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.
2020, English
Softcover, 188 pages, 28.5 x 23 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$99.00 - Out of stock
“I see now how it feels to do something new and original,” Philip Guston wrote to his friend the poet Bill Berkson in October 1970. His large paintings of hooded figures were on view for the first time, and the art world was shocked. Why would an artist celebrated for his elegant abstractions risk his career?
The overwhelmingly negative reviews took their toll, following Guston to Rome, where he and his wife had taken refuge. In ‘Resilience: Philip Guston in 1971′, published in conjunction with an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, the artist’s daughter, Musa Mayer, offers an intimate view of her father’s state of mind.
His letters to Berkson, biographer Dore Ashton, and others, as well as studio talks with students, his wife’s diaries, archival images, and never-before-published film stills of Guston and the poet Clark Coolidge—all reveal the artist’s inner process, as do the extensive plate sections of the extraordinary paintings and drawings created during that crucial year.
2017, English
Hardcover, 122 pages, 23 x 29 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$85.00 - Out of stock
Although much attention has been paid in recent years to Philip Guston’s figurative painting of the late 1960s and ’70s, this new book focuses on the decade preceding that period, published to accompany Hauser & Wirth’s first presentation of the work of Philip Guston. Part of the New York School, which included many abstract expressionists, Guston’s influence on his contemporaries and the following generation of painters is considered quite significant. This book focuses specifically on the period beginning in the late 1950s and spanning nearly a decade until the artist’s return to figuration in the late 1960s, featuring nearly 90 paintings and drawings from the artist’s abstract expressionist period, many of which have not been shown in public for decades, presenting a major survey of a seminal phase in the artist’s oeuvre.
This publication features an expanded chronology on the artist, which includes archival material, historic installation views, conversations with Guston and other selected texts (by the artist himself) from the exhibition’s time period. The book concludes with a section of 50 of Guston’s ‘pure’ drawings completed in the late 1960s.
Organised and edited by Paul Schimmel.
2020, English
Softcover, 150 pages, 21 x 29.7
Ed. of 100,
Published by
Endless Lonely Planet / Melbourne
$25.00 - In stock -
Melbourne Artist Facilitated Biennial publication by Melbourne artist Christopher LG Hill is both the ninth issue of his ongoing publishing imprint Endless Lonely Planet, and a major survey art book marking the end of his 12 year artist facilitated biennale project, spanning 2008-2020.
"Multiple sites and moments, artist facilitated biennials extending on structures and limitations set by Signs of life: Melbourne International Biennial 1999. Abstracting and bringing new meaning to the form of a biennial as a more casual and independent entity, the project has seen many participants and collaborators over the last 12 years. This book hopes to document some of these moments, but more so to be a catalyst for different modes and models that it may inspire." — publisher
Includes extensive photographic documentation of The (self initiated, Artist funded) second (fourth) Y2K Melbourne Biennial of Art (& Design), TCB art inc., 2008; The First & Final Y3K Second (third) Inaugural Melbourne Biennial of International Arts, Y3K, 2011 (curated by Joshua Petherick, James Deutsher, and Christopher L G Hill); Third/Fourth Melbourne Biennial, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2013; 4th/5th Melbourne Artist Facilitated Biennial, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2016 (as part of TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation curated by Victoria Lynn and Helen Hughes/Discipline); 5th/6th final Melbourne Artist Facilitated Biennial, Dec 2018 -Dec 2020 (co-facilitated by Virginia Overell and Christopher L G Hill in their apartment/ the ex-Telecom building that was the site of the Melbourne International Biennial 1999)
