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.
1966, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 18 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Auckland City Art Gallery / Auckland
$25.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published in 1966 on the occasion of the exhibition Eight New Zealand Artists, Auckland City Art Gallery, February 1966, featuring Don Binney, Robert Ellis, Patrick Hanly, Colin McCahon, Milan Mrkusich, Ross Ritchie, Greer Twiss, Tim Garrity. Illustrated throughout with work by the artists, introductory essay by Hamish Keith, biographical information on each artist, including exhibition chronologies. Catalogue lists 40 works executed in the years just prior to 1966 when the exhibition was held.
Good copy with age/tanning.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 154 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$220.00 - In stock -
First 1997 edition collection of "The Early Works" by the Japanese master of Ero guro Toshio Saeki, published by Treville in 1997 and long out-of-print. An extensive collection of incredible works gathered from his first major book in 1970, his acclaimed 1971 Red Book, the panel-by-panel replication of an early Saeki manga story, and much more. Texts by Akira Uno, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Timothy Leary.
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket, light wear.
1964, Spanish
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Mexico City
$300.00 - In stock -
Very rare 1964 catalogue of surrealist Remedios Varo (1908—1963), recorded as the first book devoted solely to the work of Varo, published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition presented by the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, August 3—31, 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with the paintings of Varo reproduced in colour and b/w, plus portrait of the artist. Introduction by Horacio Flores-Sanchez, essays by Raul Flores Guerrero and Carlos Pellicer. Texts in Spanish. A wonderful historical document of a visionary artist.
Remedios Varo (1908—1963)
During her childhood in Spain, Varo was influenced by her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled. Following her graduation from art school, she pursued Surrealism and political change. She moved to Paris in 1937, later finding that she could not return to Spain following the Spanish Civil War. Varo associated and exhibited with the Surrealists, exploring magic, alchemy, and analytical psychology. As World War II threatened Paris, Spanish refugees came under threat. Varo was arrested and held in early 1940. After her release, she fled Paris in the face of the Nazi invasion, and by late 1941 had secured passage to Mexico. In Mexico, Varo remained friends with fellow refugees from her European Surrealist circle, including artist Leonora Carrington, who became her closest friend and collaborator. In the late 1940s, as she supported herself through commercial illustration, Varo began to develop her mature personal style. During succeeding decades, she devoted increased time and energy to her art, and she delved further into the fantastical sources that captured her imagination. Her death of a heart attack in 1963 occurred as she was reaching new renown.
Very Good copy with light wear to boards. Previous owner inscription to inside front cover.
1964, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 22.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Galerie Dieter Brusberg / Hannover
$55.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, scarce 1964 catalogue published on the occasion of the two-person exhibition between married artist-couple Unica Zürn and Hans Bellmer - "Unica Zürn: Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen; Hans Bellmer im Studio: Druckgraphik, Zeichnungenheld", held at Galerie Dieter Brusberg, Hannover, April-June 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with portraits of the artists together alongside biographies, a selection of featured works, plus a fully illustrated catalogue of their exhibited drawings and prints. Texts in German.
Very Good copy, light general wear and tanning.
2023, English
Softcover, 24 x 17cm
Ed. of 300,
Published by
Negative Press / Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
From 1982–2020, Nixon produced over 500 printed images in relief, intaglio, stencil and planographic processes. While many of the works in his print oeuvre are unique, Nixon also produced works in small editions. From 2015 till his passing in 2020, Nixon worked with printer and publisher Negative Press.
Known predominantly as a painter, John Nixon was also an inventive and prolific printmaker. This new book documents two exhibitions of Nixon’s editions at Negative Press, featuring works made from across the artist's career, alongside personal responses to the prints by curator Sue Cramer, archivist & designer Elizabeth Boon and artist & publisher Trent Walter.
Published in an edition of 300 copies.
2023, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 25.4 x 20.3 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - Out of stock
An illuminating study of the work of artist Martin Kippenberger, whose art expressed the enthusiasms and frustrations of the West German middle class.
