World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1983, French
Hardcover, 80 pages, 17 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
L'Autre Musee—La Difference
Paris
$40.00 - Out of stock
First 1983 hardcover edition (later re-printed in the 1990s) of Bellmer — Peintures / Gouaches / Collages by Jean Revol, a lovely pocket monograph on the German artist Hans Bellmer published in France by L'Autre Musee / La Difference, Paris. A heavily illustrated (in colour and b/w) survey of Bellmer's painting and collage works, including some lesser seen early works. Accompanied by text in French from Revol, Bellmer biography, list of exhibitions, bibliography, etc.
Good copy. Clean interior with some marks/light staining to boards.
2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 110 pages, 25 x 17 cm
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Produced in association with the upcoming ACCA exhibition of the same name, this publication casts a lens upon feminist, queer, and non-binary subjectivities to consider the transgressive pleasures and liberations of horror, as makers, masters and consumers of the genre.
From the other side features curatorial texts by Elyse Goldfinch and Jessica Clark, alongside writings from Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous Feminine; Canadian film writer Kier-La Janisse, author of the cult classic, House of Psychotic Women, 2012; Lisa Fuller, a Murri woman and author of the novel Ghost Bird, 2021; and a horror-themed screenplay by UK-based author and filmmaker Alison Peirse, editor of the Women Make Horror anthology, 2021.
Artists featured in the exhibition and book include Clare Milledge, Cybele Cox, Heather B Swann, Jemima Lucas, Julia Robinson, Karla Dickens, Kellie Wells, Lonnie Hutchinson, Louise Bourgeois, Maria Kozic, Marianna Simnett, Mia Boe, Minyoung Kim, Naomi Blacklock, Naomi Kantjuriny, SJ Norman, Suzan Pitt, Tracey Moffatt and Zamara Zamara.
The exhibition crosses the artificial parameters of horror in the everyday, as something that exists as part of society but also from outside of it. Culminating in a potent synthesis of dread, camp, humour and catharsis, From the other side challenges the traditional narratives and assumed boundaries of the body, gender, the self and the ‘other’.
2023, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 368 pages, 22.86 x 15.24 cm
Published by
Farrar Straus & Giroux / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
"Destined to become a new classic ... Elkin shatters the truisms that have evolved around feminist thought."—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography
One of Lit Hub's most anticipated books of 2023
What kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty.
In this dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies, and art, Lauren Elkin—the celebrated author of Flaneuse—explores the ways in which feminist artists have taken up the challenge of their work and how they not only react against the patriarchy but redefine their own aesthetic aims. How do we tell the truth about our experiences as bodies? What is the language, what are the materials, that we need to transcribe them? And what are the unique questions facing those engaged with female bodies, queer bodies, sick bodies, racialized bodies?
Encompassing with a rich genealogy of work across the literary and artistic landscape, Elkin makes daring links between disparate points of reference—among them Julia Margaret Cameron's photography, Kara Walker's silhouettes, Vanessa Bell's portraits, Eva Hesse's rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann's body art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's trilingual masterpiece DICTEE—and steps into the tradition of cultural criticism established by Susan Sontag, Helene Cixous, and Maggie Nelson.
An erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine—and enact—our lives.
1971, Japanese / English
Softcover (in slipcase w. obi strip), 22 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kodansha Int / Tokyo
$500.00 - Out of stock
The very first printing of the legendary Complete Tadanori Yokoo book, designed by Yokoo and published in Japan in 1971. Still the quintessential Yokoo book, anyone who sees it knows immediately — boldly designed and beautifully produced with gorgeous colour, thick paper stock, fold-outs, and absolutely comprehensive in capturing the early masterpieces of one of Japan's leading artists of the 1960s. All housed in the original iconic illustrated slipcase with publisher's obi-strip present. 360 total works recorded, alongside 230 photographs — all the posters and other works showcasing his psychedelic, erotic, esoteric and politically charged photo-montage and vivid pop print-making, with documentation of the exhibitions, events, and underground scene Yokoo was central to in the 1960s, captioned throughout with texts by Akiyuki Nosaka and Yokoo himself. A treasure for any fan. A most complete copy.
Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists, who began working with painting in 1966. In parallel, Yokoo’s early screenprints experimented with collage and illustration, combining found photographs with the influence of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e and pop art’s flat vibrant colours and overtly sexual and grotesque content, often reflecting on the rapid changes and Westernisation of Japan post-war society. His interests in mysticism and esotericism, deepened by travels to India, influenced his iconic posters with eclectic psychedelic imagery sharing the aesthetics of the underground counterculture he was associated with. In Tokyo, Yokoo worked as a stage designer for avant-garde theatre, collaborating extensively with Shūji Terayama and his experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition and in the early 1970s MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work. His famous designs for The Beatles, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and collaborations with friend and iconic Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake are renowned the world over. He also starred as a protagonist in Nagisa Oshima's film Diary of a Shinjuku Thief in 1968.
Very Good—Near Fine copy preserved with very minimal wear, light tanning to obi/spine, VG slipcase.
1997, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 104 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$180.00 - In stock -
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
First Edition of the collected works of Zdzisław Beksiński, published originally in hardcover in 1997 by Editions Treville in Tokyo.
"Death, putrefaction, destruction. A time-space continuum that converts everything into eternal ruins
that are dominated by inexplicable loneliness and fear, causing the spirit of eroticism to echo hollowly across his canvases." This is an anthology of the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Chronology of paintings reproduced in colour with bio, exhibition history and essay (in Japanese).
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and Obi, with only light age/wear.
2017, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$130.00 - Out of stock
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
Comprehensive collection Zdzisław Beksiński's sadomasochistic, biomorphic drawings from the 1960s—1970s, mostly never published before, issued in Japan as part of Treville's series of volumes on the Polish master of introvert fantasy. 140 works accompanied by interviews with Beksinski, essays and other texts in English and Japanese.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
As New copy of the revised 2017 edition.
1991, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 123 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Touko Museum of Contemporary Art / Tokyo
Treville / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Fine copy of the long out-of-print hardcover Japanese monograph on the artwork of David Lynch : Paintings and Drawings, an intricately produced and appropriately disconcerting catalogue published to accompany a rare exhibition of David Lynch's artwork at Tokyo's Touko Museum of Art in 1991. Cinema's Master of the Weird displays his skewed genius in a different medium here, to an equally fascinating and unnerving end. Profusely illustrated with paintings, drawings, and photography in colour b/w, accompanied by texts from Christine McKenna, David Lynch, Takashi Nibutani, Noe Sawaragi, Yuji Konno, and Makoto Takimoto.
Fine copy in Fine DJ.
1997, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 20.96 x 14.61 cm
Published by
Farrar Straus & Giroux / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
Mina Loy's technique and subjects - prostitution, menstruation, destitution, and suicide - shock even some modernists and she vanished from the poetry scene as dramatically as she had appeared on it. Roger Conover has rescued the key texts from the pages of forgotten publications, and has included all of the futurist and feminist satires, poems from Loy's Paris and New York periods, and the complete cycle of "Love Songs," as well as previously unknown texts and detailed notes.
Edited by Roger L Conover.
"[Mina Loy] may now be launched on a posthumous career as the electric-age Blake."—Hugh Kenner, The Washington Times
"Mina Loy has finally been admitted into 'the company of poets, ' the canon. As if she cared."—Thom Gunn, The Times Literary Supplement
Mina Loy was born in London in 1882, became American, and lived variously in New York, Europe, and finally, Aspen, Colorado until she died in 1966. Flamboyant and unapologetically avant-garde, she was a painter, poet, novelist, essayist, manifesto-writer, actress, and dress and lampshade designer. Her life involved an impossible abundance of artistic friends, performance and spectacular adventures in the worlds of Futurism, Christian Science, Feminism, Fashion, and everything modern and modernist.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 21.6 x 16.7 cm
Published by
Reaktion books / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
Mina Loy was born in London in 1882, became American, and lived variously in New York, Europe, and finally, Aspen, Colorado until she died in 1966. Flamboyant and unapologetically avant-garde, she was a painter, poet, novelist, essayist, manifesto-writer, actress, and dress and lampshade designer. Her life involved an impossible abundance of artistic friends, performance and spectacular adventures in the worlds of Futurism, Christian Science, Feminism, Fashion, and everything modern and modernist.
