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
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Animal Rights / Veganism
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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.
1972, German
Hardcover, 216 pages, 24.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Georg Wenderoth Verlag / Kassel
$60.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
documenta - Dokumente 1955 - 1968 (Four International Exhibitions of Modern Art), was published by Georg Wenderoth Verlag, Kassel in 1972. This clothbound hardcover book of texts (by Dieter Westecker, Carl Eberth, Werner Lengemann, Erich Müller) and photographs of the first four documenta exhibitions, is quite a unique publication. Written at the suggestion of former students and collaborators of Documenta initiator Arnold Bode, it does not replace a documenta chronicle or a scientific study of individual facts. On the contrary, the textual and pictorial material is selected from a technical point of view, processed and presented in a comprehensible form to stimulate detailed investigations into the exhibition-presentations. The bulk of the photographic documentation is of visitor reception and interaction with the installations of artworks, including those of Hans Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Lee Bontecou, Victor Pasmore, Marino Marini, Jean Dubuffet, Konrad Klapheck, George Segal, Robert Indiana, Claes Oldenburg, Walter de Maria, Eduardo Paolozzi, Phillip King, Erich Hauser, Ernest Trova, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Carl Andre, William Tucker, Peter Brüning, David Smith, Edward Keinholz, Dan Flavin, Morris Louis, Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris, Frank Stella, Tom Wesselmann, James RosenquisThomas Lenck, Francis Bacon, Horst Antes, Shinkichi Tajiri, Christo, Jackson Pollock, Karel Appel, Bernard Schultze, Otto Herbert Hajek, Jacques Lipchitz, Lynn Chadwick, Paul Delvaux, Helen Frankenthaler, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Leger, Max Bill, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Giogio de Chirico, Victor Vasarley, Zoran Music, Giuseppe Capogrossi, and many others.
Texts in German. First and only edition.
Vert Good copy with original dust jacket.
1984, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 270 x 280 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
U.M.I. Research Press / Michigan
$50.00 - Out of stock
Softcover edition of "LOOKING CRITICALLY: 21 YEARS OF ARTFORUM MAGAZINE", the heavy 342 page volume anthology of the first 21 years of the world's most important modern and art journal. An incredibly valuable collection of art theory.
Edited by Amy Baker Sandback, designed by Roger Gorman and Mary Beath and published in 1984 by U.M.I. Research Press, this dense volume, bound in hardcover to the dimensions of a copy of ARTFORUM, begins with an Ed Kienholz review at the Ferus Gallery from ARTFORUM's June 1962 inaugural issue, and ends with Barbara Kruger reviewing the film "TRON" for the November 1982 issue. An amazing compendium of articles and reviews from the magazine's important first 21 years, featuring contributions by the likes of John Cage, Robert Morris, Kate Steinitz, Henry T. Hopkins, Don Factor, Robert Pincus-Witten, Dennis Adrian, John Coplans, Hilton Kramer, Harold Rosenberg, Henry Geldzahler, John Cage, Walter Hopps, Ed Ruscha, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rosenblum, Dan Flavin, Boris Groys, Sam Wagstaff, Billy Kluver, Lucy R. Lippard, Robert Rosenblum, Roger Shattuck, Ad Reinhardt, Mel Bochner, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Rose, Manny Farber, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Philip Leider, Hollis Frampton, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, Lawrence Alloway, Barbara Kruger, Jane Livingston, Lizzie Borden, Kenneth Baker, Laurie Anderson, Agnes Martin, Cindy Nemser, Sidney Tillim, Annette Michelson, Rosalind Krauss, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Peter Plagens, Peter Schjeldahl, J. Hoberman, Hal Foster, Richard Flood, Carter Ratcliff, Stuart Morgan, Max Kozloff, Donald Kuspit, Dan Graham, Walter De Maria, Komar & Melamid, Edit De Ak, Lawrence Weiner, Kathy Acker, Robert Mapplethorpe, Anselm Kiefer, Thomas McEvilley, Louise Bourgeois, Ingrid Sischy, and too many more to list. Artists featured include: Josef Albers, Richard Tuttle, Jo Baer, Carl Andre, Ant Farm, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Lee Bontecou, Constantin Brancusi, Bertholt Brecht, Richard Avedon, Francis Bacon, Diane Arbus, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Lynda Beglis, Larry Bell, Terry Fox, James Byers, Rober Barry, Marcel Breuer, AA Bronson, Luis Buñel, Daniel Buren, Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Marcel Broodthaers, John Chamberlain, Paul Cézanne, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Merce Cunningham, Sonia Delauney, Walter de Maria, Bruce Connor, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Walker Evans, Dan Flavin, Marcel Duchamp, Albrecht Dürer, Lucio Fontana, Hollis Frampton, Alberto Giacometti, Eva Hesse, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, John Cage, Nancy Graves, Dan Graham, Robert Grosvenor, Nancy Grossman, Walter Gropius, Hans Haacke, Hairy Who, David Hockney, Douglas Huebler, Jorg Immendorff, Donald Judd, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Keinholz, Paul Klee, Alison Knowles, Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Roberto Matta, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Barbara Kruger, Jannis Kounellis, Markus Lüpertz, El Lissitzky, Rene Magritte, Robert Mapplethorpe, John McCracken, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Motherwell, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzio, A. R. Penck, Irving Penn, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Larry Poons, Ken Price, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Roman Polanski, Jackson Pollock, Steve Reich, Gerrit Rietveld, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Dorothae Rockburne, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Lucas Samaras, Kurt Schwitters, Oscar Schlemmer, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, David Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Robert Venturi, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Saul Steinberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Taut, Jean Tinguely, Anne Truitt, Paul Wunderlich, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many more.
