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.
2003, English / Japanese
Softcover (die-cut, embossed stiff slipcase w. internal illustrated card fold-out sleeve), 92 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Signed by artist,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$450.00 - In stock -
First, deluxe edition of this rare Hajime Sorayama book published by Treville especially for the exhibition 'Hajime Sorayama - The Exhibition' at Ginza Graphic Gallery in 2003. Now out-of-print and collectible, this extra special copy is also signed by Sorayama himself on the cover "cleavage". Housed in an embossed, die-cut corset slipcase, with an illustrated, fold-out "pin-up" doubled-sided internal sleeve, both made from stiff card, this catalogue is profusely illustrated throughout with Japanese airbrush master Hajime Sorayama's erotic, futuristic, hyper-realistic illustrations with a heavy emphasis on latex and bondage mistresses. Includes his own commentary throughout (in English and Japanese), plus a special look inside his atelier.
Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947) is a Japanese illustrator famed for his precisely detailed, erotic portrayals of feminine robots and fetish pin-ups, and also well-known for his design work on the original Sony AIBO. He describes his highly detailed style as "superrealism", which he says "deals with the technical issue of how close one can get to one's object."
Very Good copy.
1998, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 100 pages, 37 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sakuhinsha / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first Japanese hardcover edition of Japanese master of erotic fantasy illustration Hajime Sorayama's absolute classic Torquere (Torture), published in 1998. Following the success of best-seller NAGA, Sorayama's Torquere delves deeper into the darker realm of fantasy fetishism and, as the title suggests, into the world of Sadomasochism. This lavish over-sized volume is illustrated cover-to-cover with Sorayama's most explicit works presented in dramatic, glossy full-colour throughout. Rare in this original hardcover edition.
Hajime Sorayama is revered for his erotic airbrushed illustrations of humanoid robots that explore ideals of femininity and beauty. Drawing on pinup pictures, Sorayama published the first book of his signature “Sexy Robot” series of chromium-plated figures in 1983. Decades later, these striking works have sold for more than $500,000. Sorayama started his career in advertising before freelancing in Hollywood, where he helped to produce visuals for sci-fi films. His illustrations gained widespread attention in 1995, when Penthouse began featuring them in a monthly column. While Sorayama has enjoyed a particular cult status for his sensual cyborgs —who appear empowered rather than objectified —he has also received mainstream commercial attention. Sony enlisted him to produce the first designs for its robotic dog AIBO, which won the grand prize for Japan’s Good Design Award in 1999. Sorayama has also worked with fashion titans such as Thierry Mugler and Dior on projects that have extended his illustrations into the realm of wearables, sculpture, and performance.
Near Fine copy.
1987, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon II, the second oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed collection that takes us further through the incredible history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. Reproducing Giger's award-winning work for the film ALIEN, his paintings, environments, sculptural works, his work for never shot film "The Tourist", collaborations with Blondie's Debbie Harry, his "New York City" series from the late 1970's and much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. Also includes interviews, texts, biography. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries of the macabre. This is volume 2 of 2 of "HR Giger's Necronomicon" where Al Azred's legendary magical book of the most wonderful abominations and perversions, "Necronomicon" (made infamous in the pages of HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology), becomes a visual reality!
First Japanese edition, published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1987. Very good copy throughout with Very Good dust jacket. Some edge wear with fragile, oversized edition.
2023, English / German
Hardcover, 240 pages, 35 x 26 cm
Published by
Scheidegger und Spiess / Zürich
$190.00 - In stock -
A unique visual foray into the fantastic worlds of artist H.R. Giger.
The art of H.R. Giger (1940-2014), Swiss-born creator of the legendary monster in Ridley Scott's movie Alien, is currently experiencing a renaissance and is featured in exhibitions as well as in magazines around the globe. This lavish large-format volume offers never-before-seen insights into Giger's private house and garden, both of which are populated by biomechanical sculptures, airbrush paintings, Alien furniture, objects, prints, and self-portraits. French photographer Camille Vivier—best known for her work for Stella McCartney and Cartier—enjoyed exclusive access to the artist's Zurich home and studio for this book, where she worked on her own as well as with models in a series of photo sessions.
Vivier's around 200 photographs form an atmospheric tribute to the arguably most distinguished representative of Fantastic Realism. In addition to images of Giger's studio and his life-size sculptures, Vivier has also documented some hundred objects and artworks, as well as his famous Alien-style garden railroad.