This new account by Mary Ann Caws explores Mina Loy's exceptional life, and features many rare images of Loy and her husband, the swiss writer, poet, artist, boxer and provocateur Arthur Cravan, who disappeared without trace in 1918.
About the Author
Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English, and French, Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is the author of many books including The Modern Art Cookbook and Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism, both published by Reaktion Books.
Industry Reviews
‘Much like its subject, Mina Loy: Apology of Genius runs on restlessness, fervor, and open-endedness. With it, Mary Ann Caws has gifted us yet another stirring assemblage that teaches and excites, this time blessedly dilating on a singularly complex, singularly wild figure at the heart of the modern and so much else.’
Maggie Nelson author of The Argonauts
‘Startlingly original, personal, and wonderfully refreshing in its candour. Beautifully and copiously illustrated, this bio-critical overview gives us a genuinely new perspective on the exciting poetry, critical prose, and artworks of this great avant-garde artist.’—Marjorie Perloff author of Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics
1959, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 20.5 x 10.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
The Arts Council / London
$55.00 - Out of stock
Lovely rare 1959 catalogue produced on the occasion of the Kurt Schwitters exhibition held by The Arts Council in London. It was in England that the modest and gentle Schwitters spent his last 7 years before he passed away in 1948. Illustrated with a selection of his constructions and collages, his MERZ works, accompanied by an introduction by art historian Alan Bowness, a full catalogue of works and a biographical note, all spread across multiple paper and tissue stocks, exquisitely letter-pressed and printed by Graphis Press in London.
Kurt (Hermann Eduard Karl Julius) Schwitters (1887—1948) was a German artist, one of the great masters of 20th century art. Associated with Der Sturm in Germany, the Dadaists, Constructivists, and Surrealists, Schwitters was a pioneer of abstract art. Working across the fields of poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography, and what came to be known as installation art., he developed his own kind of Modern Art, called MERZ.
Near Fine copy.
1971, English
Softcover, folded card, 46 x 20 cm (unfolded)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Staempfli / New York
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare folding card invitation/catalogue published on the occasion of the two-artist exhibition of Belgian painter Paul Delvaux (1897—1994) and German painter and graphic artist Paul Wunderlich (1927—2010) at Staempfli, New York, February 16—March 20, 1971. Offset printed in Switzerland, the catalogue features a colour reproduction of each artist's work in oil on canvas on the subject of the fantastic nude, with full exhibition catalogue on verso. The exhibition comprised a large number of works in oil on canvas by each artist, the earliest of which by Delvaux from 1943.
Good copy, light wear/marking.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jiyugaoka Gallery / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Very rare Japanese Japanese catalogue of Lucio Fontana's work published on the occasion of an exhibition at Jiyugaoka Gallery, Tokyo, in 1977. Cataloguing 27 works (canvas, metal, paper, litho, vinyl collage) all illustrated in b/w, accompanied by introductory text (in Japanese), biography, bibliography and list of exhibitions.
Good copy with crease to cover (running parallel to spine — looks like it was published this way to fold open), light wear, light tanning, light cover marking.
2016, English
Hardcover, 336 pages, 27 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New York
$340.00 - In stock -
This groundbreaking, award-winning book, long out-of-print, presents a multidisciplinary analysis that illuminates the making, meaning, and reception of the unfinished in art, from the Renaissance to the present day.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, at The Met, New York, March18—September 4, 2016. Edited by Kelly Baum, Andrea Bayer, and Sheena Wagstaff with further essays by Carmen C. Bambach, Thomas Beard, David Bomford, David Blayney Brown, Nicholas Cullinan, Michael Gallagher, Asher Ethan Miller, Nadine M. Orenstein, Diana Widmaier Picasso, Susan Stewart, and Nico Van Hout.