A Good copy throughout, with cover rubbing and corner bumping. Tightly bound and clean copy internally.
2018, English
Softcover (ring-bound), 102 pages, 19 x 35.2 cm
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Pretzel / New York
$90.00 - Out of stock
This lavish picture-book surveys Seth Price’s (*1973, Jerusalem) 2009-13 series of Knot Paintings, in which Price unites his signature vacuum-forming technique—an industrial plastic packaging process—with a refined group of painterly techniques that include acrylic and oil, spray-paint, screen-printing, poured resins, and patterned fabrics. Price developed the book’s concept and materials in close collaboration with designer Joseph Logan, yielding an artist's book in which the layout moves from extreme close-up to full views of these rich surfaces, while plastics and metal in the book's binding reflect the materiality of the works.
1984, English
Softcover, 52 pages, 20 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Heide Museum of Modern Art / Victoria
$35.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published in the occasion of the exhibition "THE FIELD NOW" held at Heide Park and Art Gallery, Bulleen, September 4 - October 21 1984, curated by Sue Cramer.
Features the work of Art & Language, Robert Hunter, Tim Johnson, David Aspden, Col Jordan, Sydney Ball, Michael Kitching, Tony Bishop, Allun Leach-Jones, Alan Oldfield, Peter Booth, Paul Partos, Gunter Christmann, John Peart, Tony Coleing, Dale Hickey, Ron Robertson-Swann, James Doolin, Robert Rooney, Udo Sellbach, Dick Watkins, Robert Jacks.
"Controversy inevitably surrounds large contemporary group exhibitions which demonstrate a curatorial bias. The Field, the inaugural exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968 and shown afterwards at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was no exception.
Now, some sixteen years later, this exhibition The Field Now has been conceived in order to look again at the current work of artists who were selected for the earlier exhibition.
From the original forty artists (two of whom are now deceased) there are twenty-four contributing to The Field Now. From the remaining fourteen there are some, Clement Meadmore being the most notable,
who have achieved significant reputations and are not included because for various reasons it was not possible to show their work at this time. Thus, while the criteria for the choice of artists to be included in this exhibition were predetermined by such factors, The Field Now is not
visually dependent upon knowledge of the earlier exhibition. It can be viewed as a group exhibition of contemporary work by artists who have been consistently involved in making artworks during the last
two decades.
However, while this catalogue documents the current exhibition it also provides a forum for a contemporary discussion of The Field, the broader issues associated with the period of Australian art which that exhibition exemplified, and subsequent developments." - excerpt from foreword by Maudie Palmer
Texts by curator Sue Cramer, director Maudie Palmer, artists Ian Burn and Nigel Lendon, and writers John Stringer and Patrick McCaughey. Includes bibliographical references and full colour catalogue of works exhibited.
Good copy, light rubbing and marking, otherwise clean and tight throughout.
2018, English / German
Softcover, 176 pages, 21.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Mumok / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$49.00 - Out of stock
Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann do not see their collection as just private property or a prestige object, but rather as an item of cultural value that needs exchange with the public. Their collection has been constantly growing since the late 1970s, and it provides an incomparable view of the development of contemporary art from the 1980s onward. This is a progressive statement on behalf of contemporary art that is anchored in social issues and sees itself as a form of communication. The rationale behind the collection, which is held in Herzogenrath near Aachen and in Berlin, is both creative and productive, and the two collectors’ practice can be described as a particularly free-spirited form of cultural production. The act of collecting is realized less in the processes of keeping and completing artworks and is instead understood mainly as an invitation to participate in the public production of connections. This very pragmatic and hands-on approach is manifested in sensual and unconventional gestures of presenting, including the principle of “comparative seeing.” In this sense, the Class Reunion exhibition, the title of which refers to a 2008 installation of the same name by Berlin artist Nairy Baghramian, will unravel an exciting, humorous, and surprising dialogue between the diverse artistic positions in the collection, establishing unexpected points of contact. One focus in this is on Viennese influences on this international collection and its networks.