Includes the work of ACW, Liz Allen, Animal Charm, Dan Arps, Sean Bailey, Liv Barrett, Matthew Brown, Ruth Buchannan, Jon Campbell, Jane Caught, Xin Cheng, Fiona Connor, Ying Lan Dann, James Deutsher, Daniel du Bern, Ida Ekblad, ffiXXed, Pat Foster & Jen Berean, Justin K Fuller, Matt Griffin, Ardi Gunawan, Hao Guo, Bianca Hester, Christopher L G Hill, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Lisa Kelly, Devin Kenny, Taree Mackenzie, Simon McGlinn, Rob Mckenzie, Nick Mangan, Scott Mitchell, Tahi Moore, Kate Newby, Geoff Newton, John Nixon, OSW, Alexander Ouchtomsky, Damon Packard, Spiros Panigriakis, Sean Peoples/ Cheese Peoples, Joshua Petherick, Kain Picken, Janneke Raaphorst, Nick Selenitsch, Christopher Schueler & Matthew Hopkins, Gregory P Sharp, Kate Smith, Sriwhana Spong, Dylan Statham, Masato Takasaka, Ben Tankard, Simon Taylor, Alex Vivian, Annie Wu, Hany Armanious, Andreas Banderas, Mikala Dwyer, Katherine Huang, Tobias Kaspar, Piotr Łakomy, Taree Mackenzie, Tahi Moore, Michael O’Connell, Ester Partegas, Natalie Rognsoy, John Spiteri, Dan Arps, Sean Bailey, Olivia Barrett, Matthew Benjamin, Jon Campbell, Trevelyan Clay, Fiona Connor and Michala Paludan, James Deutsher, DoubleFly, George Egerton-Warburton, Endless Lonely Planet, ffiXXed, Alicia Frankovich, Justin K Fuller, Marco Fusinato, Greatest Hits, Ardi Gunawan, Hao Guo, Christopher L G Hill, Matt Hinkley, David Homewood, Matthew Hopkins, Lou Hubbard, Renee Jaeger, Helen Johnson, Kenneth Biennale (curated by Kenny Pittock and Amy May Stuart: Chris Clarke, Christo Crocker, Christina Hayes, Chris L G Hill, Christine Pittock, Christopher Sciuto), Legendary Hearts (Kieran Hegarty and Andrew Cowie), S.T. Lore, Patrick Lundberg, Carrie McGrath, Rob McKenzie, Taree McKenzie, Nick Mangan, Gian Manik, Kate Meakin, Adelle Mills, Tahi Moore, Kate Newby, Elizabeth Newman, Virginia Overell, Sean Peoples, Joshua Petherick, Kain Picken, Lisa Radford and Sam George, Nick Selenitsch, Kate Smith, Studio Masatotectures, Sydney (Esther Edquist), Masato Takasaka and Madeline Kidd, Ben Tankard, Alex Vivian, Nicki Wynnychuk, y3k, Lauren Burrow, Counterfeitnessfirst, James Deutsher, Laurel Doody, George Egerton-Warburton, ELP3 Vine, Endless Lonely Planet, Lewis Fidock, Aurelia Guo, Christopher L G Hill, Lou Hubbard, Lucina Lane, Kate Meakin, Tahi Moore, Elizabeth Newman, Liam Osborne, Virginia Overell, Joshua Petherick, Lisa Radford, Zac Segbedzi, Nick Selenitsch, Nicholas Tammens, Alex Vivian, Rudi Williams, Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn, Candida ((Gian Manik and Ricarda Bigolin) in collaboration with Agnieszka Chabros, Samuel Heatley and Jaala Jensen), Xin Cheng, Fiona Connor, Renee Cosgrave, Christo Crocker, Ying Lan Dann, Endless Lonely Planet, Richard Frater, Aurelia Guo, HB Peace, Hoggle, Lou Hubbard, Olivia Koh, Spencer Lai, Laurel Doody Library Supply, Patrick Lundberg, Kate Meakin, Olivia O’Donnell, Jason Willers, and more...
More info at http://www.christopherlghill.com
2009, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 22.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The Everyday Press / London
$70.00 - In stock -
"In 1952 the 24-year-old Yves Klein left Paris for Japan to pursue his first love; not art but judo. After becoming one of very few Europeans to receive a coveted 4th dan black belt fro the Kodokan in Tokyo, Klein returned to France and opened the Judo Académie de Paris. In 1954 the prestigious firm of Grasset published his book Les Fondements du Judo, illustrated with hundreds of photographs of Klein and the leading Japanese teachers demonstrating the six major Kata of judo. Now this extraordinary work has finally been translated into English."
Yves Klein (1928 – 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen as an inspiration to and as a forerunner of minimal art, as well as pop art.
First and only English edition, published by The Everyday Press, now long out-of-print. Last copies.