This exhibition addresses a subject critical to artistic practice: the question of when a work of art is finished. Beginning with the Renaissance masters, this scholarly and innovative exhibition examines the term "unfinished" in its broadest possible sense, including works left incomplete by their makers, which often give insight into the process of their creation, but also those that partake of a non finito—intentionally unfinished—aesthetic that embraces the unresolved and open-ended. Unfinished features more than 200 works, created in a variety of media, by artists ranging from Leonardo, Titian, Rembrandt, Turner, and Cezanne to Picasso, Warhol, Twombly, Freud, Richter, and Nauman. Essays and case studies by major contemporary scholars address this key concept from the perspective of both the creator and the viewer, probing the impact that this long artistic trajectory which can be traced back to the first century has had on modern and contemporary art. The book explores the degrees to which instances of incompleteness were accidental or intentional, experimental or conceptual. Also included are illuminating interviews with contemporary artists, including Tuymans, Celmins, and Marden, and parallel considerations of the unfinished in literature and film. The result is a multidisciplinary approach and thought-provoking analysis that provide valuable insight into the making, meaning, and critical reception of the unfinished in art.
Very Good copy, only light wear/marks to boards.
1978, Italian / French
Softcover, 230 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Mazzotta / Milan
$50.00 - Out of stock
First 1978 Mazzotta edition of this absolute classic of Surrealist collage by Max Ernst, first published in 1934. If the collage technique has become an art, it owes it to a work like this book and of course to Max Ernst, one of the masters of collage and incomparable Surrealist painter. Western art has always tried to tear apart the straitjackets of the imprisoned body with one hand: but no one has succeeded in this insurrection like Max Ernst in the novel-collages he invented and brought to climax between 1929 and 1934. These are images accompanied by rapturous captions and cropped from the illustrations of serial novels from the 19th and early 20th centuries, full of sensual and innocent girls undermined by dark pupils of Sade, and messieurs in black suits and spats who hide shameful foibles, while in the background "the city full of dreams" by Baudelaire trembles and again "the specter lures the passer-by in broad daylight". A dreamlike staging inherited from the feuilletons, therefore, but which Ernst, with his montage made up of mysterious juxtapositions and obscure cuts, the exaltation of chance and the thrill of analogy, with his slow-motion cinema and his comic strip for adults only, has been able to transform into the banner of the perennial revolt of desire.
Bi-lingual texts (French/Italian) by Jarry, Schwob, Breton, Eluard...
A masterpiece.
Very Good copy some edge wear, ageing.
2023, English
Fold-out, double-sided poster, 16 panels, 30 x 21 cm (folded)
Edition of 200,
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$10.00 - In stock -
TEMPLATES by Melbourne/Naarm based artists Rose Nolan and Augusta Vinall Richardson is a conversation and fold-out archive of artworks, published in an edition of 200, designed by Yanni Florence, text edited by Madeline Simm.
This publication was produced in conjunction with TEMPLATE/SKETCH, Augusta Vinall Richardson solo presentation at CAVES Gallery, Melbourne 20 October 11 November, 2023
2023, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Edition of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - Out of stock
The paintings on interior design magazine photos developed after a hiatus from art making while immersed in family life and domesticity. Creative energies were subsumed into home living spaces, the inside and the garden. I looked at interior design magazines, photos of daydream spaces that were untroubled by the presence of humans; their/my containers of curated longings. Mise-en-sènes, often the realm of the English country house suffused with a collective and projected psychic energy. Rooms and furniture, dense with intangible latent energies that are now interacted with marks of paint, pen and pastel. Scribbling and smudging, tracing the imagined residue of projected desires while responding to the armature of the image in colour, shape and texture. These errant energies enlivened by paint make an intimate liminal interface between magazine and gaze. The emergent interactions are conversational, interventional and absurd. Aloof and amorphous, unconscious spaces become corporeal, thresholds are invaded with the scribbled and smudged paint, claiming a messy subjective presence of painterly process, interaction and decorative hijacking.