This book has been published to document the collection on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Wilhelm Schürmann at Mumok, Vienna, June 23, 2018 - November 11, 2018.
Edited by Karola Kraus and illustrated throughout in colour, with accompanying texts and full collection catalogue.
Participating artists:
Nairy Baghramian, Silvia Bächli, Monika Baer, John Baldessari/Meg Cranston, Francesco Barocco, Jennifer Bornstein, Nicola Brunnhuber, Ernst Caramelle, Kate Davis, Heinrich Dunst, Marina Faust, Morgan Fisher, Jef Geys, Ralph Gibson, Julian Göthe, Trixi Groiss, Gerhard Gronefeld, Julia Haller, Rachel Harrison, Lone Haugaard Madsen, Georg Herold, Nicolas Jasmin, Raimer Jochims, Mike Kelley, , Martin Kippenberger, Silke Otto Knapp, Alwin Lay, Brandon Lattu, Michael Light, Sonia Leimer, Anita Leisz, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Chris Martin, Park McArthur, Paul McCarthy, Meuser, Lisette Model, Oswald Oberhuber, Albert Oehlen, Anna Oppermann, Anna Ostoya, Jens Preusse, Rebecca Quaytman, Susanne Paesler, Laurie Parsons, Stephen Prina, Deborah Remington, Lin May Saeed, Pentti Sammallahti, Stefan Sandner, Arlene Shechet, Sigune Siévi, Michael Simpson, Michael E. Smith, Lewis Stein, Jana Sterbark, Esther Stocker, Walter Swennen, Alice Tippit, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Nora Turato, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Miriam Visaczki, Franz West, Tristan Wilczek, Christopher Williams, Heimo Zobernig
2018, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 210 x 145 mm
Published by
Whitechapel / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$50.00 - Out of stock
Part of the acclaimed Documents of Contemporary Art series of anthologies which collect writing on major themes and ideas in contemporary art.
"Tanya Harrod is our leading scholarly voice on craft. [This] invaluable anthology...is an ideal introduction to the intellectual landscape of craft, and an essential tool for those already invested in the topic." - Glenn Adamson, Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art
Craft is a contested concept in art history and a vital category through which to understand contemporary art. Through ‘craft’, materials, techniques and tools are investigated and their histories explored in order to reflect on the politics of labour and on the extraordinary complexity of the made world around us. This anthology offers an ethnography of craft, surveying its shape-shifting identities in the context of progressive art and design through writings by artists and makers, and drawing on poetry, fiction, anthropology and sociology. Reflections on new technologies and materials, lost and found worlds of handwork and the politics of work all throw light on ‘craft’ as process, product and ideology.
Artists surveyed include Anni Albers, El Anatsui, Aaron Angell, Ruth Asawa, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Annie Cattrell, Edmund de Waal, Harun Farocki, Lucio Fontana, Theaster Gates, Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Sheila Hicks, Ana Lupas, Lu Shengzhong, Enzo Mari, Martin Puryear, Jessi Reaves, Bridget Riley, Ettore Sottsass, Studio Formafantasma, Peter Voulkos.
Writers include Glenn Adamson, Elissa Auther, Reyner Banham, Jean Baudrillard, John Berger, Walter Benjamin, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Joan Key, Ulrich Lehmann, Sarat Maharaj, Karl Marx, Sadie Plant, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Roberts, Jenni Sorkin.
Tanya Harrod is an independent design historian who lives in London and who writes widely on craft, art and design. She is co-editor of The Journal of Modern Craft and is author of The Crafts in Britain in the Twentieth Century (1999), The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew (2012) which won the 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, and The Real Thing: Essays on Making in the Modern World (2015).
2016, German
Softcover, 297 pages, 17.5 x 24.6 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$49.00 - Out of stock
Controversial during his lifetime, his untimely death set a unique track record. The great museums of the world, such as The Tate Modern, the MoMA and the Nationalgalerie Berlin, for example, organized retrospectives in which Kippenberger was honored primarily as a painter and draftsman. XYZ is dedicated for the first time to the language of the exceptional artist, who did almost everything: art, performances, scandals, celebrations, travel, punk rock, columns, jokes, invitations, posters and books. Martin Kippenberger and XYZ: the book analyzes the role of the medium »language« in the work of Martin Kippenberger from different perspectives. During his lifetime, Kippenberger published a total of 149 artist books and maintained a highly respectful, but also ambivalent relationship to the medium of the book. In addition to classical texts on art and cultural history, the book also offers a range of other text categories - interview records, a literary text, an artist statement and texts by Martin Kippenberger himself.
