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.
2019, English / German
Softcover, 64 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$90.00 - Out of stock
Grey pictures by Richter from the years 1965 to 1974 as well as Spiegel, Grau / Mirror, Grey from 1991 are juxtaposed with photos by Michael Schmidt of Waffenruhe (1985–1987) and Berlin Wedding (1976–1978). An exploration of the colour grey through both artists work.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Gerhard Richter and Michael Schmidt at Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne (1 December 2018 – 8 March 2019).
English and German text.
2021, English
Hardcover, 196 pages, 22.9 x 26.2 cm
Published by
Guggenheim Museum / New York
$99.00 - In stock -
One of the foremost artistic innovators of abstraction in the 20th century, Vasily Kandinsky sought to liberate painting from its ties to the natural world and promote the spiritual in art. This richly illustrated publication looks at Kandinsky anew, through a critical lens, reframing our understanding of this vital figure of European modernism, who was also a prolific aesthetic theorist and writer.
A series of thematic essays considers his engagement with avant-garde artistic communities including the Bauhaus, his relationship to improvisation and music, his travels in Europe and Russia, and the influences behind his self-declared anarchist mode of abstraction, among other topics. Tracing Kandinsky’s life and work through his years in Moscow, several cities in Germany, and Paris, the texts offer striking new insights into an artist whose creative production and style were intimately tied to a sense of place—and displacement—and evolved amid the political and social upheavals catalyzed by the Russian Revolution and World Wars I and II.
Kandinsky’s history is closely linked to that of the Guggenheim Museum. Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting the artist’s work in 1929; a year later, they met at the Bauhaus, in Dessau. This book features more than half of the museum’s deep holdings of works by Kandinsky, presenting the full arc of his artistic development and career. Included are paintings in oil and oil with sand, reverse-glass paintings, as well as woodcuts, watercolors and drawings on paper. An illustrated chronicle of Kandinsky’s life and career, including selected exhibitions and publications, rounds out the volume.
Edited with text by Tracey Bashkoff, Megan Fontanella. Text by Mark Antliff, Patricia Leighten, George E. Lewis.
2022, English
Hardcover, 350 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Stolpe Publishing / Stockholm
$65.00 - Out of stock
Long unavailable and highly sought after, Ringbom's classic 1970 volume launched the study of esotericism's influence on abstract art.
For many years, relatively few people knew of spiritualism's impact on the birth of abstract art. But when the Finnish art historian Sixten Ringbom's book The Sounding Cosmos was published in 1970, the writing of history changed forever. Through his research on Wassily Kandinsky, one of the pivotal figures in modern art, Ringbom showed how Theosophy and esoteric teachings were absolutely essential to the development of nonfigurative painting.
This discovery generated great debate at the time, and the book was both celebrated and controversial. Although the original publication is extremely rare and sought after, to this day The Sounding Cosmos is a classic of art history that continues to be discussed--especially in recent years, as the presence of esotericism in modernist art from Hilma af Klint to Mondrian and beyond has been revisited.
The Sounding Cosmos is now being reissued for the first time in this elegant new edition. The richly illustrated original text has been supplemented with a new foreword by Daniel Birnbaum and Julia Voss.
Sixten Ringbom (1935-92) was an influential Finnish art historian. In 1965 he completed a PhD under the great art historian Ernst Gombrich. Ringbom succeeded his father as professor of art history at Åbo Akademi University in 1970, and became the first art historian to explore in depth the connections between early abstract art and occultism. He published prolifically until his death in 1992.
1980/1986, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
LACMA / Los Angeles
$45.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1980-1981. Edited by Stephanie Barron and Maurice Tuchman, this groundbreaking, richly illustrated (465 items) book documents "the most comprehensive survey of 1910—1930 Russian avant-garde art ever shown in this country"—Portfolio. Covering painting, sculpture, prints, drawing, books, photographs, costumes and examples of industrial, architectural, and theatrical design, with a special focus on Suprematism and Constructivism, this generous volume contains 19 authoritive and enlightening essays, excellent illustrated reference profiles on each artists, biographies, bibliographies, and a detailed chronology of the period. An essential art history reference, containing the works of Natan Altman, Yurii Annenkov, David Burliuk, Vladimir Burliuk, Marc Chagall, Iiia Chashnik, Vasilii Ermlov, Vera Ermolaeva, Alexandra Exter, Pavel Filanov, Naum Gabo, Natalia Goncharova, Vasilii Kamensky, Vasilii Kandinsky, Ivan Kliun, Gustav Klucis, Petr Konchalovsky, Ivan Kudriashev, Mikhail Larionov, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Pavel Mansurov, Mikhail Matiushin, Konstantin Medunetsky, Petr Miturich, Alexei Morgunov, Vera Nikolskaia, Liubov Popova, Ivan Puni, Alexandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Georgii Stenberg, Vladimir Stenberg, Varvara Stepanova, Nikolia Suetin, Vladimir Tatlin, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexandr Vesnin, K.A. Vialov, Georgii Yakulov.
Good copy, with some general cover wear.
2011, German
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 252 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$50.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print hardcover comprehensive monograph on the Viennese painter Hans Makart, this book presents the work of the artist known as “the magician of colour” in glorious illustrations, set alongside the art of fellow masters.
His name and his style are symbols of an era: Hans Makart. In 1869 the Emperor brought him to Vienna as a history painter, where he quickly became a sought-after painter for the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. His works, which were often perceived as lustful, find their equivalent in the decadence and brought Hans Makart the reputation as a scandal painter, but led to his international fame. His free use of color, which follows Delacroix, as well as the choice of his subjects give his painting a sensuality that is intoxicating in its effect and made him a symbol of a time, the Makart period, through its overwhelming splendor. His interest in the total work of art is expressed in the design of Nicolaus Dumba's study, as well as in his examination of the music of Richard Wagner and the architecture of Gottfried Semper. His influence on the art of the Vienna Secession, e.g. B. on Gustav Klimt, radiated far beyond his early death.
This catalog to an exhibit of Makart’s works includes his legendary room in the Palais Dumba, his monumental paintings, and his controversial and subversive erotic works. The large-scale theatric quality of Makart’s work is evident in the stunning reproductions featured in the book, which allow viewers to appreciate the brilliant palette of his oeuvre.
Agnes Husslein-Arco is Director of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. She has published books on Schiele, Mucha, Klimt, Makart and others.
German language. Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1974, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 189 pages, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Barrie & Jenkins / London
$25.00 - In stock -
The Sketches of Turner, R.A., 1802-20 : Genius of the Romantic, published by Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1974, presenting over 400 sketches of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), including over 100 in colour. Works created in Great Britaain and Continental Europe, with commentary throughout by author Gerald Wilkinson.
Very Good copy with poor dust jacket (creasing and tears, but all present and preserved under mylar wrap)
1978, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bonfini Press / Switzerland
$48.00 - Out of stock
First English-language edition of this hardcover monographic volume on Belgian painter and printmaker James Ensor (1860 —1949), published by Bonfini Press in Switzerland in 1978 and printed in Italy. Profusely illustrated with Ensor's paintings and graphic works in colour and black and white, accompanied by text by Jacques Jansenns. Includes biography and bibliography.
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (1860 —1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX. While Ensor's early works, such as Russian Music (1881) and The Drunkards (1883), depict realistic scenes in a somber style, his palette subsequently brightened and he favoured increasingly bizarre subject matter. Such paintings as The Scandalized Masks (1883) and Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man (1891) feature figures in grotesque masks inspired by the ones sold in his mother's gift shop for Ostend's annual Carnival. Subjects such as carnivals, masks, puppetry, skeletons, and fantastic allegories are dominant in Ensor's mature work. Ensor dressed skeletons up in his studio and arranged them in colourful, enigmatic tableaux on the canvas, and used masks as a theatrical aspect in his still lifes. Attracted by masks' plastic forms, bright colours, and potential for psychological impact, he created a format in which he could paint with complete freedom. James Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, George Grosz, Wols, and many expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century.
Very Good in VG dust jacket preserved under mylar wrap.
2018, English
Hardcover, 136 pages, 28.5 x 31.5 cm
Published by
Forma Edizioni / Firenze
$170.00 - In stock -
This monograph, edited by noted Italian art critic Bruno Cora and published on the occasion of Art Basel 2018, presents the genesis, critical analysis, and exhibition history of the Combustioni Plastiche [Plastic Combustions] cycle by Alberto Burri. These works span a quarter of a century, from 1953 to 1979, and were created using industrial sheets of different kinds of plastic, with different melting points. They are visceral and technically innovative hybrids, part painting and part sculpture, ranging in size from a few centimetres to larger works installed in places of worship and stage designs for theatre performances. They illuminate Burri's longstanding exploration of the beauty that can be found in mass produced materials, and function as a lens through which we can reassess Burri's entire creative career.
Historical photographs by Claudio Amendola and Ugo Mulas, newspaper articles, and in-depth essays offer a complete analysis of this extraordinary cycle of works in this beautiful over-sized hardcover book.
1960, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 166 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Arts Inc. / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this, the first and only comprehensive collection of Grosz' works ever published in the English-language, by Arts Inc. in New York, 1960. It presents the paintings and drawings of his two worlds—Germany after World War I, and the America of New York, Cape Cod and Huntington, Long Island—in all their fascinating variety and complexity. Many of these, especially from the artist's American period, are published here for the first time. Illustrated in colour and b/w. Known for his politically charged paintings and caricatural depictions of Berlin life in the 1920s, included are not only those items which fully reveal his familiar, passionate, social-protest artistry, but also works which for pure draftsmanship rank him with the masters. An essay by Grosz himself illuminates brilliantly the philosophy behind his works, particularly those of his later, American, period. Includes a bibliography, catalogue of plates, biography, memoirs, autobiography, introduction by Ruth Berenson and Norbert Muhlen. Edited By Herbert Bittner.
Long out-of-print and the less common English-language edition, good copy with some wear, tanning, good dust-jacket with a few small chips and tears.
2002, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 24.5 x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$55.00 - Out of stock
"Balthus is one of the most elusive of living painters. This book offers an insight into the mind and work of the artist, bringing together a wide selection of his most important pictures from the 1930s to the present."
Major monograph compiling the most important works of the great Polish-French artist Balthus. Following his father's death, Stanislas Klossowski de Rola has written a new introduction to this expanded edition that also includes the addition of Balthus's last work, The Waiting, and the controversial Guitar Lesson from 1934. Rare photographs show the young Balthus in his studio, while more recent images by his friend Henri Cartier-Bresson complete this tribute to one of the great artists of recent times.
Balthus (1908—2001), was a Polish-French modern artist born in Paris to Polish expatriate parents. His given name was Balthasar Klossowski - his sobriquet "Balthus" was based on his childhood nickname, alternately spelled Baltus, Baltusz, Balthusz or Balthus. His father, Erich Klossowski, was an art historian who wrote a noted monograph on Daumier. His older brother was the philosopher and artist Pierre Klossowski. An unusual figure in the history of twentieth century painting, Balthus both traveled among and drew upon the work of other major artists of his time, while at the same time following a unique individual trajectory. He was mentored by, friends of, and/or even collaborated with seminal creative figures from different eras, including Antonin Artaud, André Breton, and Rainer Maria Rilke, while cultivating his own highly refined style of dreamlike, classically-informed painting. The scenes he usually depicted were very ordinary bourgeois interiors or outdoor settings, which nonetheless managed to reveal the heightened inner states of his subjects as well as the states of mind of those who might be viewing them.
"I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always with a slight touch of mystery in my paintings."—Balthus
Very Good copy.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 448 pages, 15.4 x 23.5 cm
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$59.00 - Out of stock
Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Transfixed by Prehistory attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene. Rather, it is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the “new” was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought. Stavrinaki focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger), and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology.
“Transfixed by Prehistory delivers a stunning reconceptualization of the relationship between time and technology in industrial capitalism.” —Devin Fore
“From Cézanne to Smithson via Paleolithic mandibles, Stavrinaki mobilizes an unlikely group of artifacts to explore the core hermeneutic questions of an Anthropocene epoch in which the symbolic and the geological have become intertwined, if not indistinguishable. Through readings that are not just anecdotally rich and methodologically exemplary but also utterly compelling formally, Transfixed by Prehistory delivers a stunning reconceptualization of the relationship between time and technology in industrial capitalism.” —Devin Fore, Princeton University
1986, English
Softcover, 94 pages, 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art Gallery of South Australia / Adelaide
$45.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Wild Visionary Spectral : New German Art, organised by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 28 Feb — 20 April, 1986, before traveling Australia and Wellington, New Zealand in 1986. Profusely illustrated in colour throughout with the works 13 contemporary German artists, including Jörg Immendorff, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Franz Erhard Walther, Georg Baselitz, Joesph Beuys, A. R. Penck, Anslem Kiefer. Includes bios and texts by Ron Radford (on the relationship between German and Australian art), Karl Ruhrberg, and Wolfgang Max Faust.
Good—Very Good copy with some light general wear.
1967, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$18.00 - Out of stock
William Ivins, probably more than anyone else, has been responsible for the twentieth-century reconsideration of the significance of the significance of graphic techniques. As the first Curator of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art he prepared in 1929 a ground-breaking exhibition of prints, of which Notes on Prints is the book form. The work presented ranges in time and style from anonymous religious pieces, to Pollaiuolo and Mantegna, to the German school of the late fifteenth century. At the time of the exhibition, Ivins had written short but pointed introductory comments which accompanied the prints; with minor changes, they also appear here.
Includes the works of Albrecht Dürer, Andrea Mantegna, Hendrick Goltzius, William Blake, Goya, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, William Hogarth, Jacques Callot, Eugène Delacroix, Manet, Degas, Francesco Bartolozzi, Jean Duvet, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable, Paul Gauguin, Whistler, Jean Morin, Peter Paul Rubens, Christoffel Jegher, Marcantonio Raimondi, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Lucas van Leyden, Lambrecht Hopfer, Martin Schongauer, and many more.
Average/Fair, worn copy of the 1967 MIT Press edition of this classic title.
2020, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 10.8 x 17.8 cm
Published by
David Zwirner Books / New York
$25.00 - In stock -
In his 1989 book on Balthus - the storied and controversial artist who worked in Paris throughout the twentieth century - Guy Davenport gives one of the most nuanced, literary, and compelling readings of the work of this master. Reading it today highlights the change in perspectives on sexuality and nudity in art in the past thirty years.
Written over several years in his notebooks, Davenport's distinct reflections on Balthus's paintings try to explain why his work is so radical, and why it has so often come under scrutiny for its depiction of girls and women. Davenport throws the lens back on the viewer and asks: is it us or Balthus who reads sexuality into these paintings? For Davenport, the answer is clear: Balthus may indeed show us periods in adolescent development that are uncomfortable to view, but the eroticization exists primarily on the part of the viewer.
Arguing that Balthus's figures are erotic only if we make them so, and that their innocence is more present than anything pornographic in them, Davenport posits that the paintings hold up a mirror to our own perversities and force us, difficultly, to confront them. He writes, "The nearer an artist works to the erotic politics of his own culture, the more he gets its concerned attention. Gauguin's naked Polynesian girls, brown and remote, escape the scandal of Balthus's, although a Martian observer would not see the distinction." Davenport's critique helps us understand Balthus in our times-something we need more than ever as we crucially confront sexual politics in visual art.
2000, German
Softcover, 55 pages, 24 × 28 cm
Published by
Galerie Ascan Crone / Hamburg
$65.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful early artist's book by German artist Kai Althoff, published in 2000 on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Galerie Ascan Crone, Hamburg, and long out-of-print. Illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Althoff's paintings, drawings, installations and assorted imagery, alongside a text by German painter Michaela Eichwald.
As New.
Kai Althoff (born 1966 in Cologne) is a German visual artist and musician. Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconography, and counter-cultural movements, Althoff creates imaginary environments in which paintings, sculpture, drawing, video, and found objects commingle. Tapping a multitude of sources, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture, from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism, Althoff’s characters inhabit imaginary worlds that serve as allegories for human experience and emotion. His image bank and painterly style also draw on the past, especially early-20th-century German Expressionism, reconfigured by introducing collaged technique.
2011, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages, 21.9 x 28.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$90.00 - In stock -
Adolf Menzel was one of the most important German artists of the 19th century, yet he is scarcely known outside his native land. In this study a leading art historian argues that Menzel deserves to be recognized not only as one of the greatest painters and draftsmen of his century but also as a master realist whose work engages profoundly with an extraordinary range of issues - artistic, scientific, philosophical and socio-political.
Michael Fried explores Menzel's large and fascinating oeuvre, and in so doing seeks to make the artist's achievement accessible to a wide audience. Fried compares Menzel's art with that of the 19th-century's two other great realist painters, Courbet and Eakins. Analyzing paintings, drawings and prints from all stages of Menzel's long career, he asserts that the distinctive quality of Menzel's realism is found in his concern with evoking the multi-sensory, fully-embodied relationships of persons with the universe of physical objects, tools and situations.
Fried establishes connections between Menzel's work and a broad array of extra-artistic contexts, among them the writings of the empathy theorists, Kierkegaard on reflection and the everyday, Helmholtz on vision, Fontane's "Effi Briest", Duranty's art criticism, Simmel on modern urban life, E.T.A. Hoffmann's "art of seeing", and Benjamin on traces. He also explores the complex relationship between Menzel's version of "extreme" realism and the exactly contemporary technology of photography. The resulting work establishes Menzel as a key artist of modernity.