Amanda Florence is an artist born in Melbourne/Naarm. She studied BA Fine Arts Joint Hons at Camberwell College of Art, London, UK; Post grad at VCA, Melbourne and MA Creative Arts Therapy, LaTrobe University, Melbourne. She currently makes art at home, gardens and works as a Creative Arts Therapist.
@lightofdaybooks. Photography. Sometimes work that has never been shown or published before. Sometimes work that has not been seen for years. Sometimes work that may otherwise never be seen. Mainly just photographs but sometimes with text.
2023, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Edition of 50,
Published by
Light of Day Books / Melbourne
$10.00 - In stock -
Rose Nolan’s photographs taken in New York in 2010.
Rose Nolan is an artist based in Naarm / Melbourne working across painting, installation, sculpture, photography, prints and book production.
@lightofdaybooks. Photography. Sometimes work that has never been shown or published before. Sometimes work that has not been seen for years. Sometimes work that may otherwise never be seen. Mainly just photographs but sometimes with text.
2023, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 16.6 x 23 cm
Published by
Memo Review / Naarm
$35.00 - In stock -
Issue 1 of Memo’s first glossy annual magazine features an extended artist focus on Archie Moore, the 2024 Venice Biennale Australian Representative, with essays by Rex Butler, Tara Heffernan, Tristen Harwood, and Hilary Thurlow.
Audrey Schmidt unveils a covetous history of tall-poppy takedowns in the Melbourne art world. Philip Brophy rips into Hollywood’s shallow art-world playbook, while Cameron Hurst checks-in with the once-celebrated Spike magazine cultural critic, Dean Kissick, in his post-zenith era. The Manhattan Art Review’s Sean Tatol visits the Dutch artist group, KIRAC, reporting on their legal woes with French literature’s ageing enfant terrible, Michel Houellebecq.
We also have essays and reviews on art from all around Australia and the world. Amelia Winata turns up the heat on Melbourne’s public museums as Callum McGrath uncovers a typically Eurocentric failure at the heart of British art historian Claire Bishop’s recent Artforum essay on research-based art. Helen Hughes writes on Helen Johnson’s The Birth of an Institution (2022) and Chelsea Hopper and Shaune Lakin on Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993). Stars like Isa Genzken, Royal Academy graduates like Anna Higgins, cult-favourites like Jas H. Duke — Memo features all this and more.
Texts by Adam Ford, Aimee Dodds, Amelia Winata, Anastasia Murney, Andrew Harper, Audrey Schmidt, Callum McGrath, Cameron Hurst, Camille Orel, Chelsea Hopper, Darren Jorgensen, Gemma Topliss, Giles Fielke, Helen Hughes, Hilary Thurlow, Lévi McLean, Loren Kronemyer, Maraya Takoniatis, Paris Lettau, Philip Brophy, Rayleen Forester, Rebecca Edwards, Rex Butler, Sam Beard, Sean Tatol, Shaune Lakin, Susie Russell, Tara Heffernan, Tristen Harwood, Verónica Tello, Victoria Perin.
1969, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 31 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gaberbocchus Press / London
$200.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of the first and only 1969 edition of Franciszka Themerson's artist book, Traces of Living: Drawings, self-published by her avant-garde London publishing house, Gaberbocchus Press, founded in 1948 by the artist couple Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, along with translator Barbara Wright and the artist Gwen Barnard. Traces of Living is a gorgeous over-sized album teeming with Themerson's remarkable line drawings. Her experimental drawings became synonymous with the radical originality of the presses book-design, which includes works by Alfred Jarry, Kurt Schwitters, Bertrand Russell, Raymond Queneau, and many others. Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi was its flagship publication, published in many editions and still in print. The Gaberbocchus edition is a most apposite evocation of the spirit of Jarry's grotesque fable. The text, which was hand-written directly onto lithographic plates by the translator, Barbara Wright - interspersed with Themerson's conte crayon illustrations - is printed on loud yellow pages. Themerson's contributions as illustrator contributed enormously to the autograph originality of design of Gaberbocchus books. The content of the Themersons' own books were often experiments with language and visual effects. The form was tailored for each publication to support and complement the content, using self-produced paper and other techniques. Apart from appearing in many journals worldwide, several collections of Franciszka Themerson's drawings have been published as books: Forty Drawings for Friends, London 1940-42 (1943), The Way It Walks (1954), Traces of Living (1969) and Music (1998). Themerson's theatre designs included marionette productions of Ubu Roi, Ubu Enchainé and the Threepenny Opera, mostly made for the Marionetteatern in Stockholm, in the 1960s, which toured worldwide for decades, and were rewarded with international acclaim. Many of these were exhibited at the National Theatre in 1993.