Martin Kippenberger: Everything Is Everywhere is the first scholarly monograph in English on West German artist Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997), one of the most prominent German artists of the 1980s. In this book, Chris Reitz shows that the condition of Kippenberger’s art was an endless, enthusiastic searching, constrained by the impossibility of fulfillment. A child during West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder, the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s, and a young adult during the economic recession and political tumult of the 1970s, Kippenberger belonged to the first truly postwar generation. But, largely uninterested in the legacy of National Socialism that had occupied his predecessors, Kippenberger instead pursued a hyperproductive artistic practice that reflected the dreams and fears of the ascendent 1980s West German middle class.
Kippenberger’s ambitions took him everywhere: he founded a museum in Greece, invested in a fashion business and a restaurant, and even bought a gas station in Brazil. He made art in a dizzying range of genres, from paintings to poetry, from posters to stickers. He made art out of his appetites, too, producing art on the theme of his own alcoholism. Intensely entrepreneurial, Kippenberger carried out an artistic practice in which his diverse endeavors, and the people who joined him in them, were all connected in a sprawling network. Reitz deftly presents Kippenberger’s career as an allegory of the neoliberal networks of capital, technology, and culture that spanned Europe and America in the 1980s.
2023, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 20.5 x 13.5 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Melbourne
$20.00 - In stock -
Walking with Ghosts: Six Conversations about Painting — John Spiteri, Boedi Widjaja and Audrey Koh, Christoph Preussmann, Noor Mahnun Mohamed, Moya McKenna, and David Jolly talking with artist, independent curator and writer Jonathan Nichols, and published on the occasion of his PhD exhibition, VCA Artspace, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne, June 2022.
"These conversations originated in thinking about what happened in painting in the last few decades. I put this question to each of the artists I spoke with, except Boedi Widjaja whose art-making started later, deploying it at the outset of each conversation as a means to consider how and why the collective shape of painting during a key period has been relatively undocumented from a contemporary art perspective."—Jonathan Nichols
Designer: Matt Hinkley
2023, English / Arabic
Softcover, 216 pages, 19 x 25.4 cm
Ed. of 350,
Published by
Sonntag Press / Narrm—Melbourne
$55.00 - In stock -
Hot Air is the first comprehensive book surveying the work of Egyptian-born, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Raafat Ishak. Rethinking the linearity of the monographic format, Hot Air navigates Ishak’s practice through a sequence of themes and motifs that occupy his art: NUDITY/ SQUARE/ LANGUAGE/ AIR/ SUN/ BLACK/ PAINTING/ ARCHITECTURE. The final chapter, HEIDE, is dedicated to the artist’s major solo exhibition in the celebrated modernist building at Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2023.
The publication is richly illustrated with artwork images and reference material alongside newly commissioned essays in English and Arabic by Lisa Radford, Robert Schubert, Stephen Zagala and Melissa Keys. Publication coordinator: Brigid Moriarty. Design: Alex Ward. Translation: Muhammad Y Gamal. Copy editor: Sarah Gory (English) and Salma Harland (Arabic)
2023, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 16.8 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - In stock -
How artists in twentieth-century Germany adapted the idea of the medical or legal case as an artistic strategy to push to the fore sexualities, scandals, and crimes that were otherwise concealed.
In early twentieth-century Germany, the artistic avant-garde borrowed procedures from the medical and juridical realms to expose and debate matters that society preferred remain hidden and unspoken. Frederic J. Schwartz explores how the evocation or creation of a “case” provided artists with a means to engage themes that ranged from blasphemy to Lustmord, or sexual murder. Shedding light on the case as a cultural form, Schwartz shows its profound effect on artists and the ways it dovetailed with methods used by these figures to exploit fundamental changes taking place across the mass media of their time.