2017, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 15.2 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$39.00 - Out of stock
Agnes Martin’s Night Sea (1963) is a large canvas of hand-drawn rectangular grids painted in luminous blue and gold. In this illustrated study, Suzanne Hudson presents the painting as the work of an artist who was also a thinker, poet, and writer for whom self-presentation was a necessary part of making her works public. With Night Sea, Hudson argues, Martin (1912–2004) created a shimmering realization of control and loss that stands alone within her suite of classic grid paintings as an exemplary and exceptional achievement.
Hudson offers a close examination of Night Sea and its position within Martin’s long and prolific career, during which the artist destroyed many works as she sought forms of perfection within self-imposed restrictions of color and line. For Hudson, Night Sea stands as the last of Martin’s process-based works before she turned from oil to acrylic and sought to express emotions of lightness and purity unburdened by evidence of human struggle.
Drawing from a range of archival records, Hudson attempts to draw together the facts surrounding the work, which were at times obfuscated by the artist’s desire for privacy. Critical responses of the time give a sense of the impact of the work and that which followed it. Texts by peers including Lenore Tawney, Donald Judd, and Lucy Lippard are presented alongside interviews with a number of Martin’s friends and keepers of estates, such as the publisher Ronald Feldman and Kathleen Mangan of the Lenore Tawney archive, which holds correspondence between Martin and Tawney.
About the Author
Suzanne Hudson is Associate Professor of Art History and Fine Art at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Robert Ryman: Used Paint (MIT Press) and Painting Now.
Endorsements
“In her wonderful contribution to the Afterall Books One Work series, Suzanne Hudson persuasively argues that Agnes Martin’s 1963 painting Night Sea is the summa of the early grid paintings. Because, as Hudson shows, Night Sea makes Martin’s process—and indeed Martin’s struggle—so visible, we comprehend much more clearly what follows: the achieved perfection of the graphite grid paintings. That an analysis of a single work could so fully illuminate the entirety of an artist’s oeuvre is a true accomplishment. Plus, the prose is a pleasure to read.”
—Douglas Crimp, Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester
Out of print title.
2020, English / German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 52 pages, 30 x 24 mm
Published by
Tramps Ltd / New York
Koenig Books / London
$59.00 - Out of stock
A companion catalogue for Kai Althoff's intimate and enduring exhibition of new paintings and works on paper presented at TRAMPS New York October 2018 - January 2019, Häuptling Klapperndes Geschirr. Illustrated throughout with photographs of the exhibition and the works taken by Althoff himself, and accompanied by a very personal text by DovBer Naiditch (“On Kai and His Art – with some digressions concerning my children”), an essay by Ansgar Murr, and a poem by musician and artist Hanayo Takajima. Includes a fully illustrated catalogue of all the works from the exhibition, all printed on various stocks.
Kai Althoff is widely considered to be one of the most influential contemporary artists of his time. Painting and drawing play a central role in his diverse and very personal practice that also includes music, film / video, performance and sculpture.
Texts in English and German.
Design by Kühle und Moder.
1986, English / Dutch / German / French / Italian
Hardcover (cloth w. dust jacket, inc. ephemera, guide/ticket, prints), 366 pages, 27 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst / Gent
$220.00 - Out of stock
First and only edition of this very special, scarce exhibition catalogue / photo-book published to document and accompany the innovative exhibition Chambres d'Amis (‘friends’ rooms’), organised by Jan Hoet in Ghent in 1986, awarding him an international reputation as a leading artistic figure in Belgium. Chambres d'Amis featured about 50 European and American artists invited by Hoet to create works for 50 private homes in Ghent, which were then opened to the public for several weeks between June 21 - September 21, 1986. Artists included are Carla Accardi, Christian Boltanski, Raf Buedts, Daniël Buren, Michaël Buthe, Jacques Charlier, Nicola de Maria, Luciano Fabro, Günther Förg, Jef Geys, Dan Graham, Milan Grygar, François Hers, Kazuo Katase, Niek Kemps, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Bertrand Lavier, Sol LeWitt, Danny Matthys, Gerhard Merz, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Helmut Middendorf, Juan Muñoz, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Oswald Oberhuber, Heike Pallanca, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Royden Rabinowitch, Norbert Radermacher, Roger Raveel, Wolfgang Robbe, Claude Rutault, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Remo Salvadori, Rob Scholte, Ettore Spalletti, Paul Thek, Niele Toroni, Charles Vandenhove, Philip van Isacker, Jan Vercruysse, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Martin Walde, Lawrence Weiner, Robin Winters, Gilberto Zorio.