Good—Very Good copy with some light spine pinches, markings to covers.
2023, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 20.32 x 15.24 cm
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$68.00 - Out of stock
Examining this innovative collaboration as a turning point in the history of photography and in queer American culture.
Body Language is the first in-depth study of the extraordinary interplay between photographer George Platt Lynes and PaJaMa (painters Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening French). These enigmatic photographs—issuing from intimate private networks and queer sexualities—helped ground friendships and also found their way into the public worlds of fashion and fame.
Nick Mauss and Angela Miller offer timely readings of how practices of staging, collaboration, and psychological enactment through the body arced across the boundaries of art and life, private and public worlds, anticipating contemporary social media. For these audacious artists, the camera was used not to capture, but to actively perform. Renouncing photography's conventional role as mirror of the real, Lynes and PaJaMa energized forms of worldmaking via a new social framing of the self.
1996, English
Softcover, 64 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Power Plant / Canada
$240.00 - Out of stock
The rare, excellent and infamous catalogue documenting the 1996 Canadian exhibition entitled "The American Trip". Organized by curator Philip Monk, "The American Trip looks at the continuing fascination of artists with the margins of American society. The exhibition is devoted to the persistence of the “theme of the outlaw” in the works of the contemporary artists Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Cady Noland, and Richard Prince." This very substantial four person show was particularly notable as it represents one of Cady Noland's final authorized exhibitions before calculatedly withdrawing from the gallery and Museum system at the turn of the Century. Despite the fact that Cady Noland is increasingly seen as one of the most influential American artists of the period, there are no monographs on her work. This catalogue is one of the few books to include a critical text specific to Noland or to reproduce a significant number of works at the time, including her iconic contribution to the exhibition of nine free standing ink-on-aluminum pieces featuring imagery of Lee Harvey Oswald, Patty "Tanya" Hearst, and The Charles Manson Family. Additionally notable about the publication is that due to potential legal issues surrounding some of the Larry Clark photographs, the Power Plant was forced to obscure them by permanently glueing facing pages 20 and 21 together as an alternative to destroying the entire print run. A publisher's slip inserted declares: Due to legal issues, pages 20-21 have been permanently sealed. Profusely illustrated throughout with the works of all the artists (many unsealed, uncensored Clark photographs, Richard Prince's biker chicks series, Goldin's NY transgender photographs, et al) along with accompanying essay by Monk on American culture's fascination with the outlaw, outcasts, and margins of society. It recognizes the role artists have played in the dialogue between the mainstream and margins in normalizing the image of the outcast. The title refers to a constant theme in American cultural dynamics of the rejection of family and reformation of community, now expressed in the subcultures of the margins. What starts as a celebration by artists, is appropriated by the mainstream media and ends as a panic in the press. Nowhere is the fear greater than in the heart of the American family that the enemy is within and that the kids are not "alright." The images of individuals in the exhibition show them not to be traditional outlaws. They are, as the artists celebrate, the girl-or boy-next door.
Very Good copy.
