary literary texts, paintings, and films from both the Anglo-American and French traditions, including works by Jean Genet, Pierre Klossowski, René Magritte, Andy Warhol, J. G. Ballard, Balthus, and Raúl Ruiz. Through his readings of these works, the author follows the transformations of the simulacrum, showing how its vicissitudes provide an optic for remapping the postmodern canon.

On another level, the author offers an account of the role played by the simulacrum as a theoretical concept that assumes varying analytical and ideological valences in the writings of such theorists as Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In so doing, Phantom Communities intervenes in ongoing interdisciplinary debates concerning the historical and ideological limits of postmodernism, as well as the utopian possibilities of art, literature, and philosophy in a postmodern context.

Moving between these debates and the interpretation of individual works, the author shows how they converge on the fundamental aesthetic and ideological problem raised by the postmodern culture of the simulacrum: imagining the virtual communities that, at the margins of postmodern culture, are at once figured and eclipsed by its proliferating images.

VG copy.

File under: Pierre Klossowski Andy Warhol Balthus Rene Magritte René Magritte Jean Baudrillard Fredric Jameson Michel Foucault Gilles Deleuze Raúl Ruiz J. G. Ballard J.G. Ballard Jean Genet Jean Baudrillard Fredric Jameson Michel Foucault Gilles Deleuze Scott Durham Stanford University Press / Palo Alto Theory / Essay Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language 'Pataphysics / Oulipo Art Philosophy Film / Video

The Parameters of Postmodernism
By Nicholas Zurbrugg

1993, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Routledge / London

$40.00 - Out of stock

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First 1993 edition.

This ground-breaking work offers a challenging and positive view of postmodern culture. It draws on the author's extensive interviews with a number of leading postmodern artists, writers and performers, including: Jean Baudrillard Samuel Beckett John Cage Phillip Glass The Parameters of Postmodernism focuses on both the prevailing negative theories of postmodernism, and the more positive aspects of postmodern theory and practice. The negative aspect is exemplified by the work of writers like Brecht, Beckett, Barthes and Baudrillard, who emphasise the death of artistic innovation and the lack of a permanent reality. Zurbrugg highlights the contradictions in the arguments of these writers, and examines the later works in which they qualify their earlier, more infamous, statements. The positive aspect is characterised by artists such as Cage, Glass and Monk - who interweave the new postmodern media with confidence and invention, and Eco, Grass and Wolf - who revive mythological and folkloric traditions. The Parameters of Postmodernism argues that in each case - high-tech or revivalist - postmodern creativity culminates in a highly positive synthesis of past, present and futuristic materials.

VG copy.

File under: John Cage Samuel Beckett Bertolt Brecht Philip Glass Thelonious Monk Joseph Beuys Robert Ashley Nicholas Zurbrugg Umberto Eco Fredric Jameson Roland Barthes Jean Baudrillard Günter Grass Yvonne Rainer Routledge / London Theory / Essay Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Australian Art Philosophy Film / Video Sound / Music Minimal Art Performance / Dance / Theater

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 3 (Shūji Terayama)
February, 1970 (Eros and Theater)

1970, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$240.00 - In stock -

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Very rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 3, 1970, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With gorgeous graphic design and (Aleister Crowley) cover by graphic designer Heikichi Harata, this issue's special feature is ‘Eros and Theater’, edited by Shūji Terayama and Masahiko Akuta with contributions by Terayama, photographer Hajime Sawatari, writer Taruho Inagaki, director Takahiko Iimura, anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, playwright Yasunari Takahashi, director and cinematographer Sakumi Hagiwara, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Rio Kishida, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

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. 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.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Heikichi Harata Tadanori Yokoo Yasunari Takahashi Takahiko Iimura Hajime Sawatari Izumi Suzuki Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Eros Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Art Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Film / Video Occult / Esoterica Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 5 (Shūji Terayama)
August, 1972 (City Drama / Human-powered airplane Solomon)

