World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
2015, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by
TF Editores / Madrid
$130.00 - Out of stock
Powerful, lyrical and controversial, Alvin Baltrop's photographs are a groundbreaking exploration of clandestine gay culture in New York in the 1970s and 80s. During that era, the derelict warehouses beneath Manhattan's West Side piers became a lawless, forgotten part of the city that played host to gay cruising, drug smuggling, prostitution and suicides. Baltrop documented this scene, unflinchingly and obsessively capturing everything from fleeting naked figures in mangled architectural environments to scenes of explicit sex and police raids on the piers. His work is little known and underpublished--mainly due to its unflinching subject matter--but while often explicit, his photographs are on a par with those of Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar and Enrique Metenides. While the outside world saw New York as the glamorous playground of Studio 54, Warhol's gang and the disco era, Baltrop photographed the city's gritty flipside; his work is an important part of both gay culture and the history of New York itself. This clothbound volume compiles the Piers series in one definitive monograph, a powerful tribute to a long-forgotten world at the city's dilapidated margins.
Foreword by Glenn O'Brien
Edited by James Reid and Tom Watt
Alvin Baltrop (1948-2004) was born in the Bronx, New York, and spent most of his life living and working in New York City. From 1969 to 1972, he served in the Vietnam War and began photographing his comrades. Upon his return, he enrolled in the School of the Visual Arts in New York, where he studied from 1973 to 1975. After working various jobs--vendor, jewelry designer, printer--he settled on the banks of Manhattan's West Side, where he would produce the bulk of his photographic output.
2015-2018, English
Soft case, 20 cards, 25 x 20.5 cm
Ed. of 300,
Published by
dot COMME / Melbourne
$40.00 - In stock -
A G O R A P H O B I A is Rudi Williams’ response to Octavius La Rosa’s private collection of runway COMME des GARÇONS. This collaboration between Melbourne based artist Rudi Williams and fashion and textiles display specialist Annette Soumilas is a portrait of Octavius La Rosa through the documentation of his collection.
A 20 card publication set contained in a 25cm x 20cm blind embossed folder.
The nineteen photographs document twenty-two COMME des GARÇONS runway garments dated from 2012 – 2018.
The photographs were created using a 5 x 4 large format film camera; each scenario a studied, in camera response to Rei Kawakubo's designs and concepts, the engineering of the garments and the psychological space the garments inhabit for the wearer.
Edition of 300.
2019, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$55.00 - Out of stock
The 50th anniversary edition of MoMA's landmark book on conceptual art.
In the summer of 1970, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the now legendary exhibition Information, one of the first surveys of conceptual art. Conceived by MoMA’s celebrated curator Kynaston McShine as an “international report” on contemporary trends, the show and attendant catalog together assembled the work of more than 150 artists from 15 countries to explore the parameters and possibilities of the emerging art practices of the era. Noting the participating artists’ attunement to the “mobility and change that pervades their time,” McShine underscored their interest in “ways of rapidly exchanging ideas, rather than embalming the idea in an ‘object.’” Indeed, much of the work in the exhibition engaged mass-communications systems, such as broadcast television and the postal service, and addressed viewers directly, often encouraging their participation in return.
The catalog, rather than merely document the show, functioned autonomously: it included a list of recommended reading, a chance-based index by critic Lucy Lippard, and individual artist contributions in the form of photographic documentation, textual description, drawings and diagrams—some relating to work in the exhibition and others to artworks as yet unrealized. This facsimile edition of the original Information catalog, which has long been out of print, invites reengagement with MoMA’s landmark exhibition while illuminating the early history of conceptual art.
Kynaston McShine was formerly Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Keith Arnatt, Art & Language Press, Art & Project, Richard Artschwager, David Askevold, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Barrio, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, Bernhard & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, George Brecht, Stig Broegger, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, James Lee Byars, Jorge Luis Carballa, Christopher Cook, Roger Cutforth, Carlos D'Alessio, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Group Frontera, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Giorno Poetry Systems, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Ira Joel Haber, Randy Hardy, Michael Heizer, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Peter Hutchinson, Richards Jarden, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Cildo Campos Meirelles, Marta Minujin, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, New York Graphic Workshop, Newspaper, Group Oho, Helio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Paul Pechter, Giuseppe Penone, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Alejandro Puente, Markus Raetz, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Edward Ruscha, J.M. Sanejouand, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Erik Thygesen, John Van Saun, Guilherme Magalhaes Vaz, Bernar Venet, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson.
2012, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 26.7 x 30.5 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
Whitney Museum of American Art / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) was part of a vibrant community of avant-garde artists, poets, and musicians in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle included Wallace Berman, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Wally Hedrick, Edward Kienholz, and Michael McClure. Although best known for her monumental painting The Rose (1958-66), DeFeo worked in a wide range of media and produced an astoundingly diverse and compelling body of work over four decades. DeFeo's unconventional approach to materials and her intensive, physical method make her a unique figure in postwar American art.
In the first comprehensive monograph on DeFeo, Dana Miller looks at the breadth of the artist's work, her cross-disciplinary practice, broad range of interests and influences, as well as pivotal moments in her career. In addition, Miller dispels misconceptions and assumptions about the artist and also offers new insight into her under-recognized works from the 1970s and 1980s. Greil Marcus explores the significance of titles in DeFeo's work; Michael Duncan considers her approach to her career and the marketplace; Corey Keller looks at DeFeo's photographic oeuvre; and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro examines her materials and processes.
The book features new photography, archival images, and a number of previously unpublished works. Also included are a biographical chronology, an extensive bibliography, and an exhibition history.
1972/2006, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket, slipcase, obi), 92 pages, 31 x 25 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
2006 facsimile edition of this wonderful 1972 slip-cased hardcover monograph on German artist Hans Bellmer, considered one of the most important representatives of Surrealist Art. Bound in brown cloth and wrapped in illustrated original dust-jacket, this heavily illustrated book surveys Bellmer's incredible paintings, drawings, photography and sculptural dolls through beautiful colour and monochrome gravure reproductions, with alongside various texts, biography, bibliography and portrait of the artist. Published as volume 2 of the deluxe La Septième Face du Dé series by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in Japan in the 1970s, all later re-printed in the 2000s. All editions now out-of-print.
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902 – 1975), was best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. "Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925).
Fine copy.
2019, English
Softcover, 678 pages, 21.5 x 27.5 cm
Ed. of 2000,
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$89.00 - Out of stock
Out of print.
Edited by Walter Robinson, Edit DeAk, and Joshua Cohn, Art-Rite was published in New York City between 1973 and 1978. The periodical has long been celebrated for its underground/overground position and its cutting, humorous, on-the-streets coverage and critique of the art world. Art-Rite moved easily through the expansive community it mapped out, paying homage to an emergent generation of artists, including many who were—or would soon become—the defining voices of the era. Through hundreds of interviews, reviews, statements, and projects for the page—as well as artist-focused and thematic issues on video, painting, performance, and artists’ books—Art-Rite’s sharp editorial vision and commitment to spotlighting the work of artists stands as a meaningful and lasting contribution to the art history of New York City and beyond.
All issues of Art-Rite are collected and published here.
Featured artists include Vito Acconci, Kathy Acker, Bas Jan Ader, Laurie Anderson, John Baldessari, Gregory Battcock, Lynda Benglis, Mel Bochner, Marcel Broodthaers, Trisha Brown, Chris Burden, Scott Burton, Ulises Carrión, Judy Chicago, Lucinda Childs, Christo, Diego Cortez, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Ralston Farina, Richard Foreman, Peggy Gale, Gilbert & George, John Giorno, Philip Glass, Leon Golub, Peter Grass, Julia Heyward, Nancy Holt, Ray Johnson, Joan Jonas, Richard Kern, Lee Krasner, Shigeko Kubota, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Babette Mangolte, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Rosemary Mayer, Annette Messager, Elizabeth Murray, Alice Neel, Brian O’Doherty, Genesis P-Orridge, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, Judy Pfaff, Lil Picard, Yvonne Rainer, Judy Rifka, Dorothea Rockburne, Ed Ruscha, Robert Ryman, David Salle, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Serra, Jack Smith, Patti Smith, Robert Smithson, Holly Solomon, Naomi Spector, Nancy Spero, Pat Steir, Frank Stella, Alan Suicide (Vega), David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Robert Wilson, Yuri, and Irene von Zahn.
2006, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Art After Conceptual Art tracks the various legacies of conceptualist practice over the past three decades. This collection of essays by art historians and artists from Europe and the Americas (including Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Helen Molesworth, Isabelle Graw, Thomas Crow, Helmut Draxler, Alexander Alberro, Sabeth Buchmann, Henrik Oelsen, Edit András) introduces and develops the idea that conceptual art generated several different, and even contradictory, forms of art practice. Some of these contested commonplace assumptions of what art is; others served to buttress those assumptions. The bulk of the volume features newly written and highly innovative essays challenging standard interpretations of the legacy of conceptualism and discussing the influence of conceptualism's varied practices on art since the 1970s. The essays explore topics as diverse as the interrelationships between conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting and conceptualist paradigms, conceptual art's often-ignored complicity with design and commodity culture, the specific forms of identity politics taken up by the reception of conceptual art, and conceptualism's North/South and East/West dynamics. A few texts that continue to be crucial for critical debates within the fields of conceptual and postconceptual art practice, history, and theory have been reprinted in order to convey the vibrant and ongoing discussion on the status of art after conceptual art. Taken together, the essays will inspire an exploration of the relationship between postconceptualist practices and the beginnings of contemporary art.
1981, French
Softcover, 70 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Chêne-Hachette / France
$390.00 - In stock -
Beautiful and very scarce French photo book published in 1981 by two young photographers, Gilles Mimouni and Jean-Paul Dumas-Grillet (who both continued into film), presents a collection of young adolescent women shot in France during the 70s, when they were still in school. The deliberately strange title, Adorae Curieux Zamok, refers to the young heroine of the writer Nabokov "Adorae", Curieux is "curious", and the Russian term Zamok is from the word "lock", evoking the private and secret character of a universe that never reveals itself at first sight : that of adolescence.
Accompanied by a text by novelist Muriel Cerf, these "portraits de petites filles sérieuses" are a discreet and sensitive approach to an age when girls' faces are no longer entirely that of a child's and are not yet those of an adults. "Curious faces, whose black and white photographs perfectly reflect the moving gravity and allow us to read in turn the sweet melancholy, hope, boredom, candor or mischief of their age." (taken from the text on the back cover.)
Very Good copy of this collectible book. Some common light yellowing to cover and edges.
2021, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 20 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$65.00 - Out of stock
A forensic conceptualist's inventory of the ordinary and extraordinary lives in a Venetian hotel.
In 1981 Sophie Calle took a job as a chambermaid for the Hotel C in Venice, Italy. Stashing her camera and tape recorder in her mop bucket, she not only cleans and tidies, but sorts through the evidence of the hotel guests' lives. Assigned 12 rooms on the fourth floor, she surveys the state of the guests' bedding, their books, newspapers and postcards, perfumes and cologne, traveling clothes and costumes for Carnival. She methodically photographs the contents of closets and suitcases, examining the detritus in the rubbish bin and the toiletries arranged on the washbasin. She discovers their birth dates and blood types, diary entries, letters from and photographs of lovers and family. She eavesdrops on arguments and love-making. She retrieves a pair of shoes from the wastebasket and takes two chocolates from a neglected box of sweets, while leaving behind stashes of money, pills and jewelry. Her thievery is the eye of the camera, observing the details that were not meant for her, or us, to see.
The Hotel now manifests as a book for the first time in English (it was previously included in the book Double Game). Collaborating with the artist on a new design that features enhanced and larger photographs, and pays specific attention to the beauty of the book as an object, Siglio is releasing its third book authored by Calle, after The Address Book (2012) and Suite Vénitienne (2015).
Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.
2021, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 14 x 19.1 cm
Published by
The Song Cave / New York
$58.00 - In stock -
Introduction by Collier Schorr
Edited by Ben Estes
Unseen photos of rebels, outsiders, construction workers and more: celebrating the distinctive gay male gaze of Karlheinz Weinberger.
This landmark entry in the lifework of Zürich photographer Karlheinz Weinberger gathers more than 200 never-before-published vintage photographic prints that were rediscovered in 2017. This unique collection pairs images of Weinberger's most famous subjects, the "Halbstarke" — a loosely organized group of Swiss "rebels" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, carousing at local carnivals and on a camping trip — with a much more private side of Weinberger's oeuvre: solo portraits of men from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, whom he invited into his makeshift studio in the rooms of the apartment he shared with his mother.
The men in these portraits — construction workers, street vendors, bicycle messengers, outsiders — span a spectrum of fully clothed, arms-crossed poses to campy and flirtatious, fully nude and reclined, while others mimic art historical postures. All of these images, though, reveal a palpable tenderness between photographer and subject, offering an expansive, uncritical take on the male form in an era when being photographed was not the casual, ubiquitous record it is today. Though not a professional photographer (he worked as a warehouse stock manager), Weinberger captured his subjects with a distinctly gay male gaze, both carnal and artistic, and this collection is certain to earn his work a larger following and appreciation.
Born in 1921, Karlheinz Weinberger was a Swiss photographer whose work predominantly explored outsider cultures. Between 1943 and 1967 Weinberger published photos of male workers, sportsmen and bikers in the gay magazine Der Kreis under the pseudonym of "Jim." In the late '50s and early '60s he concentrated on Swiss rock 'n' roll youth, whom he photographed with both tenderness and a hint of irony. Weinberger placed little emphasis on exhibiting his work; his first comprehensive show took place only in 2000, six years before his death.
1989, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 32
AUTUMN 1989
Edited by Paul Foss
CONTENTS:
David Wills — Deposition: Introduction To "Right Of Inspection" [Droit De Regards]
Marie-Francoise Plissart and Jacques Derrida — Right Of Inspection
David Bennett — Art And Rubbish: Contemporary British Colour Photography
Paul Gilroy — Cruciality And The Frog's Perspective: An Agenda Of Difficulties For The Black Arts Movement In Britain
Art &c.
Allen S. Weiss — Golem In Gotham
Mark S. Roberts — Lyotard And Art "After Auschwitz"
Therese Lichtenstein — Boltanski's "Lessons Of Darkness"
Therese Lichtenstein — Aborigines, Representation, Necrophilia John Von Sturmer
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.
1987, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 17.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art & Text / Prahran
$45.00 - Out of stock
ART & TEXT 25
JUNE / AUGUST 1987
Edited by Paul Foss
CONTENTS:
Terry Smith — Black Swan in the City ... Detroit, first week of August, 1986
Christina Thompson — A Piece of Savage Mischief
Meaghan Morris — Tooth and Claw: Tales of Survival, and Crocodile Dundee
Merryn Gates — Transparency and Reinvention 70 in Rosslynd Piggott.
Eric Michaels — My Essay on Postmodernism
George Alexander — Get Back, Martin Sharp
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.
2021, English / Italian
Softcover, 168 pages, 18 x 15 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci / Prato
$74.00 - Out of stock
Naples, late Seventies. On the city’s streets scandalous, indecent posters suddenly appeared, and then quickly disappeared, replaced by new images. They only lasted two years before being censored. The posters were taken from porn movies, with bodies of naked, obscene, tempting women. Their focus, however, was not only women’s bodies but also (and mostly) male desire and those years’ dominant macho imagery. Marialba Russo was immediately intrigued by those images and hence decided to photograph them. Her research soon became methodical. She took those pictures almost secretly, generating an obsession which became a systematic collection, a heterogeneous corpus made of different shots, poses, gazes, all kept together by an exaggerated, comical (or tragical) eroticism, by a blatantly unilateral, male representation.
But what motivated the actions of a woman who in the late Seventies photographed posters taken from porn movies? Curiosity or anger? And mostly: what does it mean to expose these pictures? Is it a way to ridicule them or to amplify their effect? Does showing these images mean to de-power the male-dominated ritual of porn movies or, rather, is exposing it a way to reinforce it, nurturing the inclination of representing women and their bodies as mere desired objects? These are some of the questions raised by Marialba Russo’s work, which the critical essays (by Goffredo Fofi and Elisa Cuter) attempt to answer in this book, pushing the reader to put into question the perception of women’s bodies, the exposition’s meaning and how it tackles and influences gender issues in our society.