An essay by French publicist Farbrice Paineu places H.R. Giger's art in the wider context of pop culture and the genre of horror movies.
Edited by Beda Achermann.
Text in English and German.
1981, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 194 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
John Hopkins University Press / Baltimore
$20.00 - In stock -
First 1981 hardcover edition.
The problem of representation is at the heart of the intellectual ferment experienced in recent years by many different fields of inquiry. The essays in Allegory and Representation confront head on the erosion of the ground rules for representation—the principles upon which a set of stable correspondences are posited between image and object, symbol and reality, sign and referent.
The contributors to this volume reflect an unusual diversity of disciplines, from English, French, American, Slavic, and Italian literature to the history of art. Yet they all confront, through their local and particularized studies, a common problem. Paul de Man and Joel Fineman characterize allegory (and, more generally, representation) as a paradox built upon its own undoing. Robert M. Durling and Michael Fried both discuss the use of the artist's own body within a work of art to achieve a fusion of representation with that which is represented. Hugh Kenner and Leo Bersani each contrast opposing modes of representation—for Kenner, a "poetics of sunlight" and a "poetics of the cave"; for Bersani, an art that drives violently toward narrative closure and an art that remains open and unfinished. Michael Holquist redefines the problem in political terms and explores representation in the writings and career of Mikhail Bakhtin.
Taken together, these essays reveal what may be called the cunning of representation: the resiliency, brilliance, resourcefulness with which artistic prac tice has responded to the artist's perennial craving to reveal truth and reality and to the nagging dread that they lie just barely out of reach.
Allegory and Representation, the fifth collection of papers from the English Institute to be published by Johns Hopkins, con tinues the Institute's tradition of pioneer ing fresh approaches to the study of litera ture. It will be of interest to both students ind scholars working in the field, as well as to anyone concerned with the theory and dynamics of art.
Stephen J. Greenblatt is professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, His most recent book is Renaissance Self Fashioning From More to Shakespeare
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
2024, English
Hardcover, 144 pages, 26.1 x 21 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
The first-in depth publication to critically investigate the impact of Pope.L’s early performances on his career. With contributions by Stuart Comer, C. Carr, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Adrienne Edwards, Darby English, Malik Gaines, Danielle A. Jackson, Adrian Heathfield, EJ Hill, Thomas J. Lax, Andre Lepecki, Yvonne Rainer, Martine Syms, Martha Wilson.
Pope.L (b. 1955) is a consummate thinker and provocateur whose practice across multiple mediums – including painting, drawing, installation, sculpture, theatre and video – utilizes abjection, humour, endurance, language and absurdity to confront and undermine rigid systems of belief. Spanning works made primarily from 1978 to 2001, member: Pope.L, 1978-2001 features a combination of videos, photographs, sculptural elements, ephemera and live actions. This volume, published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, presents a detailed study of thirteen early works that helped define Pope.L’s career. It features essays by curators, artists, filmmakers and art historians, plus an intervieww and artistic interventions by the artist. These components are supplemented by thirteen detailed plate entries that highlight key details of each work. The entries engage performances that are rooted in experimental theatre such as Egg Eating Contest (1990) and Aunt Jenny Chronicles (1991) as well as street interventions such as Thunderbird Immolation a.k.a. Meditation Square Piece (1978), ATM Piece (1996), and The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street (2001-2009), among others. Together these works highlight the role of that performance has played within a seditious, emphatically interdisciplinary career that has established Pope.L as an influential force in the history of contemporary art.
1985, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 20 pages + catalogue insert, 25 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$100.00 - Out of stock
Rare glossy catalogue published on the occasion of a major "Survey Exhibition" of Australian conceptual artist Robert MacPherson at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1985, curated by Peter Cripps and Malcolm Enright. Heavily illustrated throughout with MacPherson's works and installations mostly at the IMA, but also Q Space Annex and Ray Hughes Gallery. Includes informative text by then IMA director and artist Peter Cripps tracing the major works of MacPherson from his first solo exhibition in 1975 (also held at the IMA) through to 1985. Also includes biography, bibliography and loose-leaf fold-out illustrated catalogue enclosed.
Over the course of his 40 plus-year career, Australian conceptual artist Robert MacPherson (1937–2021) explored the philosophical propositions of what constitutes a work of art. He often incorporated familiar imagery, everyday materials and visual elements from daily life, honouring the beauty of the mundane. MacPherson’s fascination with systems of objects and language is manifested through broad fields of knowledge, including art history and social history, biology and mythology.