Texts in German.
1985, German
Softcover, 157 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
$95.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the great 1985 Blinky Palermo monograph, "Palermo : Werke 1963-1977", wrapped in grass-green covers and published to accompany the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Winterthur 18 September - 11 November, 1984; Kunsthalle Bielefeld 27 January - 17 March, 1985; Stedelijk Museum 30 March - 12 May, 1985. Heavy illustrated throughout with examples of Palermo's work inc. his famed monochromatic, abstract canvases and "fabric paintings", installations, studio, etc, alongside texts by his friend and teacher Joseph Beuys, Laslo Glozer, Bernhard Burgi, and Erich Franz, in German.
Blinky Palermo (2 June 1943 – 18 February 1977) was a German abstract painter.
He adopted his outlandish name in 1964, during his studies with Bruno Goller and Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1962 and 1967. The name refers to Frank "Blinky" Palermo, an American Mafioso and boxing promoter who managed Sonny Liston. In 1969, Palermo moved to Mönchengladbach and set up a studio he would share with Imi Knoebel and Ulrich Rückriem. After a stay in New York in the early 1970s, he moved into Gerhard Richter's former Düsseldorf studio.
Over the course of his 14-year artistic career Palermo tirelessly probed the limits of abstract painting. Having begun his brushwork on more traditional surfaces, he shifted his activity to less conventional supports, experimenting with diverse materials and forms, exploring the relationships that can exist between the wall and the space delimited by the painting. Palermo was best known for his spare monochromatic canvases and "fabric paintings" made from simple lengths of colored material cut, stitched and stretched over a frame. He painted on aluminum, steel, wood, paper and Formica, often making lines out of tape instead of paint. Under Beuys, he became increasingly interested in the organized spatial relationship between form and colour, a polarity which is manifest throughout the rest of his oeuvre. In the mid 1960s, Palermo moved away from conventional rectangular canvases and increasingly opted for surfaces such as the circle, triangle, cruciform, totem pole and even the interior walls of buildings. Between 1964 and 1966, Palermo produced a small series of paintings on canvas in which he experimented with constructivist principles of order. Blinky Palermo died in 1977, aged 33, during a trip to the Maldives.
Good-Very Good - light rubbing edge wear to covers.
2018, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
The September issue of Texte zur Kunst focuses on Amerika (U.S. America principally): the land, the idea, and all that seems to come with it. What is Amerika today other than a contradiction between brute political reality and a largely fictional self-image, where fiction says as much about fact as “alternative facts” say about the truth? Within this contradiction, this issue tries to imagine modes of engaging with the current political machinery without opting for the one-dimensional dive into micropolitics that has plagued much recent activist discourse. The Trump regime has introduced a new form of politics whose tactics are closer to artistic practice—inventing parallel truths and questioning facts—than anything like traditional governance. As such, those familiar with art are in a unique position to offer an analysis of the specific forms that define contemporary politics in Amerika. We have thus commissioned artists and critics to come up with new strategies for analyzing the rampant barbarism, resisting the urge to sink into paralysis and defeat in the face of the endless onslaught.