1980, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 120 pages, 33 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Love Me Tender / Paris
$160.00 - Out of stock
First 1980 edition, in the scarcer hardcover issue, of Cheyco Leidmann's photo-book classic, Foxy Lady, published by Love Me Tander in Paris. Cheyco's best, this collection of his surreal photographs that parody glamour photography of the late 1970s through the use of garish electric colours, bizarre imagery, humorous photo-editing and incongruous settings. During the 80's Cheyco Leidmann, who worked mainly on fashion and beauty editorials and advertising campaigns, established a new visual style that sparked the imagination of many in the world of art, music and photography. Beautifully over-sized reproductions of saturated colours in the twilight glow of sun-drenched American landscapes, neon signs, swimming pools, secluded beaches and powerful women, this cult classic is pure 1980s airbrushed erotic-thriller dreamscape fantasy, the way only Leidmann and Love Me Tender could capture so well in book form. It was also the inspiration for Duran Duran’s "Rio" video!
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket with foxing to reverse only, otherwaise also VG with only minor edge damage. A great copy of the more desirable hardcover edition.
1989, French
Softcover, 168 pages, 40 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Les Editions Cassini / Paris
$160.00 - In stock -
Issue No. 11 (1989) of the legendary and very collectible Egoïste magazine, “the most beautiful magazine in the world”. Issue No. 11 is one of the rarer to come by, featuring actress Isabelle Adjani on the cover, shot by Richard Avedon, which continues as an incredible photographic feature and interview inside, plus features on the photography of Man Ray and a photographic portfolio by Guy Bourdin, Richard Avedon portraits of Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, Jorge Luis Borges, poetry, photographic interview features with Mikhail Grobatchev by Francoise Sagan, dancer Twyla Tharp by Claude Arnaud (shot by Avedon), film director David Lynch by Kristine McKenna (shot by Larry Fink), Karl Lagerfeld, Bettina Rheims, photographic articles on the history of the Villa Igiea, the luxury Sicilian hotel, and La Tombe de Franco by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, and many others. One of the great features of the magazine is sumptuous tailor-made advertisements specially designed and produced by Egoïste editor and artistic director Nicole Wisniak with leading fashion houses and perfumers collaborating with photographers and artists outside the usual restrictions and guidelines of fashion magazines. Exquisite spreads by Comme des Garçons, Céline, Hermès, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Calvin Klein, Yohji Yamamoto, Christian Lacroix, Luis Vuitton, Lancôme, Karl Lagerfeld, Revlon, with Isabella Rossellini, Audrey Hepburn, and many more.
Often referred to as “The most beautiful magazine in the world”, the cult luxury photography magazine Egoïste was founded in 1977 in Paris by art historian Gérard-Julien Salvy and edited/art directed by Nicole Wisniak. Immediately setting a new standard for photo publishing, Egoïste was printed in a beautiful over-sized, unbound format that benefitted the photography within and the specifically created photographic advertisements of the major fashion houses who sponsored its publication. Each issue was printed in a small run, all now exceptionally collectible, and featured the most outstanding photographers and writers of their time (including the photography of Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, Paolo Roversi, Ellen von Unwerth), and is forever linked with the personal work of Richard Avedon. The last of the Parisian chic, Egoïste is the subjective dictionary of an era. Each issue is collected with passion by many enthusiasts.
Very Good copy. Light wear to the cover, minor closed tear to top of "spine", all else clean and well preserved, interior pages all VG. Protected in plastic sleeve.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 120 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$700.00 - In stock -
Very rare first edition, first printing of Takuma Nakahira's classic photo book Adieu à X, published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, Tokyo, in 1989. Profusely illustrated throughout with Nakahira's stunning imagery; beautifully reproduced in full-bleed, these celebrated works by the iconic photographer exemplify the aesthetic and wide-ranging subject matter of the Provoke movement, which he co-founded in Tokyo in 1968 alongside Daido Moriyama, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Koji Taki. Takuma Nakahira (1938–2015) alongside the Provoke photographers revolutionized post-war Japanese photography with his dark, expressionistic photographs that captured the uncertainty, exhilaration, and tumult of life in the decades following World War II. As well as a critically acclaimed photographer, Nakahira is a writer, critic, and political activist, whose groundbreaking ideas and essays about visual expression led to the publication of Provoke: Provocative Materials for Thought (first published 1968), a radical, short-lived journal that nevertheless had a profound impact on visual culture in Japan. Nakahira and his contemporaries introduced what became known as the are, bure, boke (rough, blurred, out-of-focus) style of photography, pushing the camera well beyond its previous use as a documentary or propaganda tool. Stark and suggestive, his photographs show fragmented scenes of urban life as he experienced it—imbued with pathos, grit, and potential.