As Schwartz shows, the case was a common denominator that connected seemingly disparate works. George Grosz and Rudolf Schlichter drew on it for their violent visual art, as did architect Adolf Loos when he equated ornament with crime. Expressionists, meanwhile, approached the question of whether the so-called “mad” shared a right of public expression with those deemed sane, and examined medical and legal approaches to what society labeled as insanity. The case also took on a personal dimension when artists found themselves confronted with, or chose to engage with, the legal system. German courts prosecuted John Heartfield and others for their provocative works, while Bertolt Brecht created publicity for himself by suing the firm to whom he sold the film rights to The Threepenny Opera. Provocative and insightful, The Culture of the Case offers a privileged view of the spaces of representation in which images—in some instances, as cases—functioned at a key moment of modernity.
Frederic J. Schwartz is Emeritus Professor of History of Art at University College London. His books include The Werkbund- Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War and Blind Spots- Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany.
1982, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 30.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Pan / Sydney
$45.00 - Out of stock
First 1982 softcover edition of Art of The Holocaust, edited by Janet Blatter and Sybil Milton. A powerful collection of over 350 works of art created in ghettos, concentration camps, and in hiding by victims of the Nazis. Jewish, Communist and "degenerate", exiled, enemy-of-the-State avant-garde German artists, whose art was an "insult to German feeling", present here an arresting collective portrait of horror and the indomitable struggle to survive. Paintings and drawings reproduced throughout in colour and b/w with extensive biographies on the artists. Preface by Irving Howe.
Good copy.
1995, English
Softcover, 314 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
October Books / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 edition of this long out-of-print study by Hal Foster, published The MIT Press and October Books. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death.
Surrealism has long been seen as its founder, André Breton, wanted it to be seen: as a movement of love and liberation. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death. To this end Foster first restages the difficult encounter of surrealism with Freudian psychoanalysis, then redefines the crucial categories of surrealism—the marvelous, convulsive beauty, objective chance—in terms of the Freudian uncanny, or the return of familar things made strange by repression. Next, with the art of Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti in mind, Foster develops a theory of the surrealist image as a working over of a primal fantasy. This leads him finally to propose as a summa of surrealism a body of work often shunted to its margins: the dolls of Hans Bellmer, so many traumatic tableaux that point to difficult connections not only between sadism and masochism but also between surrealism and fascism. At this point Compulsive Beauty turns to the social dimension of the surrealist uncanny. First Foster reads the surrealist repertoire of automatons and mannequins as a reflection on the uncanny processes of mechanization and commodification. Then he considers the surrealist use of outmoded images as an attempt to work through the historical repression effected by these same processes. In a brief conclusion he discusses the fate of surrealism today in a world become surrealistic. Compulsive Beauty not only offers a deconstructive reading of surrealism, long neglected by Anglo-American art history, but also participates in a postmodern reconsideration of modernism, the dominant accounts of which have obscured its involvements in desire and trauma, capitalist shock and technological development.
Very Good copy.
2003, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Routledge / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
Bogue provides a systematic overview and introduction to Deleuze's writings on music and painting, and an assessment of their position within his aesthetics as a whole. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts breaks new ground in the scholarship on Deleuze's aesthetics, while providing a clear and accessible guide to his often overlooked writings in the fields of music and painting.
"After these books are published, there will be no need for anyone else to write a how-to-understand-Deleuze book. The clarity of the prose, the careful explanation of each difficult and important concept, and the lack of any jargon whatsoever make this the definitive commentary on Deleuze." — Dorothea Olkowski, University of Colorado
First edition. As New.
1994, English
Softcover, 388 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Duke University Press / North Carolina
$55.00 - In stock -
Queering the Renaissance offers a major reassessment of the field of Renaissance studies. Gathering essays by sixteen critics working within the perspective of gay and lesbian studies, this collection redraws the map of sexuality and gender studies in the Renaissance. Taken together, these essays move beyond limiting notions of identity politics by locating historically forms of same-sex desire that are not organized in terms of modern definitions of homosexual and heterosexual.
