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
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
2017, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$62.00 - Out of stock
'The Lure of the Biographical' focuses on the relationship between the work and the personal image of artists. The book explores how artists use their (biographic) image in order to make a name for themselves, and how other parties, such as critics, art historians, and art dealers, make connections between personal lives and bodies of work. Through detailed case studies of the image and work of Auguste Rodin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Francis Bacon, the book demonstrates which mechanisms and strategies are at play in creating the artist's image, and, in addition, proposes a model for research into questions of (self)representation
2015, English
Hardcover w slipcase, 36 pages (1 colour & 14 b/w ill.), 24 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$75.00 - Out of stock
'Because Religion of Love (written in 1990s) is so late in coming out, we hope it worth the wait. As representative of one of the most important artist's late thinking; on the one hand, it reconfirms her most classical thought (Beauty is the mystery of life.), and, on the other, adds new thought with an urgency only found in a mature artist of her age and persuasion. One of the most rigorous of sensibilities, we do not know what she meant by uncharacteristically asking another artist, Richard Tuttle, to illustrate her text, for she, unlike he, had a clear understanding of the meaning of illustration. Knowing that, he took it up as much to fathom a friend's genius after their passing, as well as the chance to say goodbye, life did not include, yet made available in publication. Hopefully, the reader can enjoy these various levels of interaction as art.' Richard Tuttle, London, September, 2014 -
1998, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 28 pages (6 circular pages folded in fourths and sewn into binding), 205 x 205 mm
Edition of 800, hand-numbered.,
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$90.00 - Out of stock
This rare artist book by Richard Tuttle features a unique design of die-cut circular pages that are sewn into the the binding and fold-out to allow the reader to turn the book in circles on order to read the words of poet Charles Bernstein amongst reproductions of Richard Tuttle's artworks. Parallel English and German texts including an essay by Wolfgang Becker.
This book was published by Walther König in Köln in 1998, and issued in a hand-numbered edition of 800 copies only.
As new, but small spots of wear and tear from glue to cover image only (not pictured), otherwise fine. Photographs upon request.
2013, English / Italian
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 782 pages, 22 x 29 cm
Published by
Fondazione Prada / Venice
$210.00 - Out of stock
Published by Fondazione Prada
Edited by Germano Celant. Introduction by Miuccia Prada. Preface by Miuccia Prada, Patrizio Bertelli. Text by Gwen L. Allen, Pierre Bal Blanc, Claire Bishop, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Charles Esche, Boris Groys, Jens Hoffmann, Chus Martínez, Glenn Phillips, Christian Rattemeyer, Dieter Roelstraete, Anne Rorimer, Terry Smith, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Francesco Stocchi, Jan Verwoert. Interviews with Thomas Demand, Rem Koolhaas.
In a daring act of historical reconstruction, the curator Germano Celant, in dialogue with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas, has recreated Harald Szeemann’s epochal "Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form", held at the Bern Kunsthalle in 1969, and installed by Celant at the magnificent Ca’ Corner della Regina in Venice in June–November 2013. Szeemann’s show was a dialogue with the Bern Kunsthalle, and Celant has reprised its spirit by placing the works in dialogue with the Ca’ Corner della Regina--a very different building, in its Venetian grandeur, to the Kunsthalle.
This publication is divided into three parts: the first reproduces a complete collection of photo documentation of the original exhibit in 1969, many photographs previously unpublished, taken by photographers during the exhibition (Claudio Abate, Leonardo Bezzola, Balthasar Burkhard, Siegfried Kuhn, Dölf Preisig, Harry Shunk and Albert Winkler); the second compiles essays and interviews on Celant’s project (texts by Gwen L. Allen, Pierre Bal Blanc, Claire Bishop, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Charles Esche, Boris Groys, Jens Hoffmann, Chus Martínez, Glenn Phillips, Christian Rattemeyer, Dieter Roelstraete, Anne Rorimer, Terry Smith, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Francesco Stocchi, Jan Verwoert. Interviews with Thomas Demand, Rem Koolhaas) and the third includes the installation views of the show in Venice. The book is completed by a "Register" of works included in both shows.