1972, Japanese
Softcover, 340 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$120.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 5, 1972, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘City Drama / Human-powered airplane Solomon’, with contributions by Terayama, artsit Jiro Takamatsu, butoh dancer and choreographer Akira Kasai, actress Eiko Kujo, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Yutaka Higashi, film critic Shigechika Sato, musician J. A. Seazer, musician Shigeo Takenaga, musician Norihito Inaba, photographer Hiroshi Yamazaki, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

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. 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.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Jiro Takamatsu Nobuyoshi Araki Nobuhiro Kawanaka Akira Kasai Yutaka Higashi Eiko Kujo J. A. Seazer Norihito Inaba Shigeo Takenaga Hiroshi Yamazaki Izumi Suzuki Shigechika Sato Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Art Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Film / Video Theory / Essay Periodicals Eros Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 6 (Shūji Terayama)
August, 1973 (New Trends in Overseas Theater)

1973, Japanese
Softcover, 340 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$180.00 - In stock -

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Very rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 6, 1973, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘New Trends in Overseas Theater’, with contributions by Terayama, musician J. A. Seazer, musician Norihito Inaba, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, actor Hideaki Sasaki, producer and actress Eiko Kujo, artist Nobuo Sasaki, and many others. Includes in-depth features and interviews on the work of theatre directors Jérôme Savary, Robert Wilson, and Mario Ricci and photo-reports the activities of independent theatre companies around the world, including Teatro Abaco (Rome), Atelje 212 (Belgrade), Teatr Laboratorium (Wrocław), La Mamma Theatre (New York), Forum Theater (Berlin), Odin Teatret (Holstebro), Stichting Mickery Workshop (Antwerp), making it a very valuable resource on the subject. There are also photo reports and scripts on the performances of Tenjō Sajiki, including works performed overseas. Incredible rare performance documents. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

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. 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.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki J. A. Seazer Nobuyoshi Araki Hideaki Sasaki Nobuo Sasaki Eiko Kujo Norihito Inaba Jérôme Savary Robert Wilson Mario Ricci Teatro Abaco Atelje 212 Teatr Laboratorium La Mamma Theatre Forum Theater Odin Teatret Stichting Mickery Workshop Tadanori Yokoo Kaoru Abe Izumi Suzuki Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Art Theory / Essay Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Eros Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 11 (Shūji Terayama)
May, 1977 (Secret Drama — Absurd Ship)

1977, Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$100.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 11, 1977, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘Secret Drama (Absurd Ship)’, with contributions by Terayama, writer Taruho Inagaki, anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Rio Kishida, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

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. 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.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Tadanori Yokoo Rio Kishida Nobuhiro Kawanaka Izumi Suzuki Taruho Inagaki Rio Kishida Masao Yamaguchi Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Art Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Theory / Essay Eros

Apocalypse Culture
Edited by Adam Parfrey

1990, English
Softcover, 362 pages, 21.6 x 24 cm
Reprint,
Out of print title / used / good
Published by Feral House / Los Angeles

$45.00 - In stock -

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"Apocalypse Culture is compulsory reading for all those concerned with the crisis of our times. An extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century."—J.G. Ballard

Two thousand years have passed since the death of Christ and the world is going mad. Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?

APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.

First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.—burb from this expanded and revised 1990 edition.

As New.

File under: Peter Sotos Joe Bradley Peter Sotos Adam Parfrey John Zerzan Hakim Bey Paul Lemos Thomas McEvilley Feral House / Los Angeles Fiction / Poetry Art Eros Counterculture Sound / Music Out-of-print / Rare Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Crime / Violence Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Film / Video Theory / Essay Anarchism

The Occult Harry Smith: The Magical and Alchemical Work of an Artist of the Extremes
by Harry Smith; Edited by Peter Valente

2025, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 23 x 15.24 cm
Published by Park Street Press / Vermont

$48.00 - In stock -

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An unusual collection of writing by and about mystic artist Harry Smith. Explores in depth the occult and mystical side of Smith—his “heaven and earth magic”—focusing on how his varied artistic efforts were part of a comprehensive magical and alchemical practice. Includes unpublished photos of and letters from Smith, rare interviews, one of his unpublished texts, and essays by scholars and friends.

Harry Smith (1923–1991) was a legendary twentieth-century artist, filmmaker, painter, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and archivist. Especially well known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, innovative abstract realms, and extraordinary collection of paper airplanes now housed at the Getty Research Institute, Smith also had a deep esoteric and mystical side, with experimentation in magic, Tarot, Kabbalah, and other occult practices. Like other alchemists, Smith’s life mission was to create a unified work from disparate elements, a synthesis of correspondences between seemingly unrelated topics—from music, string figures, and Seminole patterns to the relationship between sound and film imagery.

Presenting the most diverse collection of writings about Harry Smith, this volume explores the far-ranging esoteric themes that run throughout his art and career. The book includes never-before-seen photos, rare interviews, personal letters, and an unpublished text by Harry Smith, The 96 Apparitions of the 96 Alchemical Formulae (1 to 36), as well as personal reminiscences from Smith’s friends and former students. Smith’s groundbreaking mystical wisdom, "heaven and earth magic," and influence as an artist of the extremes leap from the pages in this book, confirming his contribution to art, music, film, and modern alchemy.

“Alchemist, magician, filmmaker, artist, mystic, anthropologist, collector, rebel, eternal omnivore, and 20th-century Renaissance man, Harry Smith was many things to many people, and this outstanding collection of lovingly written testimonies pays tribute to Harry with wit, respect, love, and laser-like precision. It is absolutely impossible to forget any interaction you had with Harry—and the beautiful tales in this remarkably readable and heartfelt book will have you awestruck, laughing out loud, and hungry for more. Perhaps the best collection of writings about one of the most enigmatic and fascinating figures the world has ever known.” ― John Zorn, American composer

“The Occult Harry Smith explores so many fascinating aspects of Harry Smith that have yet to be explored! Through a panoply of voices gathered in this volume, we get firsthand accounts and informed explorations that delve deep into the magician and trickster Harry Smith. Essential reading for anyone who wants to know more about this enigmatic and influential figure who lived his life on the edge and for his art.” ― Rani Singh, director of the Harry Smith Archives

“Through his alchemical metaphors and deep appreciation for cultural diversity, Smith’s work continues to influence new generations eager to learn more about his gentle blurring of the boundaries between art and magic. The Occult Harry Smith is a highly inspiring anthology and an invaluable glimpse into the timeless cosmic prism that was the mind of this polymath magus.” ― Carl Abrahamsson, author of Meetings with Remarkable Magicians and Occulture

“The world is blessed unknown when a Harry Smith enters it, and we are fortunate that enough individuals notice, to record his presence among them. One can only gain—and gain much—from reading this prismatic collection of fascinating views on the polymathic shaman of the city. Smith: all profit with no risk, other than the effect of enlightenment, a mere byproduct of gazing at his mighty works.”―Tobias Churton, author of Aleister Crowley in England, Aleister Crowley in Paris, and Aleister Crowley...

“This invaluable collection comes at the right time, as interest in Harry Smith’s life expands and his manifold work reaches new and ever-growing audiences. Offered up by the people who knew him best, this volume provides new and nuanced perspectives on Harry Smith: the man, the polymath, the sage."―John Klacsmann, archivist at Anthology Film Archives

“The Occult Harry Smith is a long overdue deep dive into this particular aspect of a wonderful, remarkable, and insufferable genius and polymath. In addition, by bringing together the memories and observations of an impressive, indeed close-to-definitive, collection of acolytes, scholars, and friends (not to mention photographic treasures and unpublished texts), Peter Valente presents an unexpected delight in this wide-ranging compendium—endlessly illuminating (as was Harry)—a posthumous banquet.”―Simon Pettet, poet and author of Hearth, As A Bee, and More Winnowed Fragments
About the Author

Harry Smith (1923-1991) was a filmmaker, painter, anthropologist, alchemist, and artist of the twentieth century.