2003, English
Softcover, 418 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$220.00 - Out of stock
A very rare copy of the inaugural issue of Purple Fashion, edited by Olivier Zahm, featuring Richard Prince, Bruce Benderson, Gary Indiana, Paolo Roversi, Olivier Mosset, Camille Vivier, Mark Borthwick, Pierre Bailly, Elein Fleiss, Viviane Sassen, Helmut Lang, Kerry Hallihan, Antek Walczak, Marcelo Krasilcic, Michael Lonsdale, Maison Martin Margiela, Katja Rahlwes, Niels Schumm, Dike Blair, Vava Ribeiro, Monte Hellman, Comme des Garçons, Slavoj Zizek, Balenciaga, Tony Alva, Marina Faust, Wolfgang Tillmans, Terry Richardson, Dominique Gonzales Foerster, Jeff Rian, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Anuschka Blommers, François Laruelle, Yan Céh, Issey Miyake, Rick Owens, Susan Eldridge, John Galliano, Ann Demeuelemeester, Vava Ribeiro, Serge Leblon, Hiromix, Cecile Bortoletti, Vanessa Bruno, Takashi Suzuki, Miltos Manetas, Pascale Gatzen, Stéphanie Moisdon, Junya Watanabe, Ferdinand Gouzon, and many more...
In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. Started "without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about."—Olivier Zahm. The magazine became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, and Mario Sorrenti. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications such as les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion, in which Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art. Now one of the most iconic and influential fashion magazines in history.
Very Good copy.
2004, English
Softcover, 432 pages, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$200.00 - Out of stock
"ANIMALISTIC, ARROGANT, BLOODY, BIZARRE, CRUEL"
A very rare copy of the second issue of Purple Fashion, edited by Olivier Zahm, featuring Richard Prince, Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, Juergen Teller, Imitation of Christ, Camille Vivier, Gus Van Sant, Anders Edström, Dominique Gonzales Foerster, Jeff Rian, Rita Ackermann, Heinz Peter Knes, Terry Richardson, Dike Blair, Elizabeth Peyton, Susan Cianciolo, Kim Gordon, Hermés, Giasco Bertoli, Junya Watanabe, Matthieu Orléan, Richard Kern, Maison Martin Margiela, Anuschka Blommers, François Laruelle, Niels Schumm, Comme des Garçons, Slavoj Zizek, Balenciaga, Maurizio Cattelan, Bless, Andrea Zittel, Gordon Matta-Clark, Thomas Hirschorn, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Annette Aurell, Masafumi Sanai, Katja Rahlwes, Bettina Komenda, Mike Kelley, John Galliano, Kirsten Owen, Helmut Lang, Lutz, Issey Miyake, Rick Owens, Ann Demeuelemeester, Vava Ribeiro, Jean Leclercq, Maria Cornejo, Martine Sitbon, Cosmic Wonder, Justine Kurland, Wendy and Jim, John Armelder, Tim Griffin, Martynka Wawrzyniak, Ola Rindal, Yan Céh, David Armstrong, Fabien Baron, Lewis Baltz, Takashi Homma, Drew Jarett, Anne-Sofie Back, Marc Upson, Bettina Komenda, Alain Séchas, Gary Indiana, Justine Kurland, Christopher Wool, and many more... Art directed by Christophe Brunnquell.
In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. Started "without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about."—Olivier Zahm. The magazine became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, and Mario Sorrenti. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications such as les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion, in which Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art. Now one of the most iconic and influential fashion magazines in history.
Very Good copy.
2023, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 22.9 x 14.6 cm
Published by
Art issues Press / Los Angeles
$58.00 - In stock -
"If this book of shocking intelligence and moral hope is read widely and above all well, word for word, it will help the world."—Peter Schjeldahl
An expanded edition of Hickey's controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty—championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on.
The 30th anniversary cloth edition brings back into print Dragon's four essays on beauty and commingles them with newly discovered essays by the MacArthur Foundation "genius." Art by Caravaggio, Bellini, Velázquez, Raphael, Warhol and Mapplethorpe is complemented by Hickey's tributes to Dolly Parton and Richard Pryor, outing of John Rechy's gay novel Numbers, essays on the art of writing and witty analysis of paintings by Ed Ruscha. An afterword by Hickey's friend and Dragon's editor queers the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS plague. At the time, the book made beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Today, Hickey's prescient diagnosis of the "therapeutic institution" resonates even louder and artists respond by harnessing beauty as a source of meaning and of joy.
Dave Hickey (1938-2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide.