World Food Books

The Theatre and Its Double
by Antonin Artaud

1993 / 1999, English
Softcover, 109 pages, 19.5 x 12.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by John Calder / London

$25.00 - In stock -

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Antonin Artaud is now recognized as the twentieth century's most radical influence on the theatre and on performance. In this, the most famous of his writings, he redefines the nature and the purpose of drama, what the theatrical reaction of audiences should be an experience to shake their certainty of everyday existence and how actors should approach their work. Peter Brook, Grotowski, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and many others have used Artaud's theories in their work, and in drama colleges everywhere it is obligatory reading.

The Manifestos of the Theatre of Cruelty, the text of Seraphim's Theatre and other major texts are all included here.

This remarkable French playwright and poet was born in 1896. He was a leading figure in the Surrealist movement and despite a divergence of ideas remained a dedicated Surrealist all his life, devoting his time to the study of problems of conflict between man's physical and intellectual natures. He died in 1948.

Good copy.

File under: Antonin Artaud Antonin Artaud John Calder / London Performance / Dance / Theater Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Art

Fetish Fashion
by Masami Akita (Merzbow)

1990, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 206 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Seikyūsha / Tokyo

$80.00 - In stock -

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First hardcover edition of "Fetish Fashion", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1990, an in-depth exploration of the eroticisation and transformation of the body through fetish fashion that revolutionised the world of sexuality, from SM Bizarre, Transvestism, Rubber/latex, mistresses and dominatrixes, bondage clubs, male and female castration, restraints, piercing, the fascist artificial body, medical fetish/medical art (including Romain Slocombe), and much more, all subjects illustrated in b/w. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "Fetish Fashion" is one of these very books.

First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine illustrated dust jacket.

File under: Masami Akita (Merzbow) Merzbow Masami Akita (Merzbow) Seikyūsha / Tokyo Art Sound / Music Fetishism / BDSM Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Fashion Counterculture Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Theory / Essay Eros LGBTQ+

Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music
by Nicolas Ballet

2025, English
Softcover, 640 pages, 24 x 16.99 cm
Published by Intellect Ltd / US

$110.00 - Out of stock

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Industrial music has long been recognized for its sonic innovations, but the radical visual culture that accompanied this underground movement has remained largely unexplored. Shock Factory: The Visual Culture of Industrial Music presents the first comprehensive examination of how industrial artists created a coherent aesthetic language across multiple media—from xerox art and mail art to installation and performance—fundamentally challenging modernist utopias while prophetically anticipating contemporary discourse about media manipulation and technological control.

Emerging in mid-1970s Britain from the post-punk underground before expanding globally throughout the 1980s, artists like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Test Dept, Laibach, Einstürzende Neubauten, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Coil, Psychic TV, Boyd Rice, Whitehouse, Merzbow, Hijokaidan, Hunting Lodge, Controlled Bleeding, Hafler Trio, Z'EV, Nocturnal Emissions, 23 Skidoo, Clock DVA, Master/Slave Relationship, and Monte Cazazza developed sophisticated visual strategies that matched their abrasive soundscapes with equally confrontational imagery.

At 640 pages, this award-winning monograph reveals how industrial artists systematically appropriated reprographic techniques—particularly xerox art and photocollage—to create disturbing visual narratives investigating mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry, and totalitarianism. Through détournement strategies borrowed from Situationist theory, they exposed the coercive mechanisms of mass media and technological society, creating a visual vocabulary that challenged viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about modern power structures. What emerges is a movement that perceptively anticipated contemporary concerns about surveillance, media manipulation, and collective psychological control. Industrial artists' exploration of these themes through deliberately provocative imagery served not as mere provocation but as sophisticated critique of the very media systems they inhabited. Their radical aesthetic choices—degraded reproduction quality, found imagery manipulation, shock tactics—created hybrid forms that defied traditional categorization while establishing independent networks that bypassed conventional art world structures.

Shock Factory positions industrial music's visual culture within broader art historical narratives, revealing connections to Dada, Surrealism, and conceptual art while demonstrating the movement's unique contributions to contemporary visual culture. The book arrives at a moment when questions about technology, media manipulation, and social control have never been more urgent, demonstrating how these artists' radical visual strategies continue to offer valuable insights for our digital age.

For scholars of contemporary art, music history, and media studies, this book provides essential documentation of an overlooked movement that significantly influenced subsequent artistic developments. For readers interested in underground culture and avant-garde aesthetics, Shock Factory reveals the sophisticated visual thinking that accompanied one of the most innovative musical movements of the past half-century.

"A history of industrial music needed to be written. Nicolas Ballet has accomplished this. Thoroughly. This is the book's greatest strength. It explores the significance of noise as a reflection of a world in decay and screaming as a need. And doing it so it reveals a significant connection between industrial music and contemporary art. This is also what makes it an essential book: its contribution to dismantling categories and rethinking history from mixed creative territories."—David G. Torres

Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and assistant curator at the Centre Pompidou in the New Media Department. He is the author of books and articles exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices.

File under: Nicolas Ballet Intellect Ltd / US Sound / Music Art Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Fetishism / BDSM Surrealism Dada Occult / Esoterica Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Counterculture Eros Film / Video Transgressive / Visceral / Abject

As Loud As Possible 1
The Noise Culture Magazine

2010, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by As Loud As Possible / UK

$150.00 - In stock -

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Quickly out-of-print, inaugural and solitary volume of the UK noise music magazine, As Loud As Possible, published in 2010 and edited by Chris Sienko and Steve Underwood (Harbinger Sound). Not surprisingly an instant collector's item, this first ambitious issue (names after the Incapacitants 1995 album) is packed with articles, interviews and reviews with both "seminal and newly emerging sound artists that specialize in atonal sonic brutality." Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Broken Flag (Maurizio Bianchi, Unkommuniti, Mauthausen Orchestra, Satori, Controlled Bleeding, Irritant, JFK, Mauro Teho Teardo (M.T.T.), Con-Dom Sigillum S, Agog, Giancarlo Toniutti, Vortex Campaign, Le Syndicat, Krang....), No Fun, Putrefier, Sewer Election, The Haters, The Rita / Sam McKinlay, Zone Nord / Jean-Luc Angles (Blowhole, Prick Decay, Small Cruel Party), Cheapmachines, Climax Denial, Interchange fanzine, Alien Brains / Storm Bugs / Anti-Messthetics, and much more...

Contents: “Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock: “Artaud, Aktionkunst, Abreaction and Eb.er” : texts by Alice Kemp, accompanied by new drawings from Rudolf Eb.er, and a detailed “Aktiongraphy”; The Broken Flag Story: An extensive indepth interview with Gary Mundy, covering the career of Ramleh, the complete output of his legendary Broken Flag record label, and also featuring new interviews with the artists responsible for those releases, including: Maurizio Bianchi, Unkommuniti, Mauthausen Orchestra, Satori, Controlled Bleeding, Irritant, JFK, Mauro Teho Teardo (M.T.T.), Con-Dom Sigillum S, Agog, Giancarlo Toniutti, Vortex Campaign, Le Syndicat, Krang and many more, plus unseen artwork and photographs; No Fun: Festival curator Carlos Giffoni talk about the New York festival's past, present and future, and covers his work with the No Fun Productions label. The Politics of HNW: The Rita’s Sam McKinlay talks about the obsessive nature of the harsh-head. Includes a list of Sam's essential Wall Noise picks spanning the past two decades. An excellent introduction to wall-riding; 30 Years of The Haters: G.X. Jupitter - Larsen provides a personal history, as well as a delineation of his ideas, methods, and tricks accrued over three decades. The inside story from the man who has made entropy his life's work. Putrefier: An interview with Mark Durgan, covering his twenty years in the UK's wilderness, from Birthbiter's heyday to the present-day. Includes reminiscences from Andy Bolus about their infamous duo project, Olympic Shit Man! Sewer Election: Sweden's loudest, Dan Johansson talks about his music, ideas, art and running a tape label. Interview by Mikko Aspa of Grunt; Zone Nord: An album -by- album look at the discography of this retired French noise legend, including brief commentary from Mr Zone Nord himself, Jean-Luc Angles; Apraxia: An interview with Patrick Barber, the man behind the label. Covers the output of this legendary label who released Blowhole, Prick Decay, Small Cruel Party and others in the early '90s; Cheapmachines: An interview with London sound-sculpter and all-'round sonic chameleon Phil Julian.
Climax Denial: An interview with this Milwaukee-based Power Electronics lecher, including an album-by-album analysis; Alien Brains, Storm Bugs and Anti-Messthetics: A study of the non-careers of two early eighties UK outfits that were very much connected. Includes input from some of the key players, plus lots of vintage artwork; Interchange: A look at this influential UK fanzine from the mid-80s, plus an interview with its creator, John Smith. Tunnel Canary: G. X. Jupitter - Larsen tells us about his first memories in Vancouver of this volatile bunch. IDES: An overview of the primary output of this American tape label, and an interview with its owner, Nicole Chambers; Classic Albums: A regular feature dedicated to both in-depth analysis and memories of overlooked but not forgotten gems from yesteryear. Issue #1 features articles on The Lemon Kittens (We Buy A Hammer For Daddy), XX Committee (Network) and RJF (Greater Success In Apprehensions & Convictions). A collection of thoughts and interviews, including an exclusive interview with ex- XX front-man, Scott Foust. Opinion Columns: A regular feature from a rotating pool of participatory players with the music they ponder. Includes John Olson (Wolf Eyes), Andy Ortmann (Panicsville), Mikko Aspa (Grunt), Steve Underwood (Harbinger Sound), Hicham Chadly (Nashazphone), Jonas Kellagher (Segerhuva), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) and Mark Wharton (Idwal Fisher) amongst others. Covering artists including Masonna, Vomir, and The Black Phelgm, and ranging from Bizarre Uproar all the way to Christian bluegrass bluegrass music! Extensive reviews section. Back cover artwork by Richard Rupenus (The New Blockaders).

Very Good copy with light wear.

File under: Broken Flag The Haters Leibstandarte SS MB (Maurizio Bianchi) MB (Maurizio Bianchi) Maurizio Bianchi (M.B.) Maurizio Bianchi (MB) Le Syndicat Krang Giancarlo Toniutti Vortex Campaign Sigillum S Agog Sigillum S. Con-Dom Unkommuniti Mauthausen Orchestra Satori Controlled Bleeding Irritant JFK Mauro Teho Teardo (M.T.T.) Lemon Kittens Blowhole Prick Decay Small Cruel Party Zone Nord Masonna Vomir The Black Phelgm Wolf Eyes Burning Star Core Idwal Fisher The Rita Sam McKinlay Putrefier Sewer Election Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck Alien Brains Storm Bugs Cheapmachines Climax Denial Chris Sienko Steve Underwood Gary Mundy Sam McKinlay As Loud As Possible / UK Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Sound / Music Counterculture Performance / Dance / Theater

50 Drawings to Murder Magic
by Antonin Artaud

2016, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 27.8 x 21.4 cm
Published by Seagull Books / London

$39.00 - In stock -

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Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Edited with a Preface by Évelyne Grossman

A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his thought and his appeal, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic is rooted in the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed. Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948, these pieces trace Artaud’s struggle to escape a personal hell that extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he believed ran them.

