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:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2017, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 21 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$130.00 - In stock -
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
Comprehensive collection Zdzisław Beksiński's apocalyptic fantastic paintings and photographs, many never published before with many full-bleed painting details, issued in Japan as part of Treville's series of volumes on the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w, accompanied by texts in English and Japanese. This is the first volume in the series.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
As New copy of the first 2017 edition.
1988, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 16 pages, 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
University of Tasmania Centre for the Arts / Hobart
$45.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the play and installation by Australian artist Peter Cripps at University of Tasmania, AGNSW and ACCA, curated by Bob Jenyns, 1988—1989. Namelessness was a play in 7 acts and 18 scenes. This new performance by Peter Cripps was commissioned by the University of Tasmania Centre for the Arts as part of their artist-in-residence program. The play was written by Cripps, Ruth Gall Bucher and Bob Lingard, performed by Jane Burton, Katarina Cobanovich, Bruce Hay and Scott Blacklow, with sound by David Hirst and video by Leigh Hobba. Illustrated throughout alongside an extensive essay by Lingard and an introduction by Tony Bond.
Very Good copy with exhibition invite inserted. Image sample only.
1995, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. obi strip), 80 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
Pan-Exotica / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 hardcover edition of Hans Bellmer's surrealist masterpiece, The Doll, a beautiful photo book published only in Japan, comprised entirely of all of the known photographic images of "La Poupee" — Hans Bellmer's articulated, anatomically amorphous Surrealist doll, reconfigured and captured through Bellmer's intimate hand-painted photographic images. "La Poupee" acquired iconic status as perhaps the purest exemplification of the Surrealist ideal of "convulsive beauty." Bellmer constructed his first doll in the early 1930s. André Breton and Paul Eluard described it as "the first and only Surrealist object with a universal, provocative power". Wordless, this lovely volume is photographs-only, reproduced in colour and black and white. Designed by Jun Takechi.
German artist Hans Bellmer (1902—1975) was one of the most subversive artists associated with Surrealism, famous—notorious, even—for his erotic engravings, objects and photographs. Many of Bellmer's works were inspired by the literary works of Comte de Lautréamont and Georges Bataille, amongst others.
VG—Fine copy with obi.
1989-1993, English
Softcover, approx. 96 pages, each, 27.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
American Craft Council / US
$100.00 - In stock -
Lot of 26 issues of American Craft magazine spanning 1989-1993. Packed with portfolios, profiles, essays, interviews, reviews, news, exhibition announcements, and an abundance of illustrations in colour and b/w that you would never find anywhere else (the time-capsule nature of magazines), documenting new developments in avant-garde and post-modern furniture, textiles, ceramics, metalware, glassware, jewellery, alongside traditional practices and historical articles (expressionist ceramics, new primitivism, funk sculpture, black mountain modernism...). Founded by Aileen Osborn Webb in 1941 as Craft Horizons, the magazine has been published by the nonprofit American Craft Council under the title American Craft since November 1979.
All copies Good—Very Good with varying degrees of light wear from age, reading or sun tanning/spine discolouration.
1980, Italian
Softcover, 72 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Forma / Turin
Studio Alchymia / Milan
$280.00 - In stock -
Very rare, very early volume published on the occasion of the exhibition "Elogio Del Banale" at the Venice Biennale, 1980, as part of the 1st International Architecture Exhibition. Conceived by Alessandro Mendini, Daniela Puppa, Paola Navone, this collection and book (directed by Andrea Branzi and designed by Michele de Lucchi) is heavily illustrated throughout with the work and studies of radical Italian design group Studio Alchimia, including many rarely seen early exhibition designs, interiors, furniture, objects, even catalogue decor for Fiorucci. Accompanying texts are by founding members Alessandro Mendini and Franco Raggi, and with an introduction by Barbara Radice. Includes patterns by Paola Navone and photographic studies by Ettore Sottsass throughout. An exceptional piece of printed radical design history, featuring many future Memphis members, published by Studio forma in Turin and Studio Alchymia in Milan.