VG-Fine original edition in gold printed photographic dust jacket with rare original publisher's obi. Preserved in mylar wrap.
2016, English
Softcover, 680 pages, 190 x 250 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Steidl / Göttingen
$300.00 - In stock -
The short-lived Japanese magazine "Provoke," founded in 1968, is nowadays recognized as a major contribution to postwar photography in Japan, featuring the country's finest representatives of protest photography, vanguard fine art and critical theory in only three issues overall. The magazine's goal was to mirror the complexities of Japanese society and its art world of the 1960s, a decade shaped by the country's first large-scale student protests. The movement yielded a wave of new books featuring innovative graphic design combined with photography: serialized imagery, gripping text-image combinations, dynamic cropping and the use of provocatively "poor" materials. The writings and images by "Provoke"'s members-critic Koji Taki, poet Takahiko Okada, photographers Takuma Nakahira, Yakata Takanashi and Daido Moriyama-were suffused with the tactics developed by Japanese protest photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, who pointed at and criticized the mythologies of modern life.
This enormous, and long out-of-print "Provoke" book accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held on the magazine and its creators. Illuminating the various uses of photography in Japan at the time, the catalogue focuses on selected projects undertaken between 1960 and 1975 that offer a strongly interpretative account of currents in Japanese art and society at a moment of historical collapse and renewal.
Out of Print. As New.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound w. map insert), 25.5 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Shogakukan / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Incredible over-sized 1977 photo book by Kishin Shinoyama, one of Japan's leading photographers. "Sounding Carib" is a photographic special "seperate" edition of 1970s Japanese men's magazine GORO, and one of his lesser-known masterpieces that crosses over into his 1970's "Gekisha" works, a phrase Shinoyama coined for his “risqué photography” of the period. For this wonderful collection Kishin Shinoyama travelled to Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, with camera and Olympus micro tape recorder in hand, to record the sights and sounds of the Caribbean. As the title suggests, the explosive photographic imagery follows the rhythm of the local music and festivities, with chapters titles "Trinidad : Carnival", "Puerto Rico : Salsa", and "Jamaica : Reggae", each exquisitely capturing the heat, the colour and the atmosphere of the islands. From the extravagant costumes and dizzying colour of the parades to the street markets, the beaches to the bedrooms, Shinoyama's saturated, deep contrast photographs, candid and uncensored, are a love-letter to the Caribbean of the 1970s. This special publication comes complete with a map insert to follow the journey, also musical listings to accompany the pictures. Kishin also recorded all the sounds of the trip and separately issued an LP of the same name, also through GORO magazine.
Very Good with some light general wear.
1976, Japanese / English
Softcover, 25.5 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Shogakukan / Tokyo
$80.00 - In stock -
Lovely over-sized 1976 photo book by Kishin Shinoyama, one of Japan's leading photographers. This is a special photographic 1976 calendar edition of the Japanese "All-Colour Visual Magazine" or "Sounding Visual" men's magazine GORO, and a perfect example of Shinoyama's 1970's "Gekisha" works, a phrase Shinoyama coined for his “risqué photography” of the period. Cover to cover young female (mostly) nudes entirely shot by Shinoyama, mostly full-bleed and in vivid saturated colour, including many double-page spreads and perfectly designed photographic diary pages featuring mostly famous young Japanese actresses, musicians and pop idols of the period... including Hiromi Iwasaki, Momoe Yamaguchi, Junko Sakurada, Ann Lewis, Hiroko Hayashi, Hiromi Murachi, Nagisa Katahira, Midori Kinouchi, Agnes Chan, Yūko Asano, plus large photographic features with Kaori Takeda, Hitomi Fukuhara, Aki Mizusawa and many more. As friends and models, Shinoyama continued to photograph and collaborate with many of these women throughout their careers, with some becoming the stars of his most celebrated photo-books. These collectible early special editions introduce the start of many of these collaborations, with wonderful 1970s design.
Good complete copy with some light general wear, spine pinching.
2019, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Ed. of 500,
Published by
Brand-New-Life / Zürich
$60.00 - Out of stock
For the first time, this publication brings together the Mosaic works by the British artist Stephen Willats, which were created in Great Britain and Finland in the 1990s. In these works, Willats uses the medium of the book to enter into an exchange with people and to create a space in neighborhoods, museums, and bookstores where social bonds can be established. It is a collaborative process through which Willats redefines the web of relationships between artist, artwork, audience and society; a process of instituting in which the artwork becomes its own institution.