The entire city-wide exhibition is comprehensively documented herein (from the domestic interior installations themselves to behind-the-scenes photography, social and working imagery of the artists installing and meeting, public events, etc.) in colour and b/w on various paper stocks with many fold-out panels and reproductions of artist's sketches, alongside extensive texts by Jan Hoet and statements accompanying the work of each artist all in Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian. Includes a list of all hosts/hostesses alongside the artists.
An incredible document of one the most important and unique contemporary art exhibitions in Belgium's history. Jan Hoet (23 June 1936 – 27 February 2014) was the Belgian founder and director of SMAK (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent (director from 1975 until 2003) and subsequently managed several important exhibitions all over the world including curating Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992, presenting several hundred works by 190 artists from nearly 40 countries.
“Intriguingly titled ‘Chambres d’Amis’ –-‘guest rooms’,” or, literally, ‘friends’ rooms’-– the show places art in 58 houses belonging to everyday townspeople, carrying the work outside the separate universe, the total institution, of the museum, to bring it within the private zone of the private home, an asocial place insofar as it is removed from the public arena. (...) His [Hoet’s] project takes the exhibition structure off its hinges, goes beyond the limits of the frame and spills over, whole, into an interior. Art here no longer offers a mirror or a window, nor constitutes the privileged sign of a choice, but is an actual, provocative presence, confirming its difference both from the museum space, which has lost its sanctity, and from the contextual frame in which the object serves as a fetish.”—Pier Luigi Tazzi, “Albrecht Dürer would have come too”, Artforum, September 1986
Very Good copy w. some wear/light spine fading to Good dust jacket, now preserved under mylar wrap. This special copy comes most complete, including exhibition guide/work checklist, Ghent map of exhibit locations, and a selection of 4 loose photographic press prints of featured installations.
2013, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Grazer Kunstverein / Graz
Mousse / Milan
$36.00 - Out of stock
This publication represents one of the many spaces Doug Ashford's work occupies. It is the fisrt collection of his writings and conversations and attempts to encompass the changing thoughts shared by the artist over the past twenty-five years. Doug Ashford is a teacher, artist, and writer. He has taught design, sculpture, and theory at The Cooper Union, New York, since 1989. His principal art practice from 1982 to 1996 was as a member of Group Material and since that time he has gone on to make paintings, write, and produce other cross-disciplinary projects.
Co-published with Grazer Kunstverein
edited by Krist Gruijthuijsen
Last copies, out-of-print.
2019, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū / New Zealand
$25.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published to accompany Brent Harris' "Towards The Swamp" exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2019-2020, curated by Lara Strongman. Illustrated through in colour and b/w with texts by Lara Strongman, Robert Leonard and Justin Paton.
Swamps are darkly fertile places where death and life co-exist, and where new life emerges from the traces of the old. Neither quite land nor quite water, but existing somewhere between them, the swamp is a place of constant becoming. It's a useful metaphor for the human psyche, as well as a way to think about the starting point for creativity...
New Zealand-born artist Brent Harris is a leading, high-profile contemporary artist in Australia. Harris’s art explores uneasy psychological states and childhood trauma. He uses automatic drawing – a way of working that allows the subconscious to rise to the surface – as his starting point to create grotesque, elegant and immediately engaging works of art.
2020, English
Hardcover, 108 pages, 23 x 17 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$59.00 - Out of stock
Gerhard Richter’s early period in Dresden ended in February 1961 with his escape from the DDR. The artist’s work in the West officially began at the end of 1962 with the painting listed number one in his works catalogue, “Tisch”.
The interval of one and a half years in between has remained largely ignored by art historians. It was during these months that Gerhard Richter, who still called himself “Gerd” at the time, tried to find his feet in his new surroundings in Düsseldorf.
The book presents numerous letters, photographs and documents, as well as pictures from this period and chronicles Richter’s experiences and search for a new artistic beginning.
2020, English
Hardcover, 336 pages, 27 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$98.00 - Out of stock
‘Prime Suspect’ is the first international survey exhibition of the Brussels-based Scottish artist, Lucy McKenzie (b. 1977).
The exhibition at Museum Brandhorst brings together all of the artist’s significant bodies of work from 1997 to the present.
This extensive and profusely illustrated catalogue documents the full range of McKenzie’s oeuvre – from her early works exploring the pageantry and iconography of international sport and the politics of postwar muralism, through her engagement with fin-de-siècle architecture and interior design and mid-century Belgian illustration.
Through her ongoing research into the intertwined histories of art, fashion and retail display, McKenzie has established herself among the most singular artistic voices of her generation.
2020, English
Softcover (spiral-bound), 244 pages, 31 x 24 cm
Published by
Serpentine Gallery / London
$98.00 - Out of stock
‘Atelier E.B: Passer-by’ examines an essential facet of the fashion industry: the world of mannequins and retail display.
Since the Surrealists took them up in the early twentieth century, mannequin have been an enduring motif within fine art. Lipscombe and McKenzie un-pack the disciplines of window dressing, look to radical thinkers and makers who dissolved the dividing line between fine art and commercial display, and piece together a compelling narrative that encompasses ethnography, statuary, dolls, the world fairs and our digital future.
This catalogue, like the traveling exhibition, is a meticulous and idiosyncratic study of the hierarchies which have historically separated the spheres of art and design, examining the border between commercial display and exhibition-making.
English and French text. Co-published with Lafayette. Accompanies the touring exhibition ‘Atelier EB: Passer-by’, travelling to Serpentine Galleries, London 2019: Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, 2019, and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020.
2020, English
Hardcover, 330 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Fundació Antoni Tàpies / Barcelona
Walther König / Köln
$75.00 - Out of stock
An extensive survey of Antoni Tàpies’ work, focusing on the period the Catalan artist lived under Franco’s dictatorship, between 1946 and 1975.
In works that occupy a unique mid-ground between painting and sculpture, Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) fused the material vocabulary of Arte Povera and the gestural energy of Abstract Expressionism with the mystical sensibility of Iberian Catholicism. Tàpies showed a preference for an austere palate and unconventional materials reflecting the limited resources of his political environment. He spent three decades of his long productive career in Barcelona, where he lived and died, under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. In that time, Tàpies confronted many of the paradoxes a creative artist faces under an authoritarian and anti-intellectual regime. In painting, sculpture, writing and other mediums, his work existed in conversation with the currents of contemporary art in the West while within the strictures of an oppressive state.
Antoni Tàpies: Political Biography illuminates the artist’s responses to the conditions of his native Catalonia, reproducing documents such as letters, manifestoes and samples of the media reception Tàpies generated over the years alongside reproductions of works from across his career. Texts by artists, curators and critics discussing Tàpies and the context of his oeuvre, plus a comparative chronology, are also included.
Text by Xavier Antich, Glòria Domènech, Manel Guerrero, Núria Homs, María Dolores Jiménez Blanco, Xavier Montanyà, Javier Pérez Segura.
An incredible book!
2020, English
Hardcover, 432 pages, 25 x 30 cm
Published by
Hirmer / Münich
$100.00 - Out of stock
Comprehensive hardcover catalogue published to accompany the first major presentation of women surrealist artists at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk. This groundbreaking exhibition shows that women played a more important and numerous role in Surrealism than in any other artistic avant-garde movement. Mostly connected through their association with Surrealist co-founder André Breton, Surrealism nurtured a prolific group of women artists who actively took part in the seminal exhibitions and publications of the day and expanded the formulations of the movement, taking on different roles in search for a (new) model of female and artistic identity. This expansive exhibition and catalogue revisits their diverse Imaginaries and underlines the consistency of their social and even political positions, spanning networks from Europe/UK to the US and Mexico.
“On the whole, the [Surrealist] movement in many ways strikes as decidedly ‘feminine’, since it rejected all traditionally masculine, patriarchal, and imperialist structures,” notes curator Dr. Ingrid Pfeiffer. This scholarly exhibition reveals how the movement was shaped by many more female artists than art historians have hitherto recognized.
Profusely illustrated throughout with essays by Patricia Allmer, Tere Arcq, Kirsten Degel, Heike Eipeldauer, Annabelle Görgen-Lammers, Rebecca Herlemann, Karoline Hille, Silvano Levy, Alyce Mahon, Christiane Meyer-Thoss, Laura Neve, Ingrid Pfeiffer, and Gabriel Weisz Carrington as well as biographies of the individual artists.