A heavy, scientific volume of almost 800 pages that has become an invaluable reference for those interested in Conceptual Art, Minimalism, Art Povera, Land Art, Curatorial history, and much more.
It includes the work of artists:
1969: Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Jared Bark, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Mel Bochner, Marinus Boezem, Bill Bollinger, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Ted Glass, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Eva Hesse, Douglas Huebler, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Stephen Kaltenbach, Jo Ann Kaplan, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Bernd Lohaus, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Bruce McLean, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Pino Pascali, Paul Pechter, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Frederick Lane Sandback, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Lincoln Viner, Franz Erhard Walther, William G. Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William T. Wiley, Gilberto Zorio.
2013: Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Bill Bollinger, Marinus Boezem, Daniel Buren, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton (Adam II), Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Ger van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Philip Glass, Hans Haacke, Eva Hesse, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Stephen Kaltenbach, Edward Kienholz and Jean Tinguely, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Pino Pascali, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Steve Reich, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Frederick Lane Sandback, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Lincoln Viner, Aldo Walker, Franz Erhard Walther, Lawrence Weiner, William T. Wiley, Gilberto Zorio.
2015, English
Softcover (w. printed plastic jacket), 464 pages, 18.5 x 24 cm
Out of print title / as new
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$90.00 - Out of stock
Out-of-print English edition.
The interdisciplinary and experimental educational ideas espoused by Black Mountain College (BMC), founded in North Carolina in 1933, made it one of the most innovative schools in the first half of the twentieth century. Visual arts, economics, physics, dance, architecture, and music were all taught here on an equal footing, and teachers and students lived together in a democratically organized community. The first rector of the school was John Andrew Rice, and Josef Albers, John Cage, Walter Gropius, and Buckminster Fuller were among the many adepts to give courses here. In consequence, BMC witnessed the development of a range of avant-garde concepts. This richly illustrated book appeared in conjunction with a Black Mountain exhibition ( 5 June – 27 September 2015, Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin). It is the first comprehensive publication on BMC in the German-speaking world and traces the key moments in the history of this legendary school.
1987, English / Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 18 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
PS Gallery / Tokyo
$35.00 - Out of stock
Scarce Japanese catalogue on the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, published and printed by PS Gallery in Tokyo on the occasion of Basquiat's solo exhibition October 8 - December 4, 1987. Illustrated throughout in colour illustrating his exhibited paintings, plus list of exhibitions and selected bibliography.
2004, English
Softcover, 87 pages, 18.5 x 12.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
ICA / Pennsylvania
$45.00 - Out of stock
Conceptions of “nothing” are one of the driving themes of twentieth-century art. One thinks of Piet Mondrian's reductivist approach to abstraction, Marcel Duchamp's contention that art resides in ideas, not objects, Mark Rothko's painterly reach for the sublime, Andy Warhol's affirmations of the vacuity of Pop culture. The Big Nothing will focus on themes of nothing, nothingness and negation in contemporary art and culture, surveying the legacy of these and other manifestations of absence made manifest in contemporary art. Artist include Gareth James, Jutta Koether, Louise Lawler, Richard Prince, Yves Klein, Bernadette Corporation, John Miller and James Welling, among others. Given its broad connotations, “nothing” provides general audiences with immediate access to looking at and thinking about the art of today.
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held May 1 - August 1, 2004. Curated and with essays by Ingrid Schaffner, Bennett Simpson, and Tanya Leighton. Additional essay by Paula Marincola. Artists include: Bas Jan Ader, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, Michel Auder, Jo Baer, Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Bernadette Corporation, James Lee Byars, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Chimes, Bruce Conner, Day Without Art, Jessica Diamond, Roe Ethridge, Lili Fleury, Rene Gabri, Jack Goldstein, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Nicolas Guagnini, David Hammons, Heavy Industries, Nancy Holt, Richard Hoeck, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Gareth James, Ray Johnson, Yves Klein, Joachim Koester, Jutta Koether, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Lawler, Gordon Matta-Clark, Allan McCollum, Patrick McMullen, John Miller, Matt Mullican, Eileen Neff, Gabriel Orozco, Raphael Ortiz, Charlemagne Palestine, Philippe Parreno, William Pope.L, Doris Salcedo, Karin Schneider, Allan Sekula, Arlene Shechet, Santiago Sierra, John Smith, Robert Smithson, Paul Swenbeck, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andy Warhol, James Welling, John Wesley, and Steve Wolfe. Includes checklist of the exhibition.