Very Good copy.
1974, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Ed. of 250,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Robert Jacks / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, very rare artist's book published by Australian artist Robert Jacks in 1974 whilst in New York in an edition of 250 copies to distribute to friends and acquaintances. The book (almost textless, apart from image captions and title page) is a crucial document of this important period in Jacks's career, comprising photographic documentation of all of the exhibition installations by Jacks during his time in New York and Toronto after 1968. As Ian Burn noted in his important 1970 essay ‘Conceptual art as art’, Jacks’s "recent work in New York has moved beyond painting into conceptualized presentation of numeral systems and serial techniques". Jacks’s first opportunity to present this new work was facilitated by Sol LeWitt, who selected him to inaugurate a rolling program of free exhibitions at the New York Cultural Centre in January 1971 – the ‘International Artist’s Invitational’ – with each exhibiting artist showing just a single work and selecting the artist to follow. Further exhibitions include the New York Cultural Centre, the Whitney Museum Artists Resource Centre, 112 Greene St. Gallery, and Resse Palley, all New York, plus A Space, Toronto, all documented herein.
Robert Jacks (1943—2014) was one of Australia’s most significant and accomplished abstract artists. Jacks studied sculpture at Prahran Technical College from 1958–1960 and painting at RMIT in 1961–62. His first solo exhibition, a sell-out at Gallery A in Melbourne, was held to great acclaim in 1966 and in 1968 his work was included in the landmark exhibition, The Field, at the National Gallery of Victoria. Jacks left Australia in 1968, spending ten years living and working in Canada and the United States. It was during this period, much of which was spent in New York's Soho, in which Jack was invited to exhibit by Sol LeWitt and Robert Rauschenberg at the New York Cultural Centre in 1971. When he returned to Australia in 1978, Jacks brought back a finely-tuned, mature visual language and experience that makes him a unique figure within the history and development of twentieth century Australian art. Over the subsequent decades, Jacks was collected by every state gallery, the subject of numerous monographs and honoured with a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014. In 2001, the Bendigo Art Gallery established an art award in Jacks' honour.
Very Good, mild age/wear, mild rust to staples.
1971, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 42 pages, 43 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
C.A.S. Gallery / Sydney
$400.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, important publication distributed on the occasion of the exhibition "The Situation Now: Object and Post-Object Art", 16 July—6 August 1971, Central Street Gallery, Sydney, NSW. Curated by Terry Smith and Donald Brook, The Situation Now: Object and Post-Object Art, was a survey exhibition of conceptual and experimental works in Australia, sponsored by the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) held at Central Street. Artists in the exhibition: David Aspden, Michael Johnson, Trevor Vickers, Guy Stuart, Aleksander Danko, Nigel Lendon, Tony Coleing, Ti Parks, Clive Murray-White, Bill Gregory, Robert Hunter, Optronic Kinetics (Bert Flugelman, Jim McDonnell, David Smith), Tim Johnson, Simon Close, Robert Rooney, Dale Hickey, Neil Evans, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden; with further contributions by Peter Kennedy, Mike Parr, Noel Hutchison, Bruce Pollard, Terry Smith, Donald Brook, Joel Fisher.
"THIS EXHIBITION has been put together less as a display of merely good and/or interesting art (although we think it is that), but more as a series of statements which amount to an argument about the nature of the most recent changes in art."
The staple-bound, stamped publication acts as a catalogue and reader, consisting of of discussions, interviews and artist statements, providing a deeper understanding of the various conceptual operations of these contemporary Australian artists and contributors, and important projects they were associated with (Inhibodress, Pinacotheca, Tin Sheds Art Workshop, Art & Language, et al.).
Very Good copy with some tanning to the edges and light wear.
1978, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 192 pages, 22 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vision / London
$35.00 - In stock -
First 1973 hardcover edition of WYNDHAM LEWIS : FICTIONS AND SATIRES by Robert T. Chapman.
Wyndham Lewis played a leading part in the cultural life of England at the beginning of this century. Setting himself up as 'The Enemy', he vociferously opposed Establishment art and received opinion, and for fifty years iconoclastically attacked modish dilettantism and falsity. Novelist, painter, editor, poet, dramatist, critic, philosopher — Lewis was the most versatile of the 'men of 1914', yet his reputation has long been overshadowed by Pound, Eliot and Joyce, and he is only just beginning to be accepted as one of the major figures in twentieth-century literature.