The presence of contemporary history can be felt throughout the volume, beginning with an investigation of the uses of Renaissance precedents in the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision Bowers v. Hardwick, to a piece on the foundations of 'our' national imaginary, and an afterword that addresses how identity politics has shaped the work of early modern historians. The volume examines canonical and noncanonical texts, including highly coded poems of the fifteenth-century Italian poet Burchiello, a tale from Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, and Erasmus's letters to a young male acolyte. English texts provide a central focus, including works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, Donne, Beaumont and Fletcher, Crashaw, and Dryden. Broad suveys of the complex terrains of friendship and sodomy are explored in one essay, while another offers a cross-cultural reading of the discursive sites of lesbian desire.
Accessibly written, boldly interdisciplinary, Queering the Renaissance will be indispensable for literary critics, historians, and theorists seeking to understand the representation of same-sex desire in the early modern period.
Contributors. Alan Bray, Marcie Frank, Carla Freccero, Jonathan Goldberg, Janet Halley, Graham Hammill, Margaret Hunt, Donald N. Mager, Jeff Masten, Elizabeth Pittenger, Richard Rambuss, Alan K. Smith, Dorothy Stephens, Forrest Tyler Stevens, Valerie Traub, Michael Warner
Industry Reviews
"An outstanding collection . . . Not only does it contribute importantly to emerging areas of gay/lesbian studies and the history of sexuality by historicizing what has been for the most part a relentlessly presentist field; it makes significant scholarly contributions to traditional fields in Renaissance studies."-Karen Newman, Brown University
2001, English
Softcover (stiff boards w. printed acetate obi-strip), 120 pages, 36.5 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Amus Arts Press / Osaka
$160.00 - In stock -
First edition of the long out-of-print over-sized collection of posters by legendary Japanese graphic artist Tadanori Yokoo. Published in 2001 by Amus Arts Press in Japan, this large, lavish volume comprises entirely of beautiful full page reproductions of Yokoo's major poster works spanning his entire career, in which his iconic photo-montage and print-making had a distinct psychedelic, erotic and esoteric spirit that captured international attention.
Tadanori Yokoo (b. 1936) is one of Japan's most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists. He began his career as a stage designer for avant-garde theatre in Tokyo, collaborating extensively with Shūji Terayama and his experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol" or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo's complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original, heavily reflecting Japan's cultural history and iconography. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition for his work and was included in the 1968 "Word & Image" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Four years later MoMA mounted a solo exhibition of his graphic work organized by Mildred Constantine. In 1968 Yukio Mishima claimed, "Tadanori Yokoo's works reveal all of the unbearable things which we Japanese have inside ourselves and they make people angry and frightened. He makes explosions with the frightening resemblance which lies between the vulgarity of billboards advertising variety shows during festivals at the shrine devoted to the war dead and the red containers of Coca Cola in American Pop Art, things which are in us but which we do not want to see."
Very Good copy with original plastic obi-strip. Some tanning to back stiff card cover.
2023, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 25.4 x 18 cm
Published by
Fulgur Press / UK
$84.00 - In stock -
Essays on the art and writings of the long-neglected British occultist and Surrealist.
Straddling the worlds of Surrealism, occultism and modernist literature, Ithell Colquhoun (1906-88) was widely respected in her lifetime, but her transgressive, esoteric and poetic paintings and writings were long neglected until Richard Shillitoe's 2009 book Ithell Colquhoun: Magician Born of Nature initiated her revaluation--followed by Fulgur's 2016 publication Decad of Intelligence, the Tate's 2019 acquisition of more than 5,000 Colquhoun works and Amy Hale's 2020 biography. Colquhoun occupies a unique place within the lineage of occult Surrealist painters such as Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as her presence in the 2022 Venice Biennale exhibition Milk of Dreams demonstrated.
This volume is the first critical examination of her diverse legacy, compiling papers from a 2018 conference on Colquhoun and her contemporaries Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Stella Snead. Contributors explore themes of authorship and agency, Colquhoun's drawing practice, her Celtic motifs, British Surrealism and alchemy.