Studio Alchimia was an iconoclastic, radical design group founded in Italy in 1976 by the Italian Architect Alessandro Guerriero. The Studio Alchimia was composed of designers, whose aim was to design and manufacture exhibition pieces, rather than consumer orientated products. Their products were to be regarded as prototypes / one-offs, leading the way from the principles of modernist design to a bold, new, experimental design style. This style would lead to the formation and popularity of Italian design groups in the 1980′s such as the Memphis Group and the new directions taken by the Alessi company.
Very Good copy.
1988, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 348 pages, 29.5 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Abbeville Press / New York
National Museum of American Art / Washington
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1988 hardcover edition of "Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray", the most extensive retrospective of Man Ray's art ever published in the English language, re-printed many times.
Amid the exuberant chaos of the Paris art scene between the world wars, among the jarring factions of Dadaists, Surrealists, Futurists, and miscellaneous others, Philadelphia-born Man Ray was universally admired yet - it seemed - stubbornly mysterious. Although he looms large in today's standard art histories as a figure of unmistakable importance, few people have seen more than a selection of his remarkable photographs or a handful of his enigmatic "objects". Indeed, surprisingly little is known about this extraordinary and innovative creator of paintings, collages, drawings, films, aesthetic theory, and autobiography - as well as photographs and objects.
"Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray" was acclaimed as "the first major book on this mysterious and eclectic artist and his work" (The Bloomsbury Review). It not only examines all aspects of the artist's production in all its forms, but also discusses Man Ray's multifarious connections with the artistic and political radicals of pre-World War I New York, the underground avant-garde as well as the haute monde of Paris between the wars, and the emigre society of Hollywood after World War 11.
Illustrated with nearly 300 of the artist's works in full colour and duotone (many published for the first time)"Perpetual Motif" brings together a host of authors who have distinguished themselves as specialists in the many fields of Man Ray's endeavours. Each has contributed an enlightening essay on one of the many facets in the career of this multifaceted artist.
Features an introduction by Merry Foresta and essays by Francis Naumann, Billy Kluver and Julie Martin, Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Sandra S. Phillips, Stephen C. Foster, and Roger Shattuck.
VG—NF copy in VG—NF dust jacket.
1991, Czech
Softcover (2 volumes in wrap), 266 + 50 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Prague City Galerie / Prague
Václav Špála Galerie / Prague
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the only comprehensive book (a 2 volume survey) ever published on Český informel ("Czech Informel"), a radical current of post-war art that emerged in Prague from specific local conditions at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The term "Czech Informel" was an afterthought and defined only in the context of this major 1991 exhibition, accompanying symposium and publication. In the 1960s, the term "structural abstraction" was used, which according to Mahulena Nešlehová is inaccurate and misleading, because the term structure refers rather to an order that is internally organized. Informel, a term used from 1945 by the French critic Waldemar-George and later Michel Tapié, on the other hand, works with chance and the projection of spontaneous emotions and represents an "expressive material antipainting". The revolt of about thirty desperate avant-garde artists created a turning point in the history of Czech art, a phenomenon of which had no predecessor in Czechoslovakia. Sharing an emphasis on the aesthetic effect of raw materials and destruction with concurrent post-war European arts, Czech Informel differed in emphasis on its existential basis. The principle of the permanent construction and destruction of the image was a reaction to the severity of the times and an attempt to penetrate to the deeper essence of creation, in which the birth involves at the same time the extinction of the previous and reflects the consciousness of the fragility of human existence itself.
Profusely illustrated in b/w with select colour plates, the first volume traces the painting, sculpture, print and photographic works of the radical current of central Czech Informel artists, including Jan Koblasa, Aleš Veselý, Antonín Tomalík, Zbyšek Sion, Zdeněk Beran, Vladimír Boudník, Čestmír Janošek, Antonín Málek, Jiří Valenta, Miloš Koreček, Emila Medková, Zbyněk Sekal, Čestmír Krátký, Jiří Balcar, Karel Kuklík, Pavla Mautnerová, Jozef Jankovič, Jaroslav Hovadík, Mikuláš Medek, Alois Nožička, and many more.
The second volume is devoted to the life and work of Antonín Tomalík (1939—1968), one of the main artists of the radical Informel. He played a significant and irreplaceable role in the formation of Czech avant-garde and non-conformist art at a time when artists were burdened by an existential crisis as a result of the totalitarian regime. He belonged to a generation of young artists whose skepticism about life found expression in the raw, deliberately anti-aesthetic language of dark material creation, the result of which was an expressively urgent, internally destroyed object. Tomalík died in 1968, the result of an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol.