1968, English
Softcover (French-fold with die-cut), 96 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria
$160.00 - In stock -
Rare and very collectable first edition of this iconic catalogue produced in 1968 to accompany "The Field", regarded as a landmark exhibition in Australian art history – a radical showcase of 74 abstract and conceptual, colour field, geometric and hard edge artworks. Influenced by the American origins of abstract art, the exhibition opened to much controversy at the NGV in 1968 with its silver foil-covered walls and geometric light fittings, boldly launching the careers of a generation of young Australian artists it was the first the NGV staged in its new Swanston Street galleries.
Handsomely designed with its wrapped, french-flap, die-cut cover, the book includes profiles on each exhibiting artist in the exhibition, including colour and black and white reproductions of all 72 of the works exhibited.
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary the NGV will restage the exhibition as The Field Revisited, opening in May 2018 at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia.
Texts by Elwyn Lynn, Patrick McCaughey, Royston Harpur, and an introduction by Brian Finemore (Curator) and John Stringer (Exhibitions Manager).
Artists included: Sydney Ball, Peter Booth, Janet Dawson, Robert Jacks, James Doolin, David Aspden, Tony Bishop, Ian Burn, Gunter Christmann, Tony Coleing, Noel Dunn, Garry Foulkes, Dale Hickey, Michael Johnson, Col Jordan, Michael Kitching, Alun Leach-Jones, Nigel Lendon, Tony McGillick, Clement Meadmore, Michael Nicholson, Harald Noritis, Alan Oldfield, Wendy Paramor, Paul Partos, John Peart, Emanuel Raft, Melvyn Ramsden, R.C. Robertson-Swann, Robert Rooney, Rollin Schlicht, Udo Sellbach, Eric Shirley, Joseph Szabo, Vernon Treweeke, Trevor Vickers, Dick Watkins, John White, Normana Wight.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/10 Christmas 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Features: "Letter from Australia", a report on Australian art by Alan McLeod McCulloch (inc. John Davis, Tony Coleing, Ken Reinhard, Max Lyle, Nigel Lendon, Lenton Parr, Asher Bilu, Jan Senbergs, Les Kossatz, Herbert Flugelman, Marc Clark, Jock Clutterbuck, Edwin Tanner, John Brack, Clifton Pugh, Guy Smart, Donald Laycock, Frank Hinder, Fred Williams, and more), Zoran Music, Brian O'Doherty, Michael Steiner, Bernar Venet, Rodolfo Aricò, Edward Burra, Fernando Botero, Francisco Goya, Serge Poliakoff, Aglaé Liberaki, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely, Claude Viallat, Supports/Surfaces, Dan Flavin, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Barnett Newman, Karl Wirsum, Larry Poons, Georguia O'Keefe, Carl Andre, Lucas Samaras, Alexander Calder, Richard Long, Alice Neel, Antoni Tàpies, Philip Guston, Edward Kienholz, Phillip King, Keiji Usami, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - Out of stock
Art International, Vol. XIV/9 November 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
cover: Eugenio Carmi
Features: Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, Aristide Maillol, Clement Meadmore, Lee Bontecou, George Grosz, Hannah Höch, R. B. Kitaj, Kurt Schwitters, Ross Woodman, Harry Soviak, The Israel Museum, James Rosati, Frances Picabia, Raffael Ferrer, Alexander Archipenko, Paolo Soleri, Ralph Goings, Alex Katz, René Magritte, Roberto Matta, Hans Bellmer, Frank Stella, David Aspden, John Armstrong, Gunter Christmann, Ken Reinhard, Jorge Camacho, Tetsumi Kudo, Michael Heizer, Jean-Pierre Raynaud, Pol Bury, Raoul Ubac, Antoni Tàpies, Llyn Foulkes, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/7 