Peter Valente is a writer, editor, translator, and filmmaker. He was born in Salerno, Italy, in 1970 and grew up in New Jersey. The author of 12 books and the translator of several influential works, including Gérard de Nerval’s The Illuminated, he lives in North Carolina.

File under: Harry Smith Peter Valente Harry Smith Park Street Press / Vermont Sound / Music Film / Video Occult / Esoterica Theory / Essay Art Counterculture

Pierre Molinier (+ lithograph)
by André Breton

1980, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. dust jacket + lithograph + appendix), unpaginated, 25.5 x 17.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Gakutokan / Japan

$200.00 - Out of stock

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Rare 1980 hand-numbered, limited edition of Pierre Molinier's Studio, an exquisite book of Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings, with texts by André Breton, translated from French to Japanese by Kosaku Ikuta, imagery from "Molinier" (1966) film by Raymond Borde, beautifully designed and printed in Japan where Molinier's artworks had a particular resonance. This hand-numbered edition (of 970 copies) features inlayed plate to dust-jacket, added appendix booklet, and the very rare lithographic insert of Molinier's "Réveil de l'Ange" etching, just as the first copies of André Breton and Raymond Borde's book published in 1964 by Terrain Vague included (dimension: (25.2 x 16.6 cm).

Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.

Very Good—Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket with VG-NF lithograph and appendix.

File under: Pierre Molinier Raymond Borde Andre Breton Raymond Borde Gakutokan / Japan Surrealism LGBTQ+ Eros Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Photography Film / Video Painting Drawing Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Fetishism / BDSM Performance / Dance / Theater Art

Another Country
Japanese Film Programme

1984, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 32 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Herald Ace Company / Tokyo

$35.00 - In stock -

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Rare 1984 Japanese film programme published to celebrate the release of Another Country (1984), the classic British romantic historical drama film directed by Marek Kanievska, and written by Julian Mitchell, adapted from his 1981 stage play of the same name. The film, starring Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett, with Colin Firth making his feature film debut, had an enormous impact in Japan. Loosely inspired by the life of British spy and double agent Guy Burgess, the narrative follows Bennett, a student at an elite English public school in the 1930s, as he confronts the rigid expectations of the institution while grappling with his homosexuality and growing attraction to Marxist ideology.

Heavily illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with film stills, this film book features original text contributions from artist Kuniyoshi Kaneko about male romance; artist, writer, and translator Kyoko Michishita about male beauty; and many more contributions from essayist Yasuo Kurata, actor Jun Maki, Nagasawa Setsu, Kagami Mizuho Ozawa, Terumi Takano... on homo-eroticism, men's clothing, the history of Traditional Britain represented in film, plus cast and production information, etc.

Very Good copy with some light age/foxing to cover boards.

File under: Kuniyoshi Kaneko Kuniyoshi Kaneko Kyoko Michishita Yasuo Kurata Herald Ace Company / Tokyo Film / Video LGBTQ+ Out-of-print / Rare

Fade To Black: A Collection

1985, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 96 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by S.C.A.S.A. / Glebe

$100.00 - In stock -

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Seldom seen copy of Sydney's "Fade To Black: A Collection", published by Sydney College of the Arts Film Group, edited by Stephen Cummins, Toula Anastas, Peter Handsaker, Gretta Kool and Mary Temelovski, with cover featuring stills from editor Steve Cummins' 1984 student film "Breathbeat". Stephen Cummins (1960-1994) was an Australian filmmaker, photographer and curator who left an indelible mark on the independent queer film scene.