Issue No. 111 / September 2018 "America"
Table Of Contents :
Foreword
Prefaces
Colin Lang
- The Horror, Vacui
Ken Okiishi -
Liberty and Justice For All, Not Us
Aria Dean -
Trauma And Virtuality
Letter To A Friend In New York / By Isabelle Graw
The Golden Hoard / Conversation With Andrea Fraser
Sina Najaf - i
The American Dream State
Robert F. Reid-Pharr -
What We Dare Not Remember
New Development
Is Space The Place? / Eva Díaz On Feminist Futures In The Anthropocene
Love Work Cinema
Between Bildersturm And Artistic Research / Rainer Bellenbaum About Films From The Years Around 1968 In The Historical Program Of The Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Reviews
Decolonialized Narrative In The National Art Temple / Susanne Von Falkenhausen On "Hello World" At Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
That Fluctuating Moment / Jesi Khadivi At The 10Th Berlin Biennale
The Silent Ship / Övül Ö. Durmusoglu On Manifesta 12 In Palermo
Love And Salt / Adrienne Rooney On Adrian Piper At The Museum Of Modern Art, New York
Tracks Of Disappearance / Tobi Maier About Bruce Nauman In The Schaulager, Basel
Man In The Mirror / Dan Kidner On "Picasso 1932 - Love, Fame, Tragedy" At Tate Modern, London
In The Bure Of The Circle / Marietta Kesting About Raster-Noton In The Kunstbau Lenbachhaus, Munich
Looking But Not Seeing? / Darla Migan On Faith Ring Gold At Weiss Berlin
Mad / Ame / Jenny Nachtigall About Jutta Koether At The Museum Brandhorst, Munich
If You Are Once Big / Nadja Abt About Philip Wiegard At Between Bridges, Berlin
Marked By Trade / Sven Lütticken On "Trade Markings" At The Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Amazone Retired / Tina Schulz On Astrid Klein In The Falckenberg Collection, Hamburg
Born To Die / Colin Lang On Jeanette Mundt At Société, Berlin
Limitations Of Utopia / Christina Irrgang On Cyril Lachauer In The Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Hereditary Peers / Saim Demircan On Luke Willis Thompson At Kunsthalle Basel
Zoology Of The Falls / Niklas Lichti On Peter Wächtler With Lars Friedrich, Berlin
Below The Surf / Steven Warwick On Georgie Nettell At The Kunstbunker Forum For Contemporary Art, Nuremberg
The Hour Of The Historics / Ariane Müller About Valie Export At The Neuer Berliner Kunstverein
Foreign Powers / Johanna Burton On Zoe Leonard At The Whitney Museum Of American Art
Committee Criteria / Kerstin Stakemeier On Henrike Naumann At The Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
Related Practices / Sandra Neugärtner On Anni Albers In The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Term (s) Of Endearment / Kathi Hofer On "Milieu" At After The Butcher, Berlin
Obituary
Claude Lanzmann (1925-2018)
Edition
Cecily Brown
Mark Leckey
2018, English
Softcover, 94 pages, 23 x 26.4 cm
Published by
Matthew Marks / New York
$50.00 - Out of stock
Suellen Rocca (born 1943) is perhaps best known for the work she made as a member of the Hairy Who, a group of six Chicago artists who exhibited together from 1966 to 1969. This book presents, for the first time, 30 works on paper made between 1981 and 2017. Building on the unique graphic vocabulary and innovative compositions of her 1960s work, these drawings represent a turn toward imagery she describes as "more internal." Animals, trees and unclassifiable creatures are placed in densely patterned settings that carry a genuine emotional charge.
In the book’s essay, Cat Kron notes Rocca’s "increased attention to the unconcious," tracing parallels between the artist’s "anxious imaginings" and the automatic drawing of the Surrealists. As Rocca puts it, "I just begin, and the drawing is a journey between me and the marks on the paper."
1988, English
Softcover (staple bound), 16 pages, 26 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Realities Gallery / Melbourne
$30.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published in 1988 to accompany the solo exhibition of Melbourne painter Dale Frank at Realities Gallery, Melbourne. "New Paintings" is illustrated throughout in colour with a text by Frank, as well as exhibition history and bibliography.
Very Good clean copy.
1983, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$40.00 - Out of stock
Published on the occasion of "VOX POP: Into the Eighties" an exhibition of contemporary Australian (figurative) art in the early 1980's at the National Gallery of Victoria, featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Juan Davila, Imants Tillers, Frank, Maria Kozic, Peter Tyndall, David Larwill, Mandy Martin, Linda Marrinon, Maris Kozic, Victor Rubin, Lutz Presser, Jan Murray, Jenny Watson, Peter Taylor, Fraser Fair, Dale Frank, Davida Allen, Peter Booth, John Bursill, Gunter Christmann, Paul Boston and Gareth Sansom. Text by Robert Lindsay and reproductions of works by all artists, plus biographies.
Good copy.
2017, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages, 13 x 19 cm
Edition of 100
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$14.00 - Out of stock
Limited edition publication dedicated to the drawings of Sanya Kantarovsky, published in 2017 by Innen Books in Zürich in an edition of 100 copies only, on the occasion of Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 September 22 - 24, 2017.
Sanya Kantarovsky (born in Moscow, Russia in 1982 and currently lives and works in New York) is known for his work across a variety of mediums, as well as his texts and curatorial projects. His multifaceted approach often results in artworks that seem forced to reckon with their own embarrassment. The dark humor consistent in Kantarovsky’s work pits the sumptuous against the abject and thrusts private space – be it physical or psychological – into public view. Kantarovsky’s most well known body of work, his figurative paintings, contains drastic shifts in scale, paint application and stylization. Evoking the feeling of an uneasy inner monologue, figures are gawked at, exposed, poked, or spooned medicine. They interact with one another, as well as the edges of the canvas itself, testing the confines of their given bodies and their given frame. Similarly, Kantarovsky probes his art historical predecessors: both canonical and relatively unknown painters, writers and illustrators. The presence of these muses, which dot Kantarovsky’s compositions simultaneously questions and indulges in a lineage of painterly impulses.