September 20, 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Features: Concrete Poetry feature article, Richard Paul Lohse, Larry Poons, Edwin Ruda, William Pettet, Ernest Trova, Mario Merz, Ugo La Pietra, Paul Klee, Robert Delaunay, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Adolf Hölzel, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns, Mary Vieira, László Moholy-Nagy, Max Bill, Bruno Munari, William Harnett, H. C. Westermann, John McCracken, Dante Leonelli, Frances Picabia, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/5 May 20, 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Features: Sam Gilliam, Rockne Krebs, Ed McGowin, Enio Iommi, Rogelio Polesello, Lorser Feitelson, Alberto Lilloni, Ernest Trova, David Hockney, Paul Nash, Valeriano Trubbiani, Cynthia Carlson, Pablo Palazuelo, Victor Vasarely, Larry Bell, Jim Dine, Gustav Klimt, Milton Avery, Willliam Pye, Morris Louis, Arman, Brice Marden, Alfred Jensen, Daniel LaRue Johnson, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/4 April 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
cover: Paul Wunderlich
Features: "Letter from Australia", a report on Australian art by Alan McLeod McCulloch (inc. Col Jordan, Virginia Jay, Max Lyle, Clement Meadmore, Michael Johnson, Timothy Gibb, Ken Reinhard, Joseph Szabo, Harald Noritis, Gunter Christmann, Herbert Flugelman, Ian Chandler, Jan Senbergs, Emanuel Raft, Peter Clarke, Gordon Walters, Deanna Conti, and many more), Alberto Giacometti, Barbara Hepworth, Takis, Joe Tilson, Marsden Hartley, Conrad Marca-Relli, László Moholy-Nagy, Colin Self, Alvin Loving, Eduardo Chillida, Shusaku Arakawa, Niki de Saint Phalle, Hervé Télémaque, Claes Oldenburg, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/3 March 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
cover: Richard Hamilton
Features: Richard Hamilton, Enzo Mari, Joseph Beuys, Fernand Léger, Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, Urs Lüthi, Rodolfo Aricò, Allan Jones, Alex Colville, Anne Madden, Jasper Johns, Man Ray, Ed Ruscha, Duane Hanson, Sonia Delaunay, Erró, Francois Lalanne, Pier Manzoni, Alfred Manessier, Claes Oldenburg, Doug Wheeler, Peter Zecher, Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, Vija Clemens, Michael Heizer, Dan Flavin, Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Ronald Bladen, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1970, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIV/I January 20, 1970
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
cover: Ron Robertson-Swann
Features: "Letter from Australia", a report on Australian art by Alan McLeod McCulloch (inc. Ron Robertson-Swann, Herbert Flugelman, Jock Clutterbuck, George Johnson, Stephen Walker, Owen Broughton, Les Kossatz, and more), Kazimir Malevich, Lucio del Pezzo, Christo, Konrad Klapheck, Victor Bonato, Joseph Beuys, Eliseo Mattiacci, Lambert Maria Wintersberger, Lewis Stein, Richerd Serra, Sol LeWitt, Gotthard Graubner, Robert Smithson, James Rosati, Fernando Botero, Robert Motherwell, Georges Yakoulov, Lioubov Popova, David Tremlett, Richard Smith, Guido Biasi, Max Bill, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, Leon Polk Smith, Deborah Remington, Wassily Kandinsky, Saul Steinberg, Gary Kuehn, Sam Francis, Frank Stella, Karel Appel, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1969, English / French
Softcover, 76 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$55.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XIII/6 Summer 1969
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Advisory Editors: Umbro Apollonio, Jean-Christophe Ammann, R. C. Kenedy, James Mellow.
Features: Bridget Riley, Barnett Newman, Tess Jaray, Oskar Kokoschka, Roland Topor, Tony Smith, Richard Linder, Jules Olitski, Karel Appel, Hans Bellmer, Horst-Egon Kalinowski, Louise Nevelson, Luciano Fabbro, George Brecht, Man Ray, Fernand Leger, Kenneth Noland, Lyonel Feininger, Herbert Ferber, George Sugarman, Walter de Maria, Edgar Negret, Richard Anuzkiewicz, Nicholas Krushenick, John Healey, Rodolfo Arico, Marco Cordioli, Edival Ramosa, Riccardo Emma, Livio Marzot, Pablo Picasso, Heinz Mack, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1968, English / French
Softcover, 64 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$55.00 - Out of stock
Art International, Vol. VII/8 October 20, 1968
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Advisory Editors: Umbro Apollonio, R. C. Kenedy, Lucy R. Lippard, James Mellow.
Features:
Phillip King, Paul Frazier, "Science-Fiction" (Robert Smithson, Donald Judd, Larry Bell, Lila Batzen, etc.), "Sculpture as Visual Instrument" (Charles Ross, Michael Kirby), "The Vancouver Explosion" (Iain Baxter, Roy Kiyooka, Jim Willer, Reg Holmes, Audrey Chapel Dorey, Michael Morris, etc.), Paul Wunderlich, Milton Avery, Ludwig Sander, John Barryman, Claude Villiat, Lucio Fontana, Matta, Henri Matisse, Saul Steinberg, Rene Magritte, Isamu Noguchi, Les Levine, Martial Raysse, Andy Warhol, Christo, James Dine, Carl Andre, an much more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1968, English / French / German / Italian
Softcover, 64 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$55.00 - Out of stock
Art International, Vol. XIII/5 May 20, 1968
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Advisory Editors: Umbro Apollonio, Jean-Christophe Ammann, Lucy R. Lippard, James Mellow.
Features: Jean Arp, Kaspar-Thomas Lenk, Eugenio Carmi, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Paul Thek, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Joe Brainard, Fernando Botero, David Carr, Helio Oiticica, Alexander Calder, Victor Pasmore, Phillip Sutton, Joe Perlman, Michael Kenney, Ritzi Jacobi, Roy Adzak, George Segal, Berrocal, John McCracken, Richard Serra, Jan Dibbets, Mario Merz, Markus Raetz, Robert Morris, Michael Heizer, Antonio Calderara, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pieter Engels, Ger van Elk, David Smith, Kenzo Okada, Umberto Eco, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1967, English / French / Italian
Softcover, 64 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$55.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XI/7 September 20, 1967
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Advisory Editors: Umbro Apollonio, Jorge Romero Brest, Lucy R. Lippard, James Mellow.
Features: Helen Frankenthaler, Expo '67, Jean Tinguely, Alexander Calder, Max Bill, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Otto Frei, James Rosenquist, Claude Viseux, Henri Michaux, César, Antonio Saura, Piero Gilardi, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Arman, Pol Bury, Paul de Lussanet, Henry Moore, Luis Alberto Wells, Peter Schmidt, Erwin Heerich, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Kenneth Martin, Tim Scott, Allen Jones, Tess Jaray, Jean Dubuffet, Brassai, Tetsumi Kudo, Louise Nevelson, Marcel Duchamp, Raphael Jesus Soto, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1967, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$55.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. XI/4 April 20, 1967
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Advisory Editors: Umbro Apollonio, Jorge Romero Brest, Lucy R. Lippard, James Mellow.
Features: Jacques Kaplan, Clement Greenberg, Anne Truitt, Anthony Caro, Carl Andre, Ronald Bladen, Robert Smithson, Lucy R. Lippard, Larry Poons, Colin Self, Eli Bornstein, Bridget Riley, Maurice de Sansmarez, Nanda Vigo, Victor Vasarely, Marcel Broodthaers, Arman, Roberto Crippa, Richard Smith, Howard Hodgkin, Avinash Chandra, Mary Preminger, Dan Flavin, Steve Kaltenbach, DeWain Valentine, Leonard Esbensen, Craig Kauffman, Kenneth Snelson, Morris Louis, Franz Kline, Aubrey Beardsley, Sam Francis, Richard Tuttle, Paul Klee, Gary Kuehn, Tony Smith, John Wesley, Jack Beal, Antonin Artuad, Nicholas Krushenick, Colin Self, Lucio del Pezzo, Peter Voulkos, Leonard da Vinci, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Ludwig Sander, Yves Klein, Edward Kienholz, Adolph Gottlieb, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1965, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 24.5 x 34.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
James Fitzsimmons / Lugano
$45.00 - In stock -
Art International, Vol. IX/II March 1965
Published and Edited by James Fitzsimmons
Features: Frederick Kiesler, Abraham Rattner, Henry Miller, Lucy R. Lippard, Ruth Vollmer, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Tinguely, Nicolas de Staël, Georges Mattieu, Piet Mondrian, Carlo Carrà, Frank Stella, Robert Morris, Tomioki Tessai, Masuo Ikeda, Taizo Yoshinaka, Keiji Usami, Jasper Johns, Toshimitsu Imai, Toshinobu Onosato, John Hoyland, Abrella Giorgi, and many more.