1997, English
Softcover, 116 pages, 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Morpheus International / US
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 1997 edition of H.R. Giger's Retrospective 1964-1984, presenting over 150 artworks, spanning 20 years in the career of the world's most renowned fantasy artist, gathered chronologically in this one rich and detailed volume. Carefully rendered reproductions of Giger's paintings, drawings, designs, videos, sculptures, costumes and furniture are accompanied by his own commentary and portraits of the artist at work and with Dali, Fuchs, Harry and other colleagues.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good—Very Good copy of the first 1997 English edition with light general corner/cover wear.
2016/2017, Japanese
2 softcover publications (staple-bound), 26 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vanilla Gallery / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rare 2 volume catalogue from the first exhibitions of Serial Killer Art at Vanilla Gallery, Ginza, Tokyo, in 2016 and 2017, from the HN collection. From John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, and Ronnie Clay, these exhibitions featured artworks, self-portraits, letters, and documents of serial killers in Europe and America whose heinous personalities and numerous crimes have served as models for novels and films, becoming known the world over.
"The world portrayed by murderers who committed crimes that make you want to look away is like a dreadful, lonely, impermanent feeling that looks into the depths of the viewer's heart, and is like when confronted with something unknown. It's full of tension."
Collected by Mr. HN (H. Nakajima), over 200 items were displayed in Tokyo on the occasion of these exhibits, with these pamphlets available at the exhibitions only. Illustrated with examples throughout in colour and b/w, texts in Japanese by film critic Kiichirō Yanashita, Orihara Ichi, and collector/curator H. Nakajima.
Killers included in the exhibitions: John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas, Peter Sutcliffe, Danny Rowling, Keith Jasperson, James Earl Ray, Thomas Pitera, Henry Hill, Nicholas Crowe, Dorothy Puente, Haddon Clarke, Gerald Shaffer, Anthony Shore, James Munro, Gary Ray Balls, Hudson Graham, Carroll Bundy, Otis Toole, Charles Watson, Lawrence Bittaker, Herbert Mullin, Arthur Shawcross, Rod Ferrell, Ted Bundy, Jim Jones, Christa Pike, Harvard Baumeister, David Berkowitz, Richard Ramirez, Ronnie Clay, Irene Wuornos, Wayne Low, Dana Sue Gray, Roy Norris, Kenneth Bianchi, Michael Alig, Veronica Compton, Joe Roy Metheny, Gary Heidnik, Charles Manson, Jeremy Jones, Jack Trawick, Carl Drew, Wayne Harton, Rosemary West, Theodore Kaczynski, Thomas Heyer, Ed Gein, Ferrell Mykers, Douglas Clark, Richard Clarey, Ian Brady, Jack Kevorkian, Bonnie & Clyde, Philip Jacobinski, Daniel Siebert, Tommy Lynn Sells.
Very Good with only light wear.
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 268 pages, 29.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Praeger Publishers Inc. / New York
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 1971 clothbound hardcover edition of the first major English-language monograph on Argentinian artist Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), published two years after his death. Profusely illustrated with texts by Italian writer and art critic Guido Ballo (1914-2010), this volume surveys Fontana's works across painting (many of his Concetti Spaziale examples), sculpture, drawing, installation and graphic work, encompassing his Spatialism manifesto, along with biographic details, bibliography, photographs documenting the life and work of the great artist.
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one the most innovative artists of the 20th century. A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Fontana blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. The founder of Spatialism, a movement focused on the spatial qualities of sculpture and paintings with the goal of breaking through the two-dimensionality of the traditional picture plane, he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts. He was best known for his monochrome canvases known as Concetti Spaziale that he would cut or puncture, leaving distinctive gaping slash marks and holes that imbued the finished work with an almost violent energy. In his seminal writing, White Manifesto (1946), the artist traced ideas for creating a new medium that blended architecture, painting, and sculpture. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture,” he said of his work. Fontana had widespread impact on the following generation of artists, who began to use installation media more aggressively to address the dynamics of space in gallery environments and Land Art. Fontana died on September 7, 1968 in Varese, Italy at the age of 69, just two years after being awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket. All near Fine.