1947, French
Softcover, 142 pages, 24 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Maeght Editeur / Paris
$480.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce copy of the legendary "Le Surréalisme en 1947 : Exposition Internationale de Surréalisme présentée par André Breton et Marcel Duchamp", published by Maeght Editeur, Paris, in conjunction with an important exhibition of Surrealist artists in 1947. Features the cover design by Marcel Duchamp - a photographic reproduction by Rémy Duval of "Prière de toucher (Please touch)", the famous Duchamp rubber breast edition, created with Italian-born painter Enrico Donati, that adorned the first 999 copies of the catalogue. This gorgeous catalogue features the work of artists from 24 countries including Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Jacqueline Lamba, Jacques Hérold, Wilfredo Lam, Joan Miró, Hans Bellmer, Marcel Jean, Maria Martins, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, Hans Arp, Hector Hyppolite, Serge Brignoni, Alexander Calder, Bruno Capacci, Elizabeth van Damme, Jacques Halpern, Julio de Diego, Enrico Donati, Francis Bouvet , David Hare, Iaroslav Serpan, Jacqueline Lamba, Taro Okamoto, Roberto Matta, Kay Sage, Toyen, Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen, Leonard Baskin, Jindrich Heisler, Jeanne Reynal, Roger Brielle, Jindrich Styrsky, Bruno Capacci, Jean Guerin, Isamu Noguchi, Gerome Kamrowski, Eugenio Granell, Francis Picabia, Remedios Varo, Hans Richter, Arshile Gorky, and many more,, along with the folding sheet catalogue loosely inserted.
Good copy considering age. Very tanned edges and wear to corners, edges and spine.
1984, English
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Biennale of Sydney / Sydney
$70.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published on the occasion of the Fifth Biennale of Sydney 1984, 11 April – 17 June 1984. Under the artistic direction of Leon Paroissien the 1984 Biennale was titled "Private Symbol: Social Mataphor" and featured the work of Davida Allen, Armando, Art & Language, Terry Atkinson, Breda Beban, Joseph Beuys, Tony Bevan, Annette Bezor, Francois Boisrond, Peter Booth, Tomasz Ciecierski, Tony Cragg, Juan Davila, Antonio Dias Gonzalo Diaz, Eugenio Dittborn, Felix Droese, Marlene Dumas, Edward Dwurnik Mimmo Germana, Gilbert & George, Mike Glier, Hans Haacke, Jenny Holzer, Ralph Hotere, Jorg lmmendorff, Berit Jensen, Birgit Jürgenssen, Mike Kelley, Peter Kennedy, Anselm Kiefer, Karen Knorr, Barbara Kruger, Robert Longo, Colin McCahon, Syoko Maemoto, Sandra Meigs, Cildo Meireles, Gianni Melotti, Marisa Merz, Annette Messager, Olaf Metzel, Sara Modiano, Michael Mulcahy, Josef Felix Müller, Christa Näher, Annick Nozati, Anna Oppermann, Andy Patton, A.R. Penck, Robert Randall & Frank Bendinelli, Jytte Rex, Georges Rousse, Klaudia Schifferle, Hubert Schmalix, Cindy Sherman, Vincent Tangredi, Peter Taylor, Dragoljub Raéa Todosijevié, Vicki Varvaressos, Jenny Watson, Michiko Yano, Eva Man-Wah Yuen
This catalogue includes colour examples of the work of all participating artists alongside texts by Leon Paroissien, Annelie Pohlen, Carter Ratcliff, Jean-Louis Pradel, Leon Paroissien.
1982, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Biennale of Sydney / Sydney
$70.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published on the occasion of the Fourth Biennale of Sydney 1982, 7 April – 23 May 1982. Under the artistic direction of William Wright the 1982 Biennale was titled "Vision in Disbelief" and featured the work of Jörg Immendorff, Dan Graham, Brian Eno, Sue Ford, Joan Jonas, Lyndal Jones, John Baldessari, Robert Ashley, Billy Apple, Gary Hill, Fiona Hall, Philip Guston, General Idea, Bill Henson, Slave Guitars, Michael Snow, Severed Heads, Martha Rosler, Nam June Paik, Mike Parr, Tony Oursler, Davida Allen, Dale Frank, Rebecca Horn, Gareth Sansom, Lucas Samaras, Pe Kirkeby, Maria Kozik, Laughing Hands, Bertrand Lavier, Liz Magor, Anne Marsh, Markus Lupertz, William Wegman, Bill viola, Niele Toroni, Ken Unsworth, Marina Abramovic, John Ahearn, Vivienne Binns, Ian Breakwell, Georg Baselitz, Frank Auerbach, Claus Bohmler, Sydney Ball, Anti-Music, Laurie Anderson, Terry Allen, →↑→ and many more.