This study concentrates on Lewis as an imaginative writer, and, whilst his philosophy, polemics and paint ing are considered whenever relevant, the major novels are given central importance. The approach is chronological and aims to reveal the development of Lewis's art from the Bergsonian physical comedy of the early stories, through the Vorticist period, the social satires of the Thirties, to the late non-fiction stories and the new mythology of
The Human Age. Formerly a post-graduate assistant in the Department of English at the New University of Ulster, Robert Chapman is at present completing his doctoral thesis on aesthetics in the modern novel and working for the Open University.
VG copy in G dust jacket with closed tears and rubbing wear.
1986—1987, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages/40 pages/24 pages, , 21 x 15 cm
Ed. of 250 copies,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$100.00 - Out of stock
Complete set of three volumes published in a series by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 1986—1987. These now scarce, historical publications, initiated and handsomely designed by (then) IMA director Peter Cripps and typeset by Ian Hodgkiss, were produced in an edition of only 250 copies each. The series consists of : Interviews with nine Queensland artists (edited by IMA president Bob Lingard); Peter Cripps interviews nine exhibiting artists at the Institute (edited by IMA director Peter Cripps); Art Criticism in Queensland: Forum Papers (edited by Graham Coulter-Smith).
Interviews with nine Queensland artists (Edited by Bob Lingard) features Michelle Andringa interviewed by Robert Whyte; Eugene Carchesio interviewed by Peter Bellas and Steven Grainger; Marian Drew interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; Jeanelle Hurst interviewed by Allan Furlong; Wayne Smith interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; John Stafford interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith; Ross Thompson interviewed by Bob Lingard; Adam Wolter interviewed by Marta Troland; Jay Younger interviewed by Graham Coulter-Smith.
Peter Cripps Interviews... (edited by Peter Cripps) comprises nine short interviews with eight artists (Robert MacPherson, Peter Tyndall, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Tim Johnson, Geoff Lowe, Bronwyn Clark-Coolee, Scott Redford, Mark Webb) who had all exhibited at the IMA, and one with curator Robyn McKenzie, whose exhibition "The Gothic: Perversity and Its Pleasure" was held at the institute in 1986. Includes source references.
Art Criticism in Queensland: Forum Papers (edited by Graham Coulter-Smith) comprises the papers from the second in a series of three forums held at the IMA in 1985—1986, under the directorship of Cripps. Art Criticism in Queensland consists of : Peter Anderson Introduction: Art Criticism In Queensland; Sarah Follent — The Double Cringe; Keith Bradbury — Art Criticism in Brisbane Newspapers 1930-1940; Graham Coulter-Smith — Contemporary Art Versus Criticism: Criticism and the IMA; Kate Collins — Criticism and Censorship.
Fine—almost As New copies, only light tanning.
1986, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 21 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
IMA / Brisbane
$140.00 - Out of stock
Rare and historic publication produced by the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane on the occasion of the exhibition "Q SPACE + Q SPACE ANNEX 1980 + 1981", curated by Peter Cripps in 1986.
"In 1981+82 Q SPACE and Q SPACE ANNEX, directed by John Nixon, operated in Brisbane as part of a series of strategies by artists involved in the reorientation and remodelling of contemporary art practice. Over the two years that Q SPACE and Q SPACE ANNEX operated, seventy seven exhibitions were held. Q SPACE, as with the earlier V SPACE, derived its meaning from the state in which it operated ― Q standing for Queensland. Works by the following artists and groups were shown at these spaces: Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, Imants Tillers, Hilary Boscott, John Davis, Robert MacPherson, John Nixon, John Smith and Anti-Music. This exhibition and catalogue have been compiled from the Q SPACE archives. Where possible we have attempted to maintain the original method and feeling of this documentation." — Peter Cripps, Brisbane, June 1986
Includes texts by Peter Cripps and John Nixon, as well as an interview between the two artists, alongside exhibition photography of each exhibition held, shot by John Nixon and Robert MacPherson, and a complete exhibition history.
An important piece of Australian contemporary art history. Highly recommended.
Fine—As New copy.