Texts in Czech by Antonín Dufek, Jiri Valoch, Mahulena Neslehová.
Highly recommended.
Good—VG copies with some light general wear but outer-wrap has some slitting reinforced by tape and usual fragile binding to the heavier volume due to weight and old glue starting to give way to individual pages.
1973, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 18.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
$45.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the major exhibition "Recent Australian Art" held at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 18 October-18 November 1973, featuring new work (created between 1970-1973) by close to 50 Australian artists, including many of 'The Field' artists. Each exhibited artist is profiled with a photographic portrait, potted history and blck and white reproductions of their work. Includes a foreword by Peter Laverty, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales, and introduction by Frances McCarthy and Daniel Thomas.
Artists: Robert Hunter, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Dick Watkins, Robert Rooney, Aleks Danko, Ewa Pachuka, Ti Parks, John Firth-Smith, Robert Jacks, Tim Johnson, Robert Hunter, Victor K, Donald Laycock, Mike Parr, Peter Kennedy, Paul Partos, Nigel Lendon, Rollin Schlicht, Alberr Shomaly, Guy Frank Stuart, William Anderson, David Aspden, Jonas Balsaitis, Peter Booth, Robert Boynes, Mike Brown, Tim Burns, Gunter Christmann, William Delafield Cook, John Davis, Bill Clements, Tony Coleing, Ross Grounds, Dale Hickey, Ian Howard, Noel Hutchison, Tony Kirkman, Richard Larter, Donald Laycock, Tony McGillick, Alan Oldfield, John Peart, Peter Powditch, Ron Robert-Swann, Rollin Schlicht, Alberr Shomaly, Guy Stuart, Michael Taylor, Imants Tillers, Tony Tuckson.
VG—NF copy.
1979, German
Softcover, 419 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthaus Zürich / Zürich
Bentelli Verlag / Bern
$90.00 $60.00 - In stock -
Wonderful over-sized catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Malerei und Photographie im Dialog / Painting and Photography in Dialogue, Kunsthaus Zürich, May 13 to July 24, 1977. Profusely illustrated, this heavy volume documents this historical survey of the relationship between photography and painting from 1840 to the present (late 1970s); with a full catalogue of works, artists' biographies, bibliography. Edited by Erika Billeter with texts throughout by art historian Josef A. Schmoll. Includes the work of Edvard Munch, Urs Lüthi, Wols, Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Eadweard Muybridge, Hannah Höch, Raoul Hausmann, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Oskar Schlemmer, Francis Bacon, Hilla and Bernd Becher, Les Levine, Constant Puyo, Clarence Hudson White, Jan Groover, Jochen Gerz, Duane Michels, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Ruth Francken, Theo Von Doesburg, Kurt Schwitters, Ferdinand Hodler, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Alighiero Boetti, Klaus Rinke, Giuseppe Penone, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Klee, Gerhard Richter, Monika Baumgartl, Yves Klein, Wolf Vostell, Heinrich Kühn, Georges Mathieu, Peter Roehr, Sarkis, Jiro Takamatsu, Michael Heizer, Umberto Boccioni, Hans Bellmer, William Wegman, Raoul Ubac, Margrit Jäggli, André Kertész, Jiri Kolar, Kasimir Malevich, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Dennis Oppenheim, Christian Boltanski, Dan Graham, Jan Dibbets, Jürgen Klauke, Bruce Nauman, Jean Tinguely, Vettor Pisani, Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell, Allen Kaprow, Arnulf Rainer, Mieczyslaw Berman, Jim Dine, George Brecht, Man Ray, Paul Wunderlich, Karin Székessy, Tom Wesselmann, Chuck Close, Eugène Delacroix, Duane Hanson, Heinrich Zille, Félix Vallotton, Carl Durheim, Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Eakins, Robert Rauschenberg, Édouard Vuillard, Carlo Carrà, Alphonse Mucha, Les Krims, Albert Steiner, Giorgio de Chirico, Keiji Uematsu, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Heinrich Zille, Franco Fontana, Richard Long, Ben Shahn, Edmund Kesting, László Moholy-Nagy, Anton Stankowski, Paul Nash, Rene Magritte, Paul T. Frankl, John Heartfield, El Lissitzky, Georges Hugnet, Gordon Matta-Clark....