The first eleven notebooks are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures, pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before Artaud’s death in 1948, changes course: it’s an extraordinary text on the loss of magic to the demonic—the piece that gives the book its title.

“Artaud matters,” wrote John Simon in the Saturday Review years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that remains true—perhaps more than ever.

"A gloriously reproduced edition . . . . There is something in this text that speaks to the creative process--especially to the degree to which so much of what the writer or artist commits to the page (or canvass) extends from a place beyond conscious attention, to be received actively but without specific intention."—Rough Ghosts

File under: Antonin Artaud Antonin Artaud Donald Nicholson-Smith Évelyne Grossman Seagull Books / London Surrealism Dada Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Drawing Poetry Fiction / Poetry Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Art

MURPHY
by Samuel Beckett

1973, English
Softcover, 158 pages, 19.5 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Picador / USA

$15.00 - Out of stock

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1973 Picador edition of MURPHY by Samuel Beckett, with cover art by John Holmes. First published in 1938 and reissued by Picador in 1973, this early Beckett novel is a bleakly hilarious tour through madness, metaphysics, and the daily slog of simply existing.

"Followed to England by a riotous collection of Irish eccentrics, Murphy ventures disastrously from the calm of his rocking chair in a Kensington mews. He falls in love with Celia, a prostitute. Fascinated by Eastern • mysticism, he pursues swamis and fortune-tellers. His eventual employment as an orderly in a mental hospital leads to a devastatingly ironic conclusion.

Historically, Murphy forms a bridge between the novels of James Joyce and the new literature of the post-war world, in which Beckett's work occupies such a prominent place. Murphy, though revolutionary in its perceptions, is also exuberantly readable. Though imbued with its author's characteristic pessimism, it is a comic masterpiece."

"One of the greatest prose-writers of the century'—THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

"Can scarcely be matched by another living writer'—NEW STATESMAN

Very Good copy.

File under: Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett Picador / USA Fiction / Poetry Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Art

Brus, Muehl, Nitsch, Schwarzkogler: Writings of the Vienna Actionists

1999, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 23 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Atlas Press / London

$200.00 - In stock -

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First 1999 edition of the long collectible English-language anthology of Writings of the Vienna Actionists, published by the legendary Atlas Press.

Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. These four artists from the sixties created a form of performance art which has become legendary for the extreme violence of its expression. Fined, gaoled, forced into exile, they were ignored by the art establishment of the day only to now be hailed as one of Europe's most outstanding contributions to post-war art. This anthology of their writings and documentation, brought together with the collaboration of the artists, Brus, Nitsch and Muehl, illustrates their intentions for the first time and shows how they established and explored a new territory for art.

Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. "Four artists who, during the Sixties, became notorious for pushing the definition of art to an extreme which has yet to be surpassed.

Variously fined, gaoled, and forced into exile, they were ignored by the art establishment of the day, only to be hailed in recent years as one of the most outstanding and unique contributions to post-war art in Europe. Exaggeration and myth still obscure their activities, however, and their actual motives for an art centred on the examination of taboos, the "hidden" secrets of the body, the aesthetics of destruction and the possibilities of regeneration have remained elusive. Subsequent generations of artists have claimed them as their forefathers or unscrupulously borrowed their ideas (but without approaching the intensity of their actions), and while international exhibitions have reclaimed their work for the visual arts, their writings have remained largely unpublished since they first appeared in small mimeographed editions, or are long since out of print.

This anthology of photo-documentation and writings - which includes manifestos, theoretical texts, action scores, even police and psychiatric reports - has been assembled in collaboration with the three surviving artists. It provides the first comprehensive survey of their work, and for the first time illuminates their differing intentions. These texts employ humour and vitriol to elaborate a position in total opposition to contemporary social, political and aesthetic mores. A lucid narrative emerges of a determined exploration of these conditioning factors, by means of an art that used life itself as its material.

The Vienna Actionists were indeed unique - at the very outset of post-war performance art they trod a path very different from the "Happenings" in the USA or the belated neo-Dada pranks of many of their contemporaries. They not only established a new territory for art but they explored it so thoroughly as to make most subsequent "body art" simply irrelevant.

Very Good—Near Fine copy.

File under: Günter Brus Otto Mühl Hermann Nitsch Rudolf Schwarzkogler Malcolm Green Atlas Press / London Performance / Dance / Theater Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Art Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Painting Drawing

PLAY
by Samuel Beckett

1964, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 18 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Faber & Faber / London

$15.00 - In stock -

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First 1964 Faber paperback edition of Beckett's PLAY (and Two Short Pieces for Radio).

"It is totally fascinating and satisfying because, in its smaller scale, its polyphonic dialogue uses much the same astonishing intervals of resonance and echo and discovery as "Godot"; and because it shows Beckett at his most carelessly masterful, using comedy to scour the tragic, to put flesh upon our lies, and to give the lie to our flesh."—Anne Duchene, The Guardian

Good copy with general cover wear and foxing.

File under: Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett Faber & Faber / London Performance / Dance / Theater Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Art

Happy Days: A Play in Two Acts
by Samuel Beckett

1962, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 48 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Faber & Faber / London

$80.00 - In stock -

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Scarce first hardcover edition of Beckett's Happy Days, published by Faber & Faber, 1962. Red cloth boards and dust jacket.

In Happy Days, Samuel Beckett's first full-length play since Endgame, things are stripped once again to their barest essentials. There are only two characters: Winnie, a woman of about fifty, and Willie, a man of about sixty. In the first act Winnie is buried up to her waist in a mound of earth, but still has the use of her arms and a few earthly possessions a toothbrush, tube of tooth paste, small mirror, revolver, handkerchief, spectacles; in the second act she is imbedded up to her neck and can move only her eyes.

Willie lives and moves-on all fours— behind the mound, appearing intermittently and replying only occasionally to Winnie's long monologue, but the knowledge of his presence is a source of comfort and inspiration to her, and apparently the prerequisite for all her 'happy days'.

A characteristic tour de force, Happy Days is a worthy successor to Waiting for Godot, Endgame, All that Fall and Krapp's Last Tape.

With jacket design featuring photograph from the first performance of the play-Beckett's first since Endgame-at New York's Cherry Lane Theatre in 1961, directed by Alan Schneider.

Good ex-library copy in Good dust jacket. Associated stampings to colophon and end-blank, no library marking to dust jacket, clipped with mild age/wear, also to red boards and pages.

File under: Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett Faber & Faber / London Performance / Dance / Theater Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare Art

ART & TEXT 5
Autumn 1982

1982, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Art & Text / Prahran

$45.00 - In stock -

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ART & TEXT 5
Autumn 1982
Edited by Paul Taylor
Contents:
"Self and Theatricality : Samuel Beckett and Vito Acconci" by Paul Taylor
"Beyond Beckett: Reckless Writing and the Concept of the Avant-Garde within Post-Modern Literature" by Nicholas Zurbrugg
"Dr. Spitzner’s Scrapbook" by Zerox Dreamflesh
"Literal Cloth: Elizabeth Paterson’s Masquerades" by Suzanne Spunner
"Musical Perception and Exploratory Music" by Warren Burt
"On Animism in Art" by Jenny Zimmer
"The 1979 Biennale ― ‘European Dialogue’" by Nick Waterlow
"Rebels and Precursors by Richard Haese and Murray/Murundi by Bonita Ely" by Jill Graham
"On Photo-Discourse" by George Alexander

Art & Text, one of the landmark contemporary art magazines of the 1980s and 1990s. Founded in Melbourne, Australia, in 1981 by Paul Taylor (1957–92), who soon moved to New York City to make his mark as an art critic, the magazine went on to become one of a handful of international art magazines that succeeded in capturing the turmoil and passing brilliance of that period of postmodernism.

Good - general wea, some rippling to bottom corner.

File under: Elizabeth Paterson Vito Acconci Bonita Ely Warren Burt George Alexander Jenny Zimmer Jill Graham Nicholas Zurbrugg Nick Waterlow Paul Taylor Samuel Beckett Suzanne Spunner Warren Burt Zerox Dreaniflesh Art & Text / Prahran Art Australian Art Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Theory / Essay Sound / Music Performance / Dance / Theater Conceptual Art Minimal Art Film / Video Philosophy

Pierre Molinier

?, Japanese
Softcover, 72 pages, 20 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Art Space Mireiju / Tokyo

$70.00 - In stock -

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Scarce Japanese exhibition catalogue published by Art Space Mireiju, in Shibuya, on the occasion of a major exhibition of French Surrealist artist Pierre Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings. Alongside b/w reproductions of many of his works are many texts in Japanese, a testimony from Emmanuel Arson, hommages from Japanese artists and poets inspired by Molinier, Breton translations from French, chronology, bibliography, and more. Contributions from master Japanese doll artist Simon Yotsuya in discussion with the book's editor Kunio Iwaya, a Japanese art critic and scholar specializing in surrealism and fairy tales, who also contributed a major essay, and an introduction by Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French literature and student of demonology, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa.

Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.

Very Good copy with some spine tanning.

File under: Pierre Molinier Simon Yotsuya Kunio Iwaya Andre Breton André Breton Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Art Space Mireiju / Tokyo Art Drawing Photography Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Eros LGBTQ+ Performance / Dance / Theater Fetishism / BDSM Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Surrealism Painting

Pierre Molinier
by Jean-Luc Mercié

2010, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 24 x 31 cm
Published by Les Presses Du Reel / Paris Mennour / Paris

$150.00 - In stock -

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The Molinier bible! A mammoth, crucial 400 page book on the method and genesis of Pierre Molinier's provocative, gender-bending photos and artwork. Beautifully printed and prodigiously illustrated with over 800 pictures, mostly unpublished, numerous documents, manuscripts and letters, a complete (nearly 100-page) chronology, a critical biography, and a text by Jean-Luc Mercié.Molinier. Essential publication on Molinier, the most comprehensive to date, and a must for any fan.

Rare English edition translated from the French by Edward Penwarden.

Pierre Molinier is an unknown of worldwide renown. Every book and every exhibition on the body, gender confusion or sexual excess seems to feature at least one work by this artist whose “genius” was acclaimed by André Breton in a memorable text published in 1956. But the bulk of his work has remained inaccessible. A number of pictures have never been shown and a corpus of only 160 prints has been published. The ensemble revealed by the artist's archives is much more extensive. It includes numerous proofs made to prepare his photomontages and working prints given to friends, but also notebooks and personal letters. Here, precise links emerge between his paintings, photographs and scandalous life. The myth carefully constructed by the artist begins to crumble before the reality of the work.

An inveterate seducer, thoroughgoing fetishist, unrepentant transvestite and inadvertent bisexual, to the very last Molinier remained haunted by two obsessions: pleasure, meaning immediate access to la petite mort, and “leaving a trace in the infinity of time.” This book charts the aesthetic incarnation of his passions. Its 819 photographs, most of them never published before, reveal the method, shed light on the procedures and give details of the origin and alchemy of his latent or composed images. Finally, an exhaustive chronology offers a new biography of Molinier, based on his letters: for it is in the intimacy of these writings that the shaman's heart beats closest to the truth.

In a career shared between the university (fifteen years) and publishing (twenty) Jean-Luc Mercié has written widely on painting and photography. This monograph is his fourth book about Pierre Molinier, the master from Bordeaux.

Born 1900 in Agen (France), Pierre Molinier, surrealistic painter and photographer, a precursor to body art, died in 1976 after having thought out radical and pornographic artwork.

File under: Pierre Molinier Jean-Luc Mercié Edward Penwarden Les Presses Du Reel / Paris Mennour / Paris Art Surrealism Eros LGBTQ+ Performance / Dance / Theater Photography Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Painting Drawing Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art

Organic Music Societies: Blank Forms 06

2021, English
Softcover, 496 pages, 20.2 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Blank Forms / New York

$110.00 - In stock -

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Archival documents and new writings on the intermedia collaborations of avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry.

Edited by Lawrence Kumpf with Naima Karlsson and Magnus Nygren. Introduction by Lawrence Kumpf and Magnus Nygren. Text by Keith Knox, Rita Knox, Bengt af Klintberg, Iris R. Orton, Åke Holmquist, Pandit Pran Nath, John Esam, Michael Lindfield, Sidsel Paaske, George Trolin, Alan Halkyard, Moki Cherry, Don Cherry, Ben Young, Christer Bothén, Ruba Katrib, and Fumi Okiji. Interviews by Keith Knox and Rita Knox with Don Cherry, Terry Riley, and Steve Roney.

Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson) met in Sweden in the late sixties. They began to live and perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children’s education, and pan-ethnic expression “Organic Music.” Organic Music Societies, Blank Forms’ sixth anthology, is a special issue released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name devoted to the couple’s multimedia collaborations. The first English-language publication on either figure, the book highlights models for collectivism and pedagogy deployed in the Cherrys’ interpersonal and artistic work through the presentation of archival documents alongside newly translated and commissioned writings by musicians, scholars, and artists alike.

Beginning with an overview by Blank Forms Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf and Don Cherry biographer Magnus Nygren, this volume further explores Don’s work of the period through a piece on his Relativity Suite by Ben Young and an essay on the diasporic quality of his music by Fumi Okiji. Ruba Katrib emphasizes the domestic element of Moki’s practice in a biographical survey accompanied by full-color reproductions of Moki’s vivid tapestries, paintings, and sculptures, which were used as performance environments by Don’s ensembles during the Sweden years and beyond. Two selections of Moki’s unpublished writings—consisting of autobiography, observations, illustrations, and diary entries, as well as poetry and aphorisms—are framed by tributes from her daughter Neneh Cherry and granddaughter Naima Karlsson. Swedish Cherry collaborator Christer Bothén contributes period travelogues from Morocco, Mali, and New York, providing insight into the cross-cultural communication that would soon come to be called “world music.”

The collection also features several previously unpublished interviews with Don, conducted by Christopher R. Brewster and Keith Knox. A regular visitor to the Cherry schoolhouse in rural Sweden, Knox documented the family’s magnetic milieu in his until-now unpublished Tågarp Publication. Reproduced here in its entirety, the journal includes an interview with Terry Riley, an essay on Pandit Pran Nath, and reports on counter-cultural education programs in Stockholm, including the Bombay Free School and the esoteric Forest University.

Taken together, the texts, artwork, and abundant photographs collected in Organic Music Societies shine a long overdue spotlight on Don and Moki’s prescient and collaborative experiments in the art of living.

As New copy, out-of-print.

File under: Don Cherry Terry Riley Jacques Thollot Moki Cherry Pandit Pran Nath Naima Karlsson Magnus Nygren Lawrence Kumpf Keith Knox Rita Knox Bengt af Klintberg Iris R. Orton Åke Holmquist Pandit Pran Nath John Esam Michael Lindfield Sidsel Paaske George Trolin Alan Halkyard Moki Cherry Don Cherry Ben Young Christer Bothén Ruba Katrib Fumi Okiji Steve Roney Blank Forms / New York Art Performance / Dance / Theater Sound / Music Textiles Out-of-print / Rare

Joan Jonas
Works 1968-1994

1994, English
Softcover, 120 pages, 24 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam

$45.00 - Out of stock

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Catalogue published on the occasion of Joan Jonas: Works 1968–1994, curated by Dorine Mignot, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, May 31–June 19, 1994. Joan Jonas’s 1994 retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, cemented her position as a key performance and video artist of her generation. As one her first retrospectives outside of the United States, the show highlighted the artist’s popularity in Europe in the 1990s—especially in the Netherlands and Italy—where she would continue to work late into her career. Jonas and Stedelijk curator Dorine Mignot worked in close curatorial collaboration to organize the retrospective around a selection of the artist’s pieces that most accurately represented her practice of drawing on various mediums. Aiming to translate a selection of her live performances into installations, she and Mignot chose appropriate video and audiotapes, as well as selections of props, drawings, costumes, and slides for each gallery.

Profusely illustrated throughout with accompanying texts.

Fine copy.

File under: Joan Jonas Dorine Mignot Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam Film / Video Performance / Dance / Theater Art Out-of-print / Rare

Wave of Blood
by Ariana Reines

2024, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 21.6 x 13.9 cm
Published by Divided Publishing / London

$36.00 - In stock -

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Wrestling with the mind of war, at times shocking in its self-analysis, Wave of Blood is a furious and sincere essay, an eclipse notebook, a family chronicle, all told in the poetry of witness.