1984, Lithuanian / Russian / English / French / German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 310 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vaga / Vilnius
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1984 edition of this wonderful, comprehensive monograph published by Leidykla Vaga in Vilnius on the work of fin de siècle composer, artist and writer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis. Profusely illustrated with Čiurlionis' visionary musical landscape paintings, with accompanying texts by Antanas Gedminas, Jonas Kuzminskis and Pranas Gudynas in Lithuanian, Russian, English, French and German.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875 – 1911) was a Lithuanian composer, painter and writer in Polish. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau, and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe. During his short life, he composed about 400 pieces of music and created about 300 paintings, as well as many literary works and poems. His works have had a profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture. His pictures often have a philosophical background. The influence of music on painting is striking: Čiurlionis created several cycles of paintings, which he called "sonatas" and whose individual pictures he titled "allegro", "andante" and the like. The individual images are based on the character of the respective musical performance instructions: an Andante, for example, conveys a rather calm atmosphere. Some paintings even bear the title "Fuge". This synthesis of music and painting is unique in terms of art history.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1951, German
Softcover, 98 pages, 27.5 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Self Published / Brühl
$70.00 - Out of stock
Lovely publication produced in 1951 on the occasion of a special exhibition of Max Ernst held in the Augustusburg Castle, organised by Karl Seibt and the city of Brühl in Germany on the 60th birthday of the artist. Illustrated throughout with many fine examples of Ernst's paintings, collages, frottages, prints and drawings, alongside two essays by Ernst (including "What is Surrealism?"), plus writings on Ernst by fellow Surrealist artists and writers Andre Breton, Nicolas Calas, Hans Arp, and Paul Eluard, amongst others, essay by Lothar Pretzell. All texts in German.
Good-Very Good copy with general wear, tanning.
1993, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 112 pages, 37 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$200.00 - In stock -
First Japanese hardcover edition of Japanese master of erotic fantasy illustration Hajime Sorayama's classic The Gynoids, published in 1993. This lavish over-sized volume is illustrated cover-to-cover with Sorayama's erotic female cyborgs, or Gynoids, and presented in dramatic, glossy full-colour throughout, alongside his incredible fetish mistresses. The term "Gynoids" was created by the female British SF writer, Gwyneth Jones, and developed by another British writer, Richard Calder. The word is a combination of "droid" (greek "in the image of") and "gyn" (greek "woman"). These female cyborgs of Sorayama combine elements both human and the mechanical. The soft, sensuous body parts are cleverly intertwined with inorganic, machine-like connections and protrusions to create entrancing images which embody complex and subtle tensions.
Hajime Sorayama is revered for his erotic airbrushed illustrations of humanoid robots that explore ideals of femininity and beauty. Drawing on pinup pictures, Sorayama published the first book of his signature “Sexy Robot” series of chromium-plated figures in 1983. Decades later, these striking works have sold for more than $500,000. Sorayama started his career in advertising before freelancing in Hollywood, where he helped to produce visuals for sci-fi films. His illustrations gained widespread attention in 1995, when Penthouse began featuring them in a monthly column. While Sorayama has enjoyed a particular cult status for his sensual cyborgs —who appear empowered rather than objectified —he has also received mainstream commercial attention. Sony enlisted him to produce the first designs for its robotic dog AIBO, which won the grand prize for Japan’s Good Design Award in 1999. Sorayama has also worked with fashion titans such as Thierry Mugler and Dior on projects that have extended his illustrations into the realm of wearables, sculpture, and performance.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1972, English
Softcover, unpaginated, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Playboy Press / Chicago
$180.00 - In stock -
"Playboy's Vargas Girls in full color — fifty years of beauty by Playboy's favorite delineator of the american girl"
First edition of this now rare first book collection of Alberto Vargas (1896—1982), the celebrated Peruvian-American painter of pin-up girls, published by Playboy Press in 1972. Profusely illustrated, this is the only collection of Vargas' pin-up paintings for Playboy—reproducing 99 in all, as full-page or double-page spreads, exactly as published in Playboy magazine 1962—1972. Also includes 17 further examples of his earlier work spanning the 1920s—1950s.