Very Good copy, crease to top cover corner.
1978, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 64 pages, 29.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ANU Arts Centre / Canberra
$250.00 - In stock -
Rare catalogue published on the occasion of Act 1: an exhibition of performance and participatory art, 4—12 November 1978, spanning the ANU Arts Centre, Commonwealth Gardens and Civic Centre, Canberra. Organised by the ANU Arts Centre, Act I drew Australian artists to Canberra for the "first of a series of exhibitions directed towards specific aspects of recent and experimental art". Profusely illustrated artist pages throughout with photo documentation, collage, drawings, and artist's texts. Artists include Mike Parr, Ian Hamilton, Terry Smith and Media Action Group (Ian Burn, Nigel Lendon, Terry Smith, Michael Dolk, Kieren Finnane, Mary Kinney, Ian Milliss, Anne Sutherland...), Leigh Hobba, Kevin Mortensen, John Nixon, John Davis, Marr Grounds, Ken Unsworth, John Fisher, Liz Honybun, David Kerr, Richard and Pat Larter, Tony Twigg, Lesley Savage, Terry Smith, Tony Twigg, Bob Ramsay, Noel Sheridan, Arthur Wicks, Jillian Orr, Richard Tipping, Jim Cowley, Donald Walters... Includes critical essays by Paul McGillick and Terry Smith on performance art and private and public work, plus further texts by organisers Ingo Kleinert, Diana Ashcroft Johnson, Mildred Kirk. The catalogue also operates in as a document of the exchanges between the organisers and the artists, laying bare the operations and budget, reproducing the open letter to the invited artists along with a selection of the signed responses outlining the artistic concepts, all reproduced in full facsimile. Signatures and transcribed concept responses of contributing artists also make up the wrap-around cover design. Also of particular interest for the contribution by Terry Smith and Media Action Group, who formed in 1977 at Sydney University around the Australian members of the Art & Language group, who had recently returned to Australia. The group produced slide shows on the ideological bias in media treatment of advertising, uranium mining, new technology and the history of May Day. This work is stamped "withdrawn because titled 'performance'" in the contents.
Very Good copy with light wear to cover extremities/light spine pinching. Toned pages from age.
2016, English
Hardcover, 56 pages (leporello), 17.8 x 12.7 cm
Ed. of 400,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Secession / Vienna
$100.00 - In stock -
Published in an edition of only 400 and quickly out-of-print, this artist's book by American artist Vincent Fecteau, an elaborate double-sided leporello fold of collage artworks by the artist, hardbound and published on the occasion of Vincent Fecteau’s 2016 exhibition at Secession, Vienna.
Fecteau’s abstract sculptures defy summary description. Out of everyday staples like papier-mâché, cardboard, pictures from magazines, and paint, he fashions complex objects in which spaces simultaneously collapse and explode. Reminiscent, in many instances, of the elemental forms of early twentieth-century art, his works evoke associations ranging from utopian architecture and avant-garde stage design to masks and industrially manufactured components, yet they do not spell out their references. They keep their secret in a deliberate and insistent refusal to communicate definite meaning, indicating the artist’s emphasis on sculpture as sculpture and the agency it possesses as a real thing in the world.
As New.
2021, English
Softcover (Swiss brochure-bound), 128 pages (two 64 page sections), 17.5 x 24.5 cm
Edition of 400,
Published by
Sequence Press / New York
Secession / Vienna
Revolver Verlag / Berlin
$75.00 - In stock -
Published in an edition of 400 copies and now out-of-print, Yuji Agematsu's Four Seasons is a unique artist book presenting the artist’s renowned zips, miniature sculptures comprised of reanimated urban detritus collected by Agematsu on daily walks in New York City and encased within the cellophane wrappers of cigarette packs.
The publication accompanies an exhibition at the Secession, Vienna of 366—one per day—of these arrangements from 2020, that infamous calendar year. The book features images of a selected month from each of the four seasons.