With bold, high-contrast b/w art direction by Gretta Kool and Mary Temelovski throughout, the magazine opens with imagery from Catherine Lowing's 1985 film about the Sydney Lesbian S&M scene, "Knife in the Head, Spooky", followed by notes and quotes on film from Straub, Landow, Eisenstein, Barthes, Hitchcock, Godard, Fellini, Lesley Stern, Adrian Martin, and many more, before the feature contents (interviews, essays, reviews, artist pages, etc), as follows: "Framing the Film Still" Ross Gibson, "All the Glitters" Robyn Outram, "Transported" - Virginia Hillyard, "Mojave Moon" - Renee Romeril, "Roadscript" - Andrew Martin, "To Render the Body Ecstatic" - Anna Rodrigo interviews Laleen Jayamanne, "Doppelganger in Blue" - Steve Cummins, "Carmen" Louise Burchill, "Where None" - Toula Anastas, "Between Kitsch and Fascism" - Interview with Dieter Schidor, "Kanahooka Day Trip" - Kate Richards, "On Movement" - an essay in screenstudy - Chris Tuckfield, "Vluku Vlk" - Ken Heyes, "Hot Minutes" - Andrew Donaldson, "Lost in Space" - Ross Harley, "The Super 8 Film Group - More than Informative" - Michael Hutak, "And the Winner is ..." Anne Zahalka, "Psychotherapy and the Cinema" - Ben Crawford, "Little Hans Rides Again (a film still)" - Kurt Brereton, "Broken Mirrors Feminist Horror" - Ruby Davies, "Why have there been no great women ventriloquists - or what are they talking about" - Shan Short, "Imitation of Life" - Mark Titmarsh, "Sorry Wong Number" - Claudia Shaw, "Two Scenes from an untitled film" Ken Orchard, "Pieces of Freedom" - Melissa Smith, "Frameup" - Karen Borger, "Android" - Rosemary Johnson, "Staring at Helene and Pete" - Debra Thorsen, "What Price Culture" - Paola Talbert. A wonderful time-capsule of the film arts and film criticism in mid-80's Oz.

Good-Very Good copy with minor spine pinches and rubbing to black card covers.

File under: A.D.S Donaldson A.D.S. Donaldson Anne Zahalka Stephen Cummins Toula Anastas Peter Handsaker Gretta Kool Mary Temelovski Laleen Jayamanne Claudia Shaw Adrian Martin Lesley Stern A.D.S Donaldson A.D.S. Donaldson Stephen Cummins Toula Anastas Peter Handsaker Gretta Kool Mary Temelovski Louise Burchill Claudia Shaw S.C.A.S.A. / Glebe Periodicals Art Film / Video Theory / Essay Out-of-print / Rare Australian Art LGBTQ+ Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Eros Feminism Sound / Music Fetishism / BDSM

John Waters: Place Space
Todd Oldham & Cindy Sherman

2008, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket/poster), 72 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Ammo Books / New York

$80.00 - Out of stock

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First 2008 out-of-print edition of John Waters: Place Space, the photo book that showcases the interior world of America’s self-proclaimed “Pope of Trash”, cult film-maker John Waters and his Baltimore home.

"In John Waters: Place Space visionary designer Todd Oldham turns his incredible eye toward the beauty and wit of John Waters' quirky abode. Oldham’s exquisite photography captures elegant and humorous still lifes and portraits of America’s beloved King of Sleaze in his disarmingly sweet and kindly home in Baltimore, Maryland. As a director, John Waters has achieved legendary status with films such as the art-house sensation Pink Flamingos and the family-friendly Hairspray. His unique sensibility is evident in every corner of his home, which, as Todd says, “looks like the offspring of a warped public library and the Museum of Modern Art.”

This beautifully designed John Waters book is wrapped in a custom-designed poster for your home, and includes tear-out postcards featuring books from Waters’ shelves, like Sex on Horseback and Gay John. With inspired essays by Todd Oldham and renowned photographer Cindy Sherman, this Place Space issue is sure to delight hardcore Waters fans and newcomers alike. Like a sophisticated game of "I Spy," roaming through John Waters' overflowing bookshelves for clues to his inspiration is a true delight.

Very Good copy preserved in original poster dust jacket.

File under: Cindy Sherman John Waters Todd Oldham Ammo Books / New York Film / Video LGBTQ+ Art Architecture / Interior Out-of-print / Rare Photography