2020, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 26.7 x 33 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$120.00 - Out of stock
Featuring paintings from series that span from 1994 through 2009, this volume traces Mike Kelley's (1954–2012) engagement with the medium through bodies of work including The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter), a series of oval-shaped paintings on wood; Timeless Painting, which marked Kelley's distinct return to painting in colour, and which he described as "mannerist take-offs on Hans Hofmann's compositional theory of ‘push and pull'"; and the Horizontal Tracking Shots series.
1992, English / French
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 24.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$580.00 - In stock -
The true beginning of Purple — the very rare first issue of Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm's Purple Prose, published in 1992. Founded as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980’s, Purple Prose embraced the immediate fanzine aesthetics of what became referred to as 1990's anti-fashion, a far cry from what we now identify with Purple Fashion with.
Purple Prose 1, Automne 1992, features contributions by Dike Blair, Andrea Zittel, Joshua Decter, Henry Bond, Daniel Lemer, Jutta Koether, Andrea Zittel, Roddy Bogawa, Jon Moritsugu, Jacques Boyreau, Jan Avgikos, Martin Kippenberger, Patrick Van Caeckenbergh, Edgar Heap of Birds, David Robbins, Jean-Christophe Menu, Vitaly Glabel, Kitten (pre—Free Kitten: Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore's Julia Cafritz), Patrick Bouchitey, Jean-Luc Vilmouth, François Roche, and many more.
Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm created spin-off publications like Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction and what we now know and love, Purple Fashion. Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art, in creating Purple Fashion.
Before entering the world of fashion, Zahm worked as an art critic with widespread recognition for his work as a curator as well as his participation in over 150 exhibitions featuring international contemporary art. In 1994, Zahm and Fleiss curated “The Winter of Love,” a hit show for the Museum of Modern Art in Paris that they later took to P.S.1 in New York. In responding to the superficial glamour of the 1980s, Zahm co-founded Purple Prose magazine. In the introduction of Purple Anthology, Zahm shares why he chose to create Purple Prose:
"We launched Purple Prose in the early 1990s without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about. [..] It would be a form of opposition of our own".
Very Good—Near Fine copy, light wear.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 60 pages, 39.1 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
JICC Publishing Bureau / Japan
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1982 edition of this wonderful, very early collection of artworks by Japanese artist Katsu Yoshida (1938—2002). Bold, expressionist and homo-erotically charged, Yoshida's illustration work defined the new wave of 1980's Tokyo. "Portfolio" is packed cover to cover with full-bleed, over-sized reproductions of his sensational, sensual colour brushwork that was to become iconic through the pages of Japanese underground magazines such as SM Sniper and through his collaborations in the world of fashion with Issey Miyake.
Good copy with some chipping to the spine edge of covers, tanning to extremities of newsprint stock.
1989, English
Softcover 138 pages, 28.6 x 19.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Aperture / New York
Institute of Modern Art / Valencia
$480.00 - In stock -
Very rare first 1989 edition of one of Richard Prince’s best and most influential books. Spiritual America is a catalogue cum artist's book published by Aperture in conjunction with the artist’s landmark 1989 exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain, and Guggenheim Museum, New York. Lavishly illustrated and stylishly designed closely with Prince by Bethany Johns, Spiritual America “retains a dual role as a retrospective survey of Prince’s work and a fascinating re-integration of his repertoire of images into the format from which they mostly originated - the magazine”(—Greg Hilty, Frieze Magazine). With over 200 colour images of Prince's work (the jokes, the bikers, the cowboys, the glamour girls, the hoods...), Spiritual America marked the first comprehensive publication on the artist and his work, featuring Prince's own texts as well as an incredible transcribed "interview" with author J.G. Ballard, and a preface by Corinne Diserens and Vincent Todoli.
"What would it be if I had the eyes of a fly?"
Artist's book entry 13 in "Bibliotheque d'un Amateur: Richard Prince's Publications 1981-2012"
VG—Near Fine, seemingly unread, tightly bound copy, no sunning. A light remainder stamp to top of book-block is the only detraction from a remarkable copy.
2004, English
Hardcover, 176 pages, 19 x 28.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Hatje Cantz / Berlin
Regen Projects / Los Angeles
$220.00 - In stock -
First, only edition of the collectable hardcover catalogue cum artist's book that is Richard Prince's pictorial homage to Women, published in conjunction with a 2004 Regen Projects exhibition in Los Angeles and long out-of-print.