Artists featured : Eileen Agar, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Rachel Baes, Louise Bourgeois, Emmy Bridgwater, Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, Maya Deren, Germaine Dulac, Nusch Éluard, Leonor Fini, Graverol, Valentine Hugo, Frida Kahlo, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Greta Knutson, Jacqueline Lamba, Sheila Legge, Dora Maar, Emila Medková, Lee Miller, Suzanne Muzard, Meret Oppenheim, Valentine Penrose, Alice Rahon, Edith Rimmington, Kay Sage, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jeannette Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, Elsa Thoresen, Bridget Tichenor, Toyen, Remedios Varo, Unica Zürn
2017, English
Hardcover, 319 pages, 23 x 27.5 cm
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$95.00 - Out of stock
Bringing together five decades of painting, sculpture, and installations from the celebrated Italian artist Marisa Merz, this major hardcover monograph accompanies a major US retrospective of her work. This generously illustrated book offers readers the chance to appreciate the full range of works by Marisa Merz, winner of the 2013 Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Biennale. This volume traces Merz's artistic evolution from early experiments with non-traditional materials and processes, to intricately constructed installations of the 1970s and the enigmatic ceramic heads of the 1980s and '90s. Authoritative essays explore the rise of international women's art in the 1960s and '70s and Merz's own place in Italy's postwar art history. As the sole female protagonist of Arte Povera she is one of the few Italian women to exhibit in major venues internationally. Merz's challenging and evocative body of work is deeply personal and resistant to the categories of art history, including Arte Povera and international feminist art, with which she was associated. Previously unpublished texts and poetry by the artist, and an illustrated chronology, complement this comprehensive look at an enormously influential artist.
Texts by Connie Butler, Ian Alteveer, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Leslie Cozzi, Teresa Kittler, Lucia Re, Cloe Perrone, Tommaso Trini.
1966, German
Softcover, 106 pages, 23 x 13.5
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Städtisches Museum / Leverkusen
$65.00 - Out of stock
First edition Bernard Schultze exhibition catalogue published in 1966 to accompany the exhibition "Bernard Schultze" at the Städtisches Museum Schloß Morsbroich, Leverkusen. A beautiful catalogue printed on various paper stocks throughout and lavishly illustrated with an overview of German artist Bernard Schultze's many works in vivid colour and b/w, accompanied by texts from Rolf Wedewer, Peter W. Jansen and Bernard Schultze.
Bernard Schultze (1915–2005) was a German abstract painter and integral figure of the Art Informel movement. He was notably the founder of the Quadriga collective, which included such artists as Otto Greis Karl Otto Götz, and Heinz Kreutz. Characterized by their gestural abstraction, Shultze’s works regularly feature brilliant, fluorescent colors morphing in and out of implied representation, forming fantastical landscapes, figures, and languages. Often highly textural, he is noted for his use of textile and sculptural relief throughout his painting practice. Sadly all of Schultze's early works, produced before 1945, were destroyed as a result of a 1945 air raid on Berlin. On 7 July 1955 he married painter Ursula Bluhm. The artist died in 2005 in Cologne, Germany at the age of 89, having continued painting until the end of his life.
Good copy with previous owner eraser marks to cover. Otherwise Very Good, clean and tightly bound throughout.
1970, German
Softcover, 36 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Galerie Wolfgang Gurlitt / Münich
$55.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the group exhibition "Phantastische Malerei" at Galerie Wolfgang Gurlitt in Münich in 1970. An rare and illuminating overview of German fantastic and Surrealist painters and graphic artists, many seldom documented in print. Illustrated throughout with examples of work by all exhibiting artists alongside a short bio and catalogue of exhibited works. Artists : Bele Bachem, Karlheinz Bauer, Gisela Breitling, Peter Collien, Edgar Ende, Ernst Fuchs, Thomas Häfner, Siegbert Hahn, Claus-Dietrich Hentschel, Siegfried Klapper, Gusti Knight-Stinnes, Karl Korab, Hans Kramer, Anton Krejcar, Wolfgang Lenz, Wolfgang Lettl, Helmut Lincke, Reny Lohner, Franz Luby, Pit Morell, Andreas Nottebohm, Franz Radziwill, C. Walter Rauh, Kurt Regschek, Heinz Rose, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Bernard Schultze, Rainer Schwarz, Manfred Sillner, Helmut Ullrich, Ursula, Mac Zimmermann, Rudolf Zündel.