Art International was a highly regarded international art journal based in Switzerland from 1957-1984. With international editors and contributing writers, A.I. was issued 10 times per year and was published and edited by James A. Fitzsimmons.
1985, English
Softcover, 72 pages (106 ill.), 19 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
MUMA / Victoria
$20.00 - In stock -
Wonderful publication to accompany the exhibition "Irreverent Sculpture" curated by Margaret Plant at the Monash University Gallery, 1-30th August, 1985.
The exhibition presented Australian art made during the 1950s and 60s, inopposition to the dominant modes current then in Australia. Many pieces appearing juvenile or primitive, and displaying some form of wit in visual expression, including work of the Sydney group, the 'Annandale Imitation Realists'; Colin Lanceley, Mike Brown, Ross Crothall; Barry Humphries ('First Pan Australasian Dada Exhibition, University Of Melbourne, 1952'), Ti Parks, Clive Murray-White, Aleksander Danko, and Les Kossatz.
2016, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
Published by
Serpentine Gallery / London
Walther König / Köln
$45.00 - Out of stock
This catalogue is released on the occasion of Helen Marten’s exhibition, Drunk Brown House at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery (29 September – 20 November 2016).
Marten combines disparate imagery and materials to create eclectic, large scale works. These works often serve as repositories for elaborate sculptural tableaux whose assembled detritus (wood, clay, steel, fabric) create a string of hieroglyphs or a kind of archaeological anagram. Her output includes sculpture, videos, text, and screen-printed paintings.
The volume will focus on key artworks produced in recent years, and conceived as an artist book, it will offer detailed perspectives on Marten’s meticulous installations. It will include an essay by Brian Dillon that investigates Marten’s practice, as well as fictional texts by Travis Jeppesen and Eileen Myles that takes inspiration from the artist’s works.
Helen Marten is shortlisted for both the Turner Prize, and the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in 2016.
2009, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 320 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$119.00 - Out of stock
Twenty-one-year-old Peter Heisterkamp began signing his colorful and playful abstract artworks Palermo in 1964, when peers noted his resemblance to the American gangster Frank “Blinky” Palermo. This handsome book—a historical and critical study of Palermo’s painting from the time he entered Joseph Beuys’s now famous class at the Düsseldorf academy in 1964 to his death in 1977—explores his significance for postwar and abstract art.
Christine Mehring notes that over the course of Palermo’s brief career he created five concurrent but distinct bodies of work: objects, cloth-pictures, wall-paintings, metal-pictures, and collaborative projects, primarily with his friend and colleague Gerhard Richter. Mehring shows how each of these groups demonstrates Palermo’s efforts to lead German art out of its international isolation and to transform modernist painting into historically resonant abstraction by incorporating artifice, humor, period colors, and play.
(Blinky) Palermo (1943–1977) was born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig. In 1962, he entered the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied with Bruno Goller and then with Joseph Beuys and, in 1964, appropriated the name Blinky Palermo from the American boxing promoter-cum-mafioso Frank “Blinky” Palermo, famous for managing heavyweight champion Sonny Liston. Over the course of his short life, Palermo participated in more than seventy exhibitions worldwide, including Documenta in 1972 and the Venice Biennale in 1975. He has had posthumous retrospectives at the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (1984); Kunstmuseum Bonn (1993); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2002); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2007); and Dia:Beacon and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (CCS Bard) (2011).