Out-of-print, Fine—As New copy.
2005, English / German
Softcover, 184 pages, 15.2 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$260.00 - In stock -
As new copy of the out-of-print and fantastic 2005 artist book Alien Hybrid Creatures by German painter Michael Krebber.
Alien Hybrid Creatures addresses, amongst other things, the historical figure of the dandy--and among the dandies implicated is the spawning sea anemone on the cover. It functions as a reading list for the Seminar "Dandyism I/II (Düsseldorf Academy of Art) 2001/2002, with additional material from Krebber's seminar "Geniuses and Dandies/Historical and Theoretical Reflections" 2001. Such material includes the work of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Bernhard Willhelm, Robert Bresson, Kai Althoff, Charles Baudelaire, Odilion Redon, Merlin Carpenter, Devince, Josephine Pryde, Kenneth Anger, Albert Camus, Cosmia Von Bonin, Jack Smith, John Waters, Susan Sontag, Russ Meyers, Marcel Broodthaers, and French & Saunders (amongst many more).
Alien Hybrid Creatures was published on the occasion of Michael Krebber's legendary lecture "Puberty in Painting", delivered in the context of Renate Goldmann's seminar at the Institute of Art History at the University of Cologne in 2003.
Essay by Oswald Wiener.
Designed by Markus Ziegler in cooperation with Yvonne Quirmbach.
Now a very scarce collector's item. Some light shelf wear only.
2022, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 20.9 x 15 cm
Published by
Whitechapel / London
$40.00 - Out of stock
The Cute tracks the astonishing impact of a single aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices and discourses on which artists draw. From robots and cat videos to ice cream socials, The Cute explores the ramifications of an aesthetic 'of' or 'about' minorness - or what is perceived to be diminutive, subordinate, and above all, unthreatening - on the shifting forms and contents of art today. This anthology is the first of its kind to show how contemporary artists have worked on and transformed the cute, and in ways that not only complexify its meaning, but reshape their own artistic practices.
Artists surveyed include Peggy Ahwesh, Cosima Von Bonin, Nayland Blake, Paul Chan, Henry Darger, Adrian Howells, Juliana Huxtable, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, Dean Kenning, Wyndham Lewis, Jeff Koons, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Tala Madani, Annette Messager, Mariko Mori, Charlemagne Palestine, Mika Rottenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, Jack Smith, Carolee Schneeman, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Nara
Writers include Sasha Archibald, Roland Barthes, Leigh Claire La Berge, Ian Bogost, Lauren Berlant, Jennifer Doyle, Lee Edelman, Stephen Jay Gould, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Bridget Minamore, Juliane Rebentisch, Frances Richard, John Roberts, Friedrich Schiller, Peter Schjeldahl, Kanako Shiokawa
is the author of Ugly Feelings (Harvard, 2005), Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting (Harvard, 2012), and Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (Belknap/Harvard, 2020). She is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Chicago.
1963, German
Hardcover (clothbound), 216 pages, 24.5 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Schuler Verlagsgesellschaft / Stuttgart
$25.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1963, lavishly illustrated book of 100 Treasures from museums around the world, spanning art history, antiquity, archaeology, handicrafts, biology, architecture, with text by Dr. Traudl Seifert, edited by J.E. Schuler. Includes the throne of Tutankhamun, Order of the Golden Fleece, Venus von Milo, Nike von Samothrake, Ming dynasty vase, Arabian celestial globe, the Taj Mahal, Meißner porcelain, Louis XIV pistols, Renaissance Venetian cabinet, statue of Uta von Naumburg, Venus von Milo, Altar of Verdun, Nike von Samothrake, The Tabatière rifle, the bust of Nefertiti, The lady and the Unicorn
... the work of Michelangelo, Veit Stoss, Aristide Maillol, Tilman Riemenschneider, Albrecht Dürer, and many more.
Good copy with general wear and rubbing to linen boards.
2020, English
Softcover, 328 pages, 13.7 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$48.00 - Out of stock
A collection of writings on art by Barry Schwabsky.