"Perfectly beautiful yet strangely faceless, hundreds of interchangeable fashion models and bare-breasted biker chicks find themselves reincarnated in the artwork of Richard Prince. Prince recycles these American (male) pop culture fantasies from found materials, most often advertising images and magazine layouts which he rephotographs, repaints or overpaints, arranges in collages, or breaks down into fragments. Images of women representing various spheres of trivial culture, marketing iconography like the Marlboro Man, and figures borrowed from chauvinist cartoons are central motifs in his art. Without comment, Prince cites and duplicates them in supposedly defunct role clichés that remain stubbornly present even today. Women goes even further, presenting a diverse yet decidedly thematic selection of appropriations chosen by the artist himself and ranging across his body of work. From bad sexist jokes to the covers of books written by female authors, from rockin' out naked biker chicks to Kate Moss, from a rephotographed Untitled Film Still to penny-novel nurses--these are Richard Prince's Women."
Lavishly illustrated throughout. Text by Shaun Caley Regen. Designed by Lorraine Wild and Robert Ruehlmann. (Cat Entry 13 in "Bibliotheque d'un Amateur: Richard Prince's Publications 1981-2012")
Near Fine, As New copy.
1995, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 240 pages, 20 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Scalo Publishers / Zürich
$320.00 - In stock -
First 1995 hardcover edition of Richard Prince's photo/artist's book, Adult Comedy Action Drama, a splendid, rare and controversial volume on the subject of photography, American consumerism and voyeurism.
“An autobiography through words and pictures… Adult Comedy Action Drama links together Prince’s drawings, aphorisms, original photographs and photographs of other peoples’ photographs. Lighthearted and funny, it describes and theatricalizes the visual ‘stage set’ of an artist’s life, enacting all the comedies, actions and dramas with pictures alone. Prince’s is a postmodern landscape, where one becomes what one beholds” (Roth, 30). “Prince updates the old Modernist flirtation between the intellectual and the supposedly primitive… borrowing conceptual and aesthetic strategies from Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Minimalism and the photography-as-painting movement” (New York Times). Open Book, 366. Roth, 274.
Very Good copy with very minor ex-libris markings to top of book block and initial endpaper and title page only, otherwise a gorgeous copy throughout w. VG dust jacket preserved in mylar wrap.
1984, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket) in slipcase (w. obi), 110 pages, 31cm x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shogakukan / Tokyo
$240.00 - In stock -
First 1984 edition of Kuniyoshi Kaneko's Theatre of Eros, one of the finest monographic volumes on Japanese painter, illustrator and photographer Kuniyoshi Kaneko (1936—2015), this copy with signed dedication by the artist (dated "1984.1.2") to the first blank page. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with Kaneko's figurative paintings and drawings of young men and women in enigmatic, metaphysical scenes of surreal, stylised erotic beauty, channeling the spirits of Cocteau and Balthus, including his famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, his illustrations for Orpheus, an array of his beloved oil on canvas and pastel and paper works, plus much more. Free of convention, Kaneko's dreamlike scenarios were very often of same-sex, homo-erotic, even fetishistic nature, and his artwork, encouraged by editor and writer Shibusawa Tatsuhiko (1928—1987), became a staple in the underground publishing scene of 1970's Tokyo. Theatre of Eros includes an extensive, illustrated biography, many photographic portraits, and a conversation with Japanese essayist and poet Mutsuo Takahashi (b. 1937). Takahashi was one of the most prominent poets of postwar Japan, known for his bold poetic work of male-male eroticism.
A beautifully preserved complete copy with original publisher's obi, and inserted with a file of various Kaneko Japanese media press clippings, 1984 Seibu gallery Theatre of Eros exhibition flyer, and the complete pages of an amazing photographic feature on Japanese pop star (and YMO-founder Haruomi Hosono collaborator) Miharu Koshi art directed and designed by Kaneko himself.
F copy in NF slipcase and obi.
2024, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 27 x 22 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$120.00 - In stock -
A unique journey with James Ensor through the history of still life in Belgium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Still life played an important role within the work of Belgian expressionist and symbolist painter James Ensor (1860–1949). The quality and significance of his intriguingly complex still lifes become clear when placed within the broader development of the genre in Belgium between 1830 and 1930.