With contributions by Jamie Allen, Bernhard Garnicnig, Elsa Himmer, Lucie Kolb and Stephen Willats.
Edition of 500 copies.
2021, English / German
Softcover, 224 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
This September issue of Texte zur Kunst examines envy as the operating system of an art world based largely on networking, competition, and interdependencies. Envy, as understood here, develops when individuals orient and compare themselves to others. One could characterize the art world as a prototype for a competition-driven, envy-generating society; achievement in art is difficult to measure and counts less than success. Issue #123 takes a closer look at the productive as well as destructive potentials of envy in the field of art and examines the extent to which the diagnosis of envy plays into the competitive nature of work and life today. The specific social effects of contemporary forms of online communication are discussed here, as well as the political economy of envy with particular regard to art.
2016, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 16 x 23 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$69.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
The role of photo agencies remains a blind spot in the history of photography. Emerging in the beginning of the 20th century to “satisfy the picture-hunger of modern man” (Tschichold), they transformed photography into a commodity. As catalysts for the picture market and through the creation of systematic collections, these companies shaped our western visual culture. The 1920s, 1930s and 1990s, in particular, ushered a paradigm shift in the economy of the medium, marked by major technological developments and the rise of new markets. Taking the example of the Bettmann Archive and Corbis – one of the world’s largest photo agencies, founded by Bill Gates – the book Banking on Images inquires into the criteria used in selecting these images, the way in which the value of a commercial “image bank” is determined, and the concept of photography that lies behind it.
2015, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.4 x 20.1 cm
ed. of 300,
Published by
Try Hard Editions / Sydney
$35.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of an isolated system will tend to increase over time, is used in physics to explain why we experience time as moving forward, why eggs once broken don’t un-break or buildings once demolished don’t spring miraculously back from the rubble and dust. It’s what is known as the arrow of time.
Atlantis by Pedro Ramos is an exercise in dismantling this simply linear notion of time. It takes as its subject the implosion of the Atlantis hotel on the island of Madeira, Ramos’ birthplace. Originally built in 1972 to capitalise on the burgeoning tourism industry, the Atlantis hotel was demolished in 2000 to make way for the expanding airport, ironically bringing in the very tourists the hotel was built to accommodate. The implosion was barely a footnote in history, however in Atlantis Ramos uses it as means to explore how the same event can take on multiple meanings depending on the perspective - the personal or the historical.
The images in Atlantis are taken from original news footage of the implosion found online, they are degraded and blurred, showing their own signs of entropy. By fracturing and re-sequencing the footage Ramos is able to summon the building back from the debris in order to watch it come crashing down again, allowing him to enliven and re-imagine his own faded memories of the event. Technology has allowed us to restructure our memories.
On an historical timescale Atlantis can be read as an allegory for the experience of modernity, a world of perpetual destruction and renewal where the same forces which bring things into being are just us quickly their undoing, as Marx would say a world in which “all that is solid melts into air.”
Text by Adam Jasper (Frieze Magazine, Cabinet Magazine)
Design by Rob Milne (Rainoff)
Edition of 300.
1990, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 8 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
A&D / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
"New Art International" from 1990, a special "Art & Design Profile" edition from London's A.D. magazine. Articles/essays by Thomas Lawson, Victor Burgin, Germano Celant, Robert Rosenblum, Donald Kuspit, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, and many more. Profusely illustrated throughout with the work of Haim Steinbach, Cady Noland, Zoe Leonard, Jenny Holzer, Allan McCollum, Jannis Kounellis, Cindy Sherman, Mario Merz, Barbara Kruger, Susana Solano, Ashley Bickerton, Larry Johnson, David Salle, Peter Halley, Robert Longo, John Baldessari, Barbara Bloom, Laurie Simmons, Luciano Fabro, Christian Boltanski, Thomas Schütte, Günther Förg, Annette Lemieux, Gilbert & George, Victor Burgin, Jeff Koons, Tim Rollins + KOS, Giuseppe Penone, James Lee Byars, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Thérèse Oulton, Kryzstof Wodiczko, and many more....
Very Good copy, light tanning to cover and some bumping to bottom back cover edge.