Designed by Claus Due, this Swiss brochure-bound edition ingeniously contains two books in one, organizing the lusciously reproduced, enlarged views of individual selected days from the zip works on the left, and the corresponding pages of the artist’s meticulous, diary-like notebooks in which he records each day’s trove on the right.
The essay written by philosopher and Urbanomic publisher Robin Mackay incisively captures and theorizes the spirit of the artist’s daily assemblages, likening them to video game creator Keita Takahashi’s “clump spirit [katamari damashii, 塊魂]—a cosmic disposition which places great hope in the obsessional collecting of heterogeneous stuff.” With references to Plato, Philip K. Dick, Zoolander and Dante’s Paradiso, Mackay gathers inspiration from a wide swath of sources to pay homage to Agematsu’s work.
As New.
2006, German / English
Softcover, 72 pages, 30 x 24 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Secession / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
Galerie im Taxispalais / Innsbruck
$200.00 - Out of stock
Rare 2006 catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Isa Genzken at Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck and Secession, Wien, by Walther Koenig. Profusely illustrated throughout with Genzken's works and installation views, accompanied by texts by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Manfred Hermes, Anette Freudenberger, Silvia Eiblmayr, and Barbara Holub in both English and German.
"For more than thirty years, Isa Genzken has been developing a versatile oeuvre, continually extending it by adding new aspects. Her settings, her unusual combinations of materials, and the fragile but monumental character of her constructions reflect the surrounding world and the fragility of human existence. Her work—which includes sculptures and installations as well as photography, collage, and film—explores the space between public claims and private artistic autonomy, thus defining an interface where the personal and the universal meet. The formal and conceptual rigor at the root of Isa Genzken’s approach is tempered by unrestricted freedom, producing works that can be interpreted and experienced on very different levels. A central role is played by the choice and combination of materials with different connotations which the artist finds at home depots, builders’ suppliers, and department stores: whereas in the past Genzken used wood, plaster, epoxy resins, and above all concrete, the material of Modernism, her main materials today are plastic, synthetics, and a wide range of mirrors, as well as everyday items and consumer goods such as chairs—design classics alongside cheap camping chairs—garments, and plastic dolls and animals.
For her exhibition in the Hauptraum at the Secession, Isa Genzken has devised an installation with new sculptures and pieces on the wall: wheelchairs and seats draped in various textiles, ribbons, and sheets, walking frames, anthropomorphic figures, and wall-filling collages made from mirrors, photos, and adhesive tape create a carefully arranged image. Warholesque baby dolls with their outsize glasses look like prematurely aged children or, conversely, like infantilized adults, waiting under tattered parasols on a Hollywood set for shooting to recommence. But less than this bizarre scene, what is disconcerting here is the cool precision with which, for all the piece’s figurativeness, no story is told. Dolls and animals form heterogeneous abstract surfaces, but they are not deployed to narrative ends, and neither are other materials such as the mirrors, plastic sheeting, or the paint dripped or sprayed over many of the sculptures.
The new works relate to Genzken’s recent Empire/Vampire series. But while these works were presented on plinths at eye level, at the Secession, the entire space turns into a kind of plinth and the visitors become part of this scenario that is both beguilingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The works turn an imaginary inner space outwards, but rather than being something merely invented, the space always refers to the real—a comparative moment against which all the pieces can be measured. In an interview with Wolfgang Tillmans, Isa Genzken describes the way she thinks a sculpture should look: “It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite. [...] Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.”
Good copy, due to bumps/creases to corners and previous owners inscription to title page, otherwise a Very Good copy throughout.
1993, German
Softcover, 68 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bremen / Bremen
$200.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, collectable artist's book / catalogue published on the occasion of a major solo exhibition of Isa Genzken, "Skizzen für einen Spielfilm", held at Kunsthalle Bremen, July - August 1993. Wonderful design with extensive text section in (mostly) German/(some) English, comprising of scenes/script excerpts/discussions between Genzken and Gerhard Richter, Dan Graham, Michael Hengsberg (gallerist Daniel Buchholz's then assistant), amongst others, followed by an image section of Genzken's previous exhibition installations, and closing with a text by art historian and exhibition curator Katerina Vatsella. Highly recommended.
Very Good copy with light wear.