Ariana Reines is a poet, playwright, and performing artist from Salem, Massachusetts and based in New York. Her books include A Sand Book—winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tuftfts Award and longlisted for the National Book Award—Mercury, Coeur de Lion, and The Cow, which won the Alberta Prize from Fence in 2006. She has taught poetry at UC Berkeley (Holloway Poet), Columbia, NYU, and Scripps College (Mary Routt Chair), been a visiting critic at Yale School of Art, and for community organizations including the Poetry Project and Poets House. Her poetry and prose have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Artforum, Frieze, Harper’s, and many others.

“Ariana Reines is a go-for-broke artist who honors her traditions by being like no one else. Some of us have made a fetish of our stupidity, pretending to forget history, and some of us have made a fetish of despair, congratulating ourselves on melancholia, but Ariana is too brilliant and too alive for either of those sad luxuries . . . I am convinced of the authenticity of the summonses she receives and the summonses she issues and when I read her I am reminded that all of this is a calling before it’s an identity or career. Her voice—which is always more than hers alone—is a dialectic between the very ancient and the bleeding edge...” – Ben Lerner

“Mind-blowing...” – Kim Gordon

“Her writing is queer and raunchy, raw and occult, seemingly never pulling away from her deepest vulnerabilities. Yet Reines simultaneously maintains a feeling of epic poetry, of ancient intention. She moves between worlds in search of the divine and the self...” – The New York Times

File under: Ariana Reines Ariana Reines Divided Publishing / London Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Poetry Performance / Dance / Theater

The Parameters of Postmodernism
By Nicholas Zurbrugg

1993, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Routledge / London

$40.00 - Out of stock

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First 1993 edition.

This ground-breaking work offers a challenging and positive view of postmodern culture. It draws on the author's extensive interviews with a number of leading postmodern artists, writers and performers, including: Jean Baudrillard Samuel Beckett John Cage Phillip Glass The Parameters of Postmodernism focuses on both the prevailing negative theories of postmodernism, and the more positive aspects of postmodern theory and practice. The negative aspect is exemplified by the work of writers like Brecht, Beckett, Barthes and Baudrillard, who emphasise the death of artistic innovation and the lack of a permanent reality. Zurbrugg highlights the contradictions in the arguments of these writers, and examines the later works in which they qualify their earlier, more infamous, statements. The positive aspect is characterised by artists such as Cage, Glass and Monk - who interweave the new postmodern media with confidence and invention, and Eco, Grass and Wolf - who revive mythological and folkloric traditions. The Parameters of Postmodernism argues that in each case - high-tech or revivalist - postmodern creativity culminates in a highly positive synthesis of past, present and futuristic materials.

VG copy.

File under: John Cage Samuel Beckett Bertolt Brecht Philip Glass Thelonious Monk Joseph Beuys Robert Ashley Nicholas Zurbrugg Umberto Eco Fredric Jameson Roland Barthes Jean Baudrillard Günter Grass Yvonne Rainer Routledge / London Theory / Essay Art Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language Out-of-print / Rare Australian Art Philosophy Film / Video Sound / Music Minimal Art Performance / Dance / Theater

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 3 (Shūji Terayama)
February, 1970 (Eros and Theater)

1970, Japanese
Softcover, 300 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$240.00 - In stock -

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Very rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 3, 1970, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With gorgeous graphic design and (Aleister Crowley) cover by graphic designer Heikichi Harata, this issue's special feature is ‘Eros and Theater’, edited by Shūji Terayama and Masahiko Akuta with contributions by Terayama, photographer Hajime Sawatari, writer Taruho Inagaki, director Takahiko Iimura, anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, playwright Yasunari Takahashi, director and cinematographer Sakumi Hagiwara, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Rio Kishida, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Heikichi Harata Tadanori Yokoo Yasunari Takahashi Takahiko Iimura Hajime Sawatari Izumi Suzuki Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Eros Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Art Performance / Dance / Theater Theory / Essay Film / Video Occult / Esoterica Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 5 (Shūji Terayama)
August, 1972 (City Drama / Human-powered airplane Solomon)

1972, Japanese
Softcover, 340 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$120.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 5, 1972, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘City Drama / Human-powered airplane Solomon’, with contributions by Terayama, artsit Jiro Takamatsu, butoh dancer and choreographer Akira Kasai, actress Eiko Kujo, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Yutaka Higashi, film critic Shigechika Sato, musician J. A. Seazer, musician Shigeo Takenaga, musician Norihito Inaba, photographer Hiroshi Yamazaki, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Jiro Takamatsu Nobuyoshi Araki Nobuhiro Kawanaka Akira Kasai Yutaka Higashi Eiko Kujo J. A. Seazer Norihito Inaba Shigeo Takenaga Hiroshi Yamazaki Izumi Suzuki Shigechika Sato Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Art Performance / Dance / Theater Out-of-print / Rare Film / Video Theory / Essay Periodicals Eros Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 6 (Shūji Terayama)
August, 1973 (New Trends in Overseas Theater)

1973, Japanese
Softcover, 340 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$180.00 - In stock -