Very Good copy with tanning to edges and light spine wear.
1993 / 2005, Japanese / English
Softcover (2 volume set in hard slipcase), french-folds, 122 and 24 pages, 21.5 x 26.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art / Itō
$220.00 - Out of stock
Extremely rare, one-and-only monograph on master of airbrushed eroticism, Japanese artist Aimei Ozaki, published to accompany "Natural History of Eros and Thanatos", a retrospective survey of his work at Ikeda Museum of 20th Century Art in 1993. Surveying his entire career to date this lavishly illustrated slipcased volume reproduces Ozaki's exceptional work throughout the years 1951-1992, and this special copy comes with the additional volume published by Muramatsu Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition "Amorphous Works 1995-2005" covering his later work, 1995-2005, and published as a supplement to the earlier book here. Rarely seen as a special slipcased double-volume this set comprises the most comprehensive overview of Ozaki's highly individual paintings set to print. Never exhibiting outside of Japan, Aimei Ozaki (b. 1933 Nezu, Tokyo) began showing his work in 1964 when he took a great interest in biomorphism and the "morphology of transfiguration and reduction" as the theme of his pictorial expressions, from his early neo expressionism and mixed media pop paintings developing into his iconic masterful erotic depictions of flowers, cacti, birds and the human body inspired by Baudelaire through his immaculate airbrushed paintings of the 1970s and 80s. Accompanying texts, including essay by Yoshida Yoshie, biography, catalogue, exhibition history, portrait, and much more, in Japanese and English.
Very Good copy with light wear. Slipcase preserved in mylar wrap.
2020, English
Hardcover, 104 pages, 25 x 25 cm
Published by
Hunters Point Press / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
For nearly five decades New York-based artist B. Wurtz (born 1948) has transformed humble materials and discarded objects into humorous and wryly beautiful works of art. This full-color, Swiss-bound monograph focuses on the artist’s iconic series of “pan paintings” made on disposable aluminum roasting pans and to-go containers. In 1990, Wurtz discovered patterns stamped in the bottom of these mass-produced products and grasped their potential as “readymade abstract paintings.” In the three decades since, he has worked across a wide variety of pan shapes and sizes, applying dazzling combinations of color using the patterns as predetermined compositions. Pan Paintings provides the first overview of the various permutations in color and shape that comprise this long-term series. The book includes an essay by art historian and curator Erica Cooke which considers this critically acclaimed body of work and its deep entanglement with the craft-oriented ethos and amateur culture of postwar America.
2003, English
Softcover, 128 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 33 x 24 cm
Edition of 500,
Published by
UQ Art Museum / Brisbane
$50.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful and scarce over-sized monograph surveying the early work of Scott Redford, published on the occasion of the exhibition "1962: Scott Redford Selected Works 1983 - 1992" at the University Art Museum, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, Australia. 3 October - 22 November 2003. Beautifully designed and brilliantly illustrated, this monograph brings to life Redford’s diverse work across assemblage, sculpture, painting, installation, and much more. Includes essay by Andrew McNamara and interview with Scott Redford. Limited edition of 500 copies.
Scott Redford (b. 1962 Gold Coast, Queensland) is a highly significant and influential Australian contemporary artist who has been exhibiting since the early 1980s. Redford's work is unique in its references to international art movements including colour-field painting, conceptual art and pop art, while engaging with local themes, such as Australian art history, beach culture and vernacular architecture, regularly commenting on issues of gender and identity.