This catalogue includes colour and black and white examples of the work of all participating artists alongside texts and biographies.
2012, English
Softcover, 70 pages (7 b/w ill.), 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$24.00 - Out of stock
Painting has demonstrated remarkable perseverance in the expanding field of contemporary art and the surrounding ecology of media images. It appears, however, to have dispelled its own once-uncontested material basis: no longer confined to being synonymous with a flat picture plane hung on the wall, today, painting instead tends to emphasize the apparatus of its appearance and the conduits of its circulation. With contributions by Peter Geimer, Isabelle Graw, and André Rottmann, Thinking through Painting investigates painting’s traits and reception in cultural and socioeconomic discourse.
1981, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 18 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
The Tate Gallery / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
Long out of print catalogue published to accompany the exhibition of David Jones’ paintings, drawings, inscriptions, and a selection of engravings and boxwood carvings at the Tate in 1981. Walter David Jones (known as David Jones, 1895 – 1974) was both a painter and one of the first-generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolour, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer, Jones' In Parenthesis, published in 1937, was hailed by T.S. Eliot as 'a work of genius.' He received similar approbation throughout his career from W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Hugh McDiarmid, Kathleen Raine, R.S. Thomas, Evelyn Waugh, Seamus Heaney, Igor Stravinsky and many others. Throughout the 1920s, he trained with the artisans of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic, an experimental Roman Catholic artist community founded on the principles of Distributism, at Ditchling, Sussex and headed by Eric Gill and others. He himself converted to Catholicism in 1921, and the Catholic 'mythos,' as he termed it, (particularly the Catholic Mass) also became a profound source of inspiration for his art and thinking. Although impeded by several nervous breakdowns in the 30s and 40s, Jones pursued a life totally dedicated to painting and writing. Although engaged once and deeply in love several times, Jones never married. For most of his adult life, he lived alone in various locations in London and Sussex, usually in a single room in a boarding house, but surrounded by a joyful chaos of artworks, artist tools, books, papers and few other possessions.
Illustrated throughout with full catalogue, chronology, essays and bibliography.
Good clean copy, light wear/creasing.
1985, German
Softcover, 213 pages, 22.5 x 30 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$58.00 - Out of stock
Major monograph on the work of Konrad Klapheck published in 1985 by Prestel in Munich. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Klapheck's paintings, drawings and graphic work, accompanied by essays by Werner Hofmann and Peter-Klaus Schuster (in German), and full biography and bibliography.
From the contents: Werner Hofmann: eloquent stupidity or the melancholy of the clichés / Peter-Klaus Schuster: about big and small with Klapheck / Konrad Klapheck: Why I paint; About my drawings / catalog: 1955-1959 The creation of a vocabulary - the main themes in their first versions / 1959-1963 Simplification and stylization / 1963-1973 Return to the banal subject - enhancement and monumentalization / 1973-1985 Development of a composting principle - discovery of the drawing.
Konrad Klapheck (born February 10, 1935) is a German painter and graphic artist whose style of painting combines features of Surrealism and Pop art. Klapheck's works of the mid-1950s are in a magic realist style that became more idiosyncratic when he painted the first of his famous typewriters. His subsequent paintings, often large in scale, are precise and seemingly realistic depictions of technical equipment, machinery and everyday objects, but strangely alienated; they are "monumental, amusingly absurd and sexually suggestive". Klapheck's subjects through the years have included (in order of introduction) typewriters, sewing machines, water taps and showers, telephones, irons, shoes, keys, saws, car tires, bicycle bells and clocks. Influenced by Duchamp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, Klapheck's "ironic treatment of everyday mechanics" prefigures Pop art in its magnification of the trivial. He became a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1979.
2017, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 15.2 x 21.6 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
Afterall / London
$39.00 - Out of stock
The artist Sigmar Polke (1941–2010) worked across a broad range of media—including photography, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and film—and in styles that varied from abstract expressionism to Pop. This volume in Afterall’s One Work series offers an illustrated exploration of Freundinnen (Girlfriends 1965/66), one of Polke’s important early paintings. Taken from a found image of two young women, and using the raster dots also found in mass media reproductions, Girlfriends offers a statement about the use and social function of images.