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Very rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 6, 1973, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘New Trends in Overseas Theater’, with contributions by Terayama, musician J. A. Seazer, musician Norihito Inaba, photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, actor Hideaki Sasaki, producer and actress Eiko Kujo, artist Nobuo Sasaki, and many others. Includes in-depth features and interviews on the work of theatre directors Jérôme Savary, Robert Wilson, and Mario Ricci and photo-reports the activities of independent theatre companies around the world, including Teatro Abaco (Rome), Atelje 212 (Belgrade), Teatr Laboratorium (Wrocław), La Mamma Theatre (New York), Forum Theater (Berlin), Odin Teatret (Holstebro), Stichting Mickery Workshop (Antwerp), making it a very valuable resource on the subject. There are also photo reports and scripts on the performances of Tenjō Sajiki, including works performed overseas. Incredible rare performance documents. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki J. A. Seazer Nobuyoshi Araki Hideaki Sasaki Nobuo Sasaki Eiko Kujo Norihito Inaba Jérôme Savary Robert Wilson Mario Ricci Teatro Abaco Atelje 212 Teatr Laboratorium La Mamma Theatre Forum Theater Odin Teatret Stichting Mickery Workshop Tadanori Yokoo Kaoru Abe Izumi Suzuki Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Art Theory / Essay Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Eros Counterculture

Angura (Underground Theatre) No. 11 (Shūji Terayama)
May, 1977 (Secret Drama — Absurd Ship)

1977, Japanese
Softcover, 64 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo

$100.00 - In stock -

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Rare copy of Angura (Underground Theatre) issue 11, 1977, the "Dramatic Theory Magazine" published in Tokyo by Shūji Terayama's radical avant-garde theatre company Tenjō Sajiki. With iconic cover photography by Shūji Terayama, this issue's special feature is ‘Secret Drama (Absurd Ship)’, with contributions by Terayama, writer Taruho Inagaki, anthropologist Masao Yamaguchi, film director Nobuhiro Kawanaka, playwright Rio Kishida, and many others. A very unique periodical that not only discusses in-depth the works of Angura theatre, but also the international avant-garde, inviting diverse critical perspectives on performance and anti- and living-theatre, sharing ground with Gutai and Fluxus. Illustrated throughout with drawings, diagrams and photographs, mixing themes of pop, protest, surrealism, and eros, plus texts and scripts in Japanese. A rare printed embodiment of Tenjō Sajiki, Terayama, Tadanori Yokoo and the Japanese underground.

Tenjō Sajiki was a Japanese independent theater troupe co-founded by Shūji Terayama, Kujō Kyōko, Yutaka Higashi, Tadanori Yokoo, and Fumiko Takagi. Led by Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer Shūji Terayama, the prolific group was active between 1967 and 1983 (until Terayama's death). A major phenomenon on the Japanese Angura ("underground") theater scene, the group has produced a number of stage works marked by experimentalism, folklore influences, social provocation, grotesque eroticism and the flamboyant fantasy characteristic of Terayama's oeuvre. Tenjō Sajiki benefitted greatly from collaborations with a number of prominent artists, including musicians J. A. Seazer and Kan Mikami, and graphic designers Aquirax Uno and Tadanori Yokoo.

Shūji Terayama (1935 — 1983) was a Japanese avant-garde poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. His works range from radio drama, experimental television, underground (Angura) theatre, countercultural essays, to Japanese New Wave and "expanded" cinema. Terayama is considered one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan, with a wide-reaching influence on many artists from the 1970s onward.

File under: Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Tenjō Sajiki Tadanori Yokoo Rio Kishida Nobuhiro Kawanaka Izumi Suzuki Taruho Inagaki Rio Kishida Masao Yamaguchi Tenjō Sajiki / Tokyo Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Art Performance / Dance / Theater Film / Video Theory / Essay Eros

Aquirax Uno
Masquerade

1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and plastic sleeve), 126 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Bijutsu Shuppansha / Japan

$140.00 - In stock -

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Published in 1982 and long out-of-print, Masquerade is one of the finest artist books of Japanese illustrator and graphic artist Aquirax Uno. Lavishly illustrated and elaborately designed and directed by the artist himself, this beautiful album collects Uno's most stunning fantastical illustration and painting throughout the 1960s—1980s, alongside texts and photography of Uno in his atelier. Masquerade collates a cross-section of Uno's graphic work spanning his entire career, his iconic and innovative print, book, and theatre works, including many new, unpublished works and illustrations printed in large format across many full-colour fold-outs — a wonderful way to capture his decadent, provocative, stream of consciousness line work in intimate detail. Highly recommended!

Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.

Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s–1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.

Good copy with heavy foxing to cover edges and end pages, original publisher's textured plastic protector sleeve with usual slight shrinkage from age, edge wear. Sample images only.

File under: Aquirax Uno Tenjō Sajiki Tenjo Sajiki Shuji Terayama Shūji Terayama Bijutsu Shuppansha / Japan Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Eros Art Drawing Out-of-print / Rare Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Performance / Dance / Theater

Aquirax Uno
Posters 1959-1975

2005, Japanese / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 80 pages, 19 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Blue Interactions / Japan

$120.00 - In stock -

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Wonderful hardcover collection of Aquirax Uno's poster work dating 1959-1975.

Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.

Near Fine copy with dust jacket and obi.