2006, English
Hardcover, 220 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$60.00 - Out of stock
In February 1991, the artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) and the philosopher Sylvère Lotringer met in a borrowed East Village apartment to conduct a long-awaited dialogue on Wojnarowicz's work. Wojnarowicz was then at the peak of his notoriety as the fiercest antagonist of morals crusader Senator Jesse Helms—a notoriety that Wojnarowicz alternately embraced and rejected. Already suffering the last stages of AIDS, David saw his dialogue with Lotringer as a chance to set the record straight on his aspirations, his personal history, and his political views. The two arranged to have this three-hour dialogue video-recorded by a mutual friend, the artist Marion Scemama. Lotringer held on to the tape for a long time. After Wojnarowicz's death the following year, he found the transcript enormously moving, yet somehow incomplete. David was trying, often with heartbreaking eloquence, to define not just his career but its position in time. The subject was huge, and transcended the actual dialogue. Lotringer then spent the next several years gathering additional commentary on Wojnarowicz's life and work from those who knew him best—the friends with whom he collaborated. Lotringer solicited personal testimony from Wojnarowicz's friends and other artists, including Mike Bildo, Steve Brown, Julia Scher, Richard Kern, Carlo McCormick, Ben Neill, Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Marguerite van Cook, and others. What emerges from these masterfully-conducted interviews is a surprising insight into something art history knows, but systematically hides: the collaborative nature of the work of any "great artist." All these respondents had, at one time, made performances, movies, sculptures, photographs, and other collaborative works with Wojnarowicz. In this sense, Wojnarowicz appears not only as a great originator, but as a great synthesizer.
2019, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 44 pages,
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery / New York
$50.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Calix, Cup, Chalice, Grail, Urn, Goblet: Presenting the Sexual Essence of Morris Graves, at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, June 15 – August 2, 2019. This exhibition was a seven-decade survey exploring the artist’s symbolic use of vessels in luminous, spiritual works that exemplify the essence of his mystical relationship with nature. From early oil paintings to surrealist works on paper and later quiet still-lifes, the imagery of the chalice is reflective of Graves’s expansive world view. Presenting the Sexual Essence of Morris Graves charts the evolution of this recurring form as a reflection on an artist who sought spiritual life and growth in a world that he felt was defined by disruption and disintegration.
Morris Graves (1910–2001) was a self-taught Modern American painter and member of the Northwest School of Visionary Art. A lifetime traveler, he spent much of his time in Asia, studying in Japan and absorbing ideas and iconography related to Zen Buddhism. In America he spent long periods in semi-isolation, absorbed in nature and his art. He created coded, colourful paintings exploring the spiritual bond he shared with the land and culture of the Pacific Northwest, his birthplace and home. Lauded by critics as a type of modern-day mysticism or “visionary art,” Graves' canvases and works on paper often featured bold depictions of local flora and fauna, contrasted by natural, recognizable forms inspired by the artist’s personal relationship to spirituality. “I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world—to pronounce it—and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye,” he once wrote.
Very Good copy.
1984, English
Softcover, 90 pages, 29 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
LAICA / Los Angeles
$70.00 - Out of stock
Scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Australia: Nine Contemporary Artists" at Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, June 30 - August 14, 1984. To coincide with the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, LAICA director Robert Smith invited nine Australian artists (John Davis, John Dunkley-Smith, Marr Grounds, Lyndal Jones, John Nixon, Mike Parr, Redback Graphix, Stelarc) to create site-specific installations at the gallery. This generous catalogue profiles the work of each artist with reproductions of past works, artist writings, and document of their various outcomes in Los Angeles. Includes biographies.
Very Good copy with some tanning to covers and sticker residue to bottom of spine/front. Sticker on verso reading "Exhibitions Australia".
2019, English
Hardcover, 464 pages, 24.1 x 31.5 cm
Published by
Petzel Gallery / New York
$70.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
Wade Guyton, Petzel, New York, 1.16.14 - 2.22.14 is the long-awaited volume that documents a one night only performance hosted at Petzel Gallery as part of Guyton's seminal 2014 exhibition, in which the artist made long horizontal black paintings stretched to precisely fit the gallery walls. In 2007, Guyton showed a series of black paintings made with his Epson 9600 printer and covered the gallery's concrete floor with a facsimile of his studio's plywood floor. For the 2014 exhibition, he made five new works on linen using the same digital file from 2007, this time enlarged to accommodate the increased width of an Epson 11880. The works were turned on their sides, hung horizontally and stretched to fit the gallery walls. Two of them were jammed in a corner. In addition to the five paintings, he presented a new wood and concrete sculpture that took its form from the coat check counter at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, where concurrently he had installed four paintings for the International.
On February 17, 2014 the gallery hosted performances by James Campbell, I.U.D., and Blondes. Wade Guyton, Petzel, New York, 1.16.14 - 2.22.14 features over 400 illustrated pages of documentary footage from that performance and includes an essay by art historian Bettina Funcke entitled "Guyton's Rooms." The book was designed by Wade Guyton, Joseph Logan, and Zach Steinman.