The book offers an overview of the nineteenth-century Belgian academic tradition of decorative painting, with intriguing work by lesser-known painters such as Jean Robie, Hubert Bellis, Frans Mortelmans, and Henri De Braekeleer, as well as forgotten female artists such as Berthe Art and Alice Ronner. In the early twentieth century, artists such as Louis Thevenet continued to develop the genre of still life in a traditional manner, while innovators such as the late James Ensor, Léon Spilliaert, Marthe Donas, Walter Vaes, and Gustave Van de Woestyne created highly personal interpretations.
This book is published on the first exhibition ever entirely devoted to James Ensor's still lifes at Mu.ZEE (Ostend).
1972 / 1983, English
Softcover, 166 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
$18.00 - Out of stock
'Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.'
'But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but word can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.'
John Berger's Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: 'This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.' By now he has.
John Peter Berger (1926 – 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. He is well known for his novels and stories as well as for his works of nonfiction, including several volumes of art criticism. His first novel, A Painter of Our Time, was published in 1958, and since then his books have included Ways of Seeing, the fiction trilogy Into Their Labours, and the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently and moved to a small village in the French Alps. He died in 2017.
'Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of professional art critics ... he is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation'
Peter Fuller, Arts Review
'One of the most influential intellectuals of our time'
Observer
1971, Japanese
Rigid softcover (in slipcase), 64 pages, 30 cm x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakugei Shorinsha / Tokyo
$400.00 - In stock -
Super rare and bookshop favourite early collection of artworks by ero-guro master Toshio Saeki (1945—2019), published in 1971 by Gakugeishorin. Stunning large-format softcover collection of exquisitely printed saturated full-bleed colour and b/w artworks on warm matte paper stock capturing this legendary underground artist at the height of his powers, housed in original publisher's cardboard slipcase. His third book collection featuring so many of his finest works. Postface by Hiraoka Masaaki in Japanese. A must!
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Very Good copy. Very complete copy with slipcase and obi present. Some wear/marking to a VG slipcase.
2002, Japanese
Hardcover in slipcase w. illustrated paste-on, unpaginated, 21.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seirin Kogeisha / Tokyo
$280.00 - In stock -
First, limited number-stamped edition of "The Earliest Works of Toshio Saeki" by the Japanese master of Ero guro, published by Seirin-Kogei-Sha in 2002 and long out-of-print. Before Saeki worked in his later palette of bright flat colours, he expressed the darker and more chaotic aspects of unbridled eroticism in stark black and white, with the occasional and dramatic splash of a single primary colour. In this lavishly illustrated book, Saeki's disturbing iconography reveals links to the past and simultaneously indicates the even more bizarre twists his work would take in the future. The Earliest Works also shows the early inspirations of Toshio Saeki, Tomi Ungerer's effect being a most clear one. Broken into three chapters: Earliest Works, Uncollected Works, and Unpublished Studies from 1969, the book also includes a chronological record and notes by Yuji Yamashita. An incredible book!
Toshio Saeki (1945—2019) was an illusive Japanese illustrator and painter, and icon of 1970s Tokyo counterculture, known for combining Japanese folklore, Yōkai spirits and elements of Western art with his own sophisticated aesthetics to create a unique, sensational world of eros, dark humour, and horror. Given the title “Erotic Engineer” by Timothy Leary, Saeki's provocative art broke all sexual taboos, questioned Japanese ideology and traditional views on love, desire and gender roles. Saeki’s surgically-precise graphic work is closely related to the Japanese cultural phenomenon ‘Erotic, Grotesque, Nonsense’ (ero, guro, nansensu).
“Toshio Saeki conjures death with a pen”—Shūji Terayama, 1969.
Perfect fine hardcover copy housed in fine slipcase, beautifully preserved.
2024, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 22 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$59.00 - Out of stock
Sigríður Björnsdóttir met 22-year-old Dieter Roth in Copenhagen in 1952. A year later, Roth joined her in Reykjavík, and in 1957 they married. 50 years later, Björnsdóttir recounts their meeting, the ups and downs of their marriage, their life with their children and their eventual separation. 'Dieter Roth in My Life' is an honest and personal account of a period in Björnsdóttir’s life, shared with a man she describes as the love of her life who went on to become a successful and highly influential artist. Beyond her own artistic activities, Björnsdóttir describes her collaborative and experimental work with Roth, their encounters with friends and peers within the tightly woven Icelandic creative community and the beginnings of Roth’s multifaceted practice. Sigríður Björnsdóttir is an art therapist and artist living in Reykjavík. She graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1952 and went on to become a pioneer in art therapy, practicing in Iceland and lecturing worldwide.