File under: Aquirax Uno Shuji Terayama Tenjo Sajiki Blue Interactions / Japan Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Out-of-print / Rare Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Performance / Dance / Theater

Musicworks (lot of 9 issues, 1991—1997)
The Journal of Sound Exploration

1991—1997, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 70 pages ea. approx x 9 issues, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Musicworks / Toronto

$100.00 - In stock -

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Lot of 9 issues (1991—1997) of Musicworks, The Journal of Sound Exploration, published out of Toronto. Launched in January 1978 by Andrew Timar and John Oswald, best known for his plunderphonics, Musicworks was a long-running Canadian avant-garde music magazine devoted to experimental, improvised and Electroacoustic music. These issues together feature an abundance of exclusive interviews, essays, reviews, theoretical texts, scores, colloquies, artworks, features on and by Stan Brakhage, Chris Cutler, John Cage, Tibor Szemző, Pauline Oliveros, Trevor Wishart, Carolee Schneemann, Josef Režný, Jerry Hunt, Kazue Sawai, Glenn Branca, Yūji Takahashi, Tim Hodgkinson, Louis Andriessen, Glenn Gould, Harry Partch, Akio Suzuki, Fergus Kelly, Petr Kotik, Nicholas Gebhardt, Barbara Benary, Andrew Culver, Udo Kasemets, Franz Van Rossum, R.I.P. Hayman, Iva Bittová, Nobuo Kubota, David Rokeby, François Girard, J.S. Bach, Jocelyn Robert, Don Ritter, Glenn Gould, Paul Rapoport, and many more. Scarce and incredible resource for improvised and avant-garde compositional music/performance/video histories from this publisher and cassette label.

Good copy with with general light magazine wear.

File under: Stan Brakhage Chris Cutler John Cage Tibor Szemző Pauline Oliveros Trevor Wishart Carolee Schneemann Josef Režný Jerry Hunt Kazue Sawai Glenn Branca Yūji Takahashi Tim Hodgkinson Louis Andriessen Glenn Gould Akio Suzuki Fergus Kelly Petr Kotik Nicholas Gebhardt Barbara Benary Andrew Culver Udo Kasemets Franz Van Rossum R.I.P. Hayman Iva Bittová Nobuo Kubota David Rokeby François Girard J.S. Bach Jocelyn Robert Don Ritter Paul Rapoport John Oswald Harry Partch John Oswald Musicworks / Toronto Periodicals Sound / Music Art Performance / Dance / Theater Fluxus Theory / Essay Film / Video

Pierre Molinier (+ lithograph)
by André Breton

1980, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. dust jacket + lithograph + appendix), unpaginated, 25.5 x 17.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Gakutokan / Japan

$200.00 - Out of stock

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Rare 1980 hand-numbered, limited edition of Pierre Molinier's Studio, an exquisite book of Molinier's fetishistic gender-bending paintings, photomontages, and drawings, with texts by André Breton, translated from French to Japanese by Kosaku Ikuta, imagery from "Molinier" (1966) film by Raymond Borde, beautifully designed and printed in Japan where Molinier's artworks had a particular resonance. This hand-numbered edition (of 970 copies) features inlayed plate to dust-jacket, added appendix booklet, and the very rare lithographic insert of Molinier's "Réveil de l'Ange" etching, just as the first copies of André Breton and Raymond Borde's book published in 1964 by Terrain Vague included (dimension: (25.2 x 16.6 cm).

Pierre Molinier (1900—1976) was a French painter, photographer and a forerunner of gender performance art and Body Art (Art corporel). Molinier spent much of his artistic life working in isolation in Bordeaux, exiled from local and national art scenes. Born in Agen, nothing had predestined Molinier to a life as an artist. Self-taught, from a working-class background, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started out as a house painter. He got married and had two children. Tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home an in 1950 and Molinier begun photographing himself seriously, staging his own death and erecting a fake gravestone proudly declaring himself ‘a man without morals’. He was thrown out of the Bordeaux Salon des Indépendants as early as 1951 amidst controversy over his orgiastic painting of the same year, Le Grand Combat. Stirring up an obsessive correspondence with the anarchic poet-founder of Surrealism, André Breton, Molinier was soon integrated into the Surrealist group with a solo exhibition at Breton’s Paris gallery in 1956. Molinier’s anti-moral project appealed to the group’s interest in repressed desires, fetishism, and the transgression of bourgeois morals. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. From the mid-1960s Molinier chronicled the exploration of his subconscious transsexual desires in "Cent Photographies Erotiques": graphically detailed images of pain and pleasure. Cut-up, reassembled, and manipulated, Molinier painstakingly created elaborate and sensual photomontages in which he assumed the roles of dominatrix and succuba previously taken by the women of his paintings. Either alone with doll-like mannequins or with female models such as German sadomasochist Hanel Koeck, Molinier, who considered himself fundamentally androgynous, appears as a transvestite, employing his body and that of his acquaintances to create visions of hybrid identity, where stockinged multi-limbed, multi-sexed beings imitate pagan figures, Hindu gods, and Masonic symbols, in a rejection of a Christian tradition which he argued, had repressed androgyny. Designed to shock, Molinier’s artwork represented a very intimate disclosure about his own sexual ambiguity, inviting the viewer to bring to the images his or her own response of excitement or disgust. The degree of his artistic perversity and blasphemous tendencies was deemed too much for the French cultural elite, and the man Breton dubbed the “magician of erotic art” was shunned from the art world. Molinier did not participate in the 1965 International Surrealist Exhibition. For the last 11 years of his life Molinier played out his own most profound moments in the 'theatre' of his Bordeaux 'boudoir – atelier'. He committed suicide in 1976, shooting himself with a pistol, something he had foreshadowed in his artwork, time and again. Essentially a leg fetishist, but also considering himself as a shaman, facetious and provocative, anti-bourgeois and anti-religious, Molinier enjoyed transgressing gender identification : his outstanding photographs greatly influenced the European and North American Body Art in the 1970s and continue to fascinate artists today.

Very Good—Near Fine copy in VG dust jacket with VG-NF lithograph and appendix.

File under: Pierre Molinier Raymond Borde Andre Breton Raymond Borde Gakutokan / Japan Surrealism LGBTQ+ Eros Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Photography Film / Video Painting Drawing Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Fetishism / BDSM Performance / Dance / Theater Art