Stefan Gronert approaches Girlfriends through its deliberate and elusive ambiguity, providing technical detail and historical background that allow some of the work’s motivation and depth to become clearer. Gronert analyzes Polke’s relationship to his tutors and peers, especially Gerhard Richter; describes the art historical context in which Polke worked; and discusses some of the social and political issues to which Girlfriends refers. Considering such topics as the distinction between Polke and Alain Jacquet in their use of photographed material, between Polke’s use of the raster technique and that of Roy Lichtenstein, and the feminist discourse of the time, Gronert draws on a variety of critical interpretations of Polke’s work, including some material that has not yet been translated into English.
About the Author
Stefan Gronert is Curator of Photography and New Media at Sprengel Museum Hannover. A lecturer in art history at the Braunschweig University of Art, he is the author of Jeff Wall: Specific Pictures and coeditor of Gerhard Richter: Editions 1965-2013.
2017, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 25 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$120.00 - Out of stock
Now out of print and very collectable, this unique volume contains the last abstract images series made by Hilma af Klint in the 1920ʼs which are previously unpublished in their entirety. These images are followed by ground breaking essays which shed new light on the pioneering abstract artist af Klint and her importance for artists today. These images are complemented by essays based on lectures delivered during the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, at London’s Serpentine Galleries in 2016. Briony Fer, David Lomas, Branden Joseph, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum shed new light on af Klint and her importance for artists today, also addressing the need for a broader conception of art history that her work proposes.
Hilma af Klint (1862 – 1944) was a Swedish artist and mystic whose paintings were amongst the first abstract art. A considerable body of her abstract work predates the first purely abstract compositions by Kandinsky. She belonged to a group called "The Five", a circle of women who shared her belief in the importance of trying to make contact with the so-called "High Masters" – often by way of séances. Her paintings, which sometimes resemble diagrams, were a visual representation of complex spiritual ideas.
2012, English
Softcover, 486 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$70.00 - Out of stock
Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, Andre Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. I Am a Beautiful Monster is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator. Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational carpe diem. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura.
I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations.
1971, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 18.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
E P Dutton / New York
$48.00 - Out of stock
"In 1961 a fashionable commercial artist named Andy Warhol created an artistic furor in New York with his deadpan versions of the Campbell’s Soup can. Since then he has become the most talked about but least understood artist of the late 20th century. Warhol made acceptable the use of industrial techniques in the creation of paintings obsessed with modern clichés—car crashes, Coke bottles, sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor. At the same time, his films—Blowjob, Sleep, Chelsea Girls, Lonesome Cowboys—forced us to look at the object/subject, transformed the bizarre into the banal, and remade the form and content of cinematic experiment and production."
First edition, published in 1971 by the mighty Studio Vista (and out of print since 1980), Peter Gidal’s Andy Warhol was the first book written on Warhol’s films and paintings, a concise and astute analysis of an artistic revolution. "Idol of the jet set," "trend-maker," superstar, Warhol was taken at more than face value in Gidal’s unconventional and insightful exploration. Decades later, Andy Warhol remains a seminal text, essential for a serious understanding of the artist and the work. Still the best thing written on Andy Warhol, according to art historian Benjamin Buchloh. Illustrated with over 100 b/w photographs, many of which caused great censorship problems at the time of distribution.
2018, English
Softcover, 350 pages, 15 x 22 cm
Published by
Trapart / Stockholm
$63.00 - Out of stock
Texts and Interviews by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, with Peter Christopherson. Edited with notes by Andrew M. McKenzie. Introductions by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge & Carl Abrahamsson.
Brion Gysin (1916–86) has been an incredibly influential artist and iconoclast: his development of the “cut-up” technique with William S. Burroughs has inspired generations of writers, artists and musicians. Gysin was also a skilled networker and revered expat: together with his friend Paul Bowles, he more or less constructed the post-beatnik romanticism for life and magic in Morocco, and was also a protagonist in an international gay culture with inspirational reaches in both America and Europe. Not surprisingly, Gysin has become something of a cult figure.
One of the artists he inspired is Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who collaborated with both Gysin and Burroughs in the 1970s, during his work with Throbbing Gristle and COUM Transmissions. The interviews made by P-Orridge have since become part of a New Wave/Industrial mythos. This volume presents them in their entirety alongside three texts on Gysin by P-Orridge, plus an introduction. This book is an exclusive insight into the mind of a man P-Orridge describes as “a kind of Leonardo da Vinci of the last century,” and a fantastic complement to existing biographies and monographs.