"Many consider Barry Schwabsky to be the critic on painting today, even if he does write copiously on other art forms," write editors Rob Colvin and Sherman Sam in their foreword to this selection of Schwabsky's writings. Written since the turn of the millennium, the texts in The Oberver Effect include meditations on the broader context of painting today alongside reflections on such well-known American painters as Alex Katz, Kerry James Marshall, Nicole Eisenman, and Dana Schutz, as well as practitioners from Europe and beyond—Bernard Frize, Tal R, and Ha Chonghyun among them. As Colvin and Sam point out, the book "documents a dialogue between abstraction and the image" in which "images serve less to represent their described subject than to articulate the sort of painting each one desires to be."
2008, English
Softcover, 15.2 x 21.3 cm
Published by
The Post-Apollo Press
$46.00 - Out of stock
Seasons is a series of prose poems concerning the seasons, but that’s just a starting point. Keeping her attention at the constant intersection of the self with climate and environment, Adnan writes: “To see is to think.” The result is a kind of inner dialogue between the senses and the mind, one’s skin and the world that blurs their boundaries. As the poet takes us into the nooks, crannies and abysses of her meditations, we encounter surrender and revelation throughout.
Cover art by Etel Adnan
Design by Simone Fattal
Founded in 1982 by Simone Fattal and inspired by the adventurous spirit ushered in by the Apollo space program, The Post-Apollo Press published experimental works of poetry, prose and translation for over thirty years. With a distinctly international approach to publishing, the Press features works by major American, European and Middle-Eastern writers, including Etel Adnan, Marguerite Duras, Jalal Toufic, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino.
2002, English
Softcover, 38 pages, 11.6 x 16 cm
Published by
Post Apollo Press / US
$28.00 - Out of stock
In/somnia explores fissures within words as places where thought enters. Sleepless sleepers, we dream among ever more complex and hallucinatory realitites: `in/tense/in/season'—Rosmarie Waldrop.
2020, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$34.00 - Out of stock
Shifting the Silence breaks the taboo around writing and speaking about our own deaths. In short, unrelenting paragraphs, Adnan grapples with the breadth of her life at ninety-five, the process of aging, and the knowledge of her own approaching death. The personal is continuously projected outwards and mirrored back through ruminations on climate catastrophe, the ongoing war in Syria, Mars missions, and Adnan’s view of the sea out of her window in Brittany in a poignant, often painful interplay between the interior and the cosmic.
“When you have no way to go anywhere, what do you do? Of course, nothing.” Adnan’s prose-poetic rumination on death would strike a chord at any time, but it feels especially apt in this moment of protracted grief. Peppered with questions—“There are so many islands I dreamed of visiting, where have they gone?”—Adnan’s lamentations are recursive and soothing. To live is to die, and the poets can ease the passage. - Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
1977, French
Hardcover (gilt-blocked, decorated clothbound w. gold dust jacket), 294 pages, 22 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Draeger / Paris
$220.00 - In stock -
First French edition of this extravagant, lavishly illustrated book of wines and famous vineyards, created by Dalí in honor of his wife Gala and published in 1977 by Draeger, Paris. The perfect, equally surreal and sensual viticulture follow-up companion to Dalí's best-selling cookbook, Les dîners de Gala. A Dalínian take on pleasures of the grape and a coveted collectible, the book sets out to organize wines “according to the sensations they create in our very depths.” Through eclectic metrics like production method, weight, and color, the book presents wines of the world in such innovative, Dalíesque groupings as “Wines of Frivolity,” “Wines of the Impossible,” and “Wines of Light.”
Bursting with imagery, the book features more than 140 illustrations by Dalí. Many of these are appropriated artworks, including various classical nudes, all of them reconstructed with suitably Surrealist, provocative touches, like Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus, one of Dalí’s favorite points of reference over the decades. Dalí also included what is now considered one of the greatest works from his late “Nuclear Mystic” phase, The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), which sets the iconic biblical scene in a translucent dodecahedron-shaped space before a Catalonian coastal landscape. Dalí was by this stage a devout Catholic, simultaneously captivated by science, optical illusion, and the atomic age.
The first section is dedicated to “Ten Divine Dalí Wines,” an overview of 10 important wine-growing regions, while the second develops Dalí’s revolutionary ordering of wine by emotional experience, instead of by geography or variety. Rather than any prescriptive classification, it’s a flamboyant, free-flowing manifesto in favor of taste and feeling, as much a multisensory treat as a full-bodied document of Dalí’s late-stage oeuvre, in which the artist both reflected on formative influences and refined his own cultural legacy. Texts in French by Dalí, Max Gerard, Louis Orizet.
Very Good copy in beautiful gold dust jacket, only light wear.