Vargas, often considered one of the most famous of the pin-up artists, made his name in the 1940s as the creator of iconic World War-II era pin-ups for Esquire magazine known as "Vargas Girls." Between 1940 and 1946 Vargas produced 180 paintings for the magazine. He would leave Esquire in 1946, striking for better compensation, and a four year lawsuit ensued over the use of his "Varga" signature. He struggled financially until 1959 when Hugh Hefner, who was formerly a copywriter for Esquire and quit after he was denied a $5 raise, signed him up to create artwork for his nascent Playboy magazine. Over the next 16 years Vargas produced 152 paintings for the magazine. His career flourished and he had major exhibitions of his work all over the world.
Good—VG copy with minor cover edge/corner wear/marking to glossy black boards.
1977, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 352 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Obliques / Paris
$180.00 - Out of stock
The landmark, over-sized Obliques special double issue, "La Femme Surréaliste", published in Paris in 1977. The French literary journal Obliques (who published special issues on Artaud, Bellmer, Kafka, Klossowski, Vian, Sartre, Robbe-Grillet, Strindberg, Genet...) was the first publisher to present a comprehensive list of the literary and plastic production of Surrealist women with this gorgeous volume, long before the works of surrealist women, as a corpus, began to be more widely studied in the 1980s. Featuring well known names, but also many female artists neglected and seldom mentioned in the recent (strangely narrow-minded) re-evaluation of this period, this beautifully printed issue of Obliques is an incredibly valuable reference on a movement that was decidedly ‘feminine’. Edited by Roger Borderie with Michel Camus, it features profiles on the work and writing of Belen, Maya Bell, Bona, Leonora Carrington, Lise Deharme, Jacqueline Duprey, Aube Elléouët, Josette Exandier, Leonor Fini, Aline Gagnaire, Giovanna, Jane Graverol, Marianne Van Hirtum, Rozeta Hum, Valentine Hugo, Karskaya, Greta Knutson, Laure, Gina Pane, Annie Lebrun, Georgette Magritte, Manina, Joyce Mansour, Nora Mitrani, Meret Oppenheim, Mimi Parent, Valentine Penrose, Gisele Prassinos, Karina Raeck, Remedios Varo, Sibylle Ruppert, Colette Thomas, Toyen, Isabelle Waldberg, Unica Zurn, Cécile Reims, Dorothea Tanning, Greta Knutson, and more. Additional texts and works by Beatrice Didier, Cécile Reims, Michel Butor, Michel Sicard, Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues, Jean Roudaut, Rene Micha, Gerard Legrand, Jean Pfeiffer, Jacques Laurans, Michel Carassou, Annie Lebrun, Charles Bachat, Olivier Milliard, Robert Brechon, Jules Michelet, Jerome Prieur, Xaviere Gauthier, Elsa Thoresen Gouveia, plus a gallery by Titi Parant and Henri Maccheroni's Portraits Corrigés. Profusely illustrated with artworks, mostly in b/w with some colour sections.
Very Good copy of the rarer hardcover edition in VG dust jacket with signs of ageing and some wear/small tears
1984, French
Softcover, 24 pages, 31.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
Galerie Maeght / Paris
$45.00 - Out of stock
1984 catalogue for solo exhibition by Pierre Klossowski at Galerie Maeght Lelong, Paris. Illustrated throughout with Klossowski's artworks in colour and black and white, alongside photographic portraits, biography and texts by conceptual painter and critic Rémy Zaugg, including "Simulacra", an interview with Pierre Klossowski.
Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus. As a writer, Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. Roberte Ce Soir (Roberte in the Evening) provoked controversy due to its graphic depiction of sexuality. He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's review, Acéphale, in the late 1930s.
Good copy but with wear and tanning to covers.