2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 360 pages, 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Ediciones Polígrafa / Barcelona
$140.00 - In stock -
Since the mind-1960s, Dan Graham (Urbana, Illinois 1942) has produced an important body of art and theory that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historial, social and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. He is a highly influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both as a practitioner of conceptual art and a well-versed art critic and theorist. Graham s work questions the relationship between people and architecture and the psychological effects it has on us. His work highlights the awkwardness that occurs when intimate moments or details are rudimentarily broadcast in an impersonal manner, as he continues to investigate the voyeuristic act of seening onself reflected, whilst at the same time watching others. This monograph analyzes his main works and collects some of seminal writings by the artist.
With a text by Alexander Alberro.
First English hardcover edition, now out-of-print.
2017, English / German
Hardcover, 144 pages, 24 x 30 cm
$70.00 - In stock -
Richard Serra is one of the most important contemporary sculptors and occupies a firm place in the art of the past 50 years, where he is already counted among the classics. This lavishly produced volume concentrates on Serra’s early works, the so-called “Props” or “Prop Pieces”, as well as works on film from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Richard Serra (*1939) experimented at an early stage with industrial materials like rubber, neon and lead, and also with steel a little later. His treatment of them demonstrates power and sensitivity at the same time. He creates powerful sculptures, canvases and works on paper whose execution demonstrates a fine sense of spatial situations. The volume contrasts works including a selection of twelve “Prop Pieces” with the artist’s early films. In both work groups the main focus lies on the artistic action: the positioning, leaning and adjustment of the lead sheets Serra uses corresponds with the simple actions of his works on film.
Edited by Jörg Daur, Alexander Klar
Contributions by J. Daur, P. Forster, M. Nieslony, S. von Berswordt-Wallrabe
1983, English / Japanese
Softcover, 36 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Akira Ikeda Gallery / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
Very rare Richard Serra catalogue published on the occasion of his Japanese solo exhibition 'New Sculpture' at Akira Ikeda Gallery, Tokyo, June 6-July 30, 1983. This handsome publication, rather than illustrating the exhibited works, surveys many of Serra's works spanning 1969-1983, illustrated in full-page monochrome throughout, and accompanied by introduction by author, architect, and Master of Architecture Yale University, Maki Kuwayama, portrait of the artist, list of works, biography, bibliography, exhibition list. All texts in English and Japanese.
Richard Serra (b. 1938) is an American artist commonly associated with Minimalism and the Process Art movement. Though perhaps best known for his monumental works made from industrial steel, Serra has also worked extensively in painting and printmaking. After attending the University of California, Berkeley, he earned his MFA from Yale, where he became friends and collaborators with classmates such as Frank Stella, Chuck Close and Nancy Graves, to whom Serra was married for five years. Later working in New York, Serra was inspired by Minimalist contemporaries such as Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt, who valued the work of creation more than the finished artwork itself.
Serra’s work is installed permanently at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and can also be found in the collections of Dia:Beacon, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, London.
Very Good copy, only light tanning to spine, otherwise fine throughout.
2018, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 23 x 27.1 cm
Published by
The Renaissance Society / Chicago
$120.00 - In stock -
Over a fifty-year career, Robert Grosvenor has produced a body of work that is at once solidly physical and conceptual, muscular and fluid. Grosvenor frequently uses industrial materials and found objects as he experiments with texture and scale, resulting in sculptures that reveal a handmade quality and subtle vein of humor.
In 2017, the Renaissance Society presented an exhibition of the sculptor's untitled work from 1989 to 1990. Re-contextualized within a spare architectural installation, this assemblage of materials and found objects eludes interpretation at the same time as it asserts its form and construction. Such nuances, combined with its ambiguous scale, evoke what critic John Yau has suggested is the labor of an "anonymous worker." Grosvenor has made significant contributions as a sculptor over the past fifty years, but relatively few books have been published about his work. This monograph documents the Renaissance Society show and also features new scholarship considering Grosvenor's work with a broad scope. The text includes contributions by Yves-Alain Bois, Bruce Hainley, Susan Howe, John Yau, and Renaissance Society executive director and chief curator Solveig Ovstebo.
2020, English
Hardcover, 120 pages, 19.3 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Karma / New York
Galerie Max Hetzler / Berlin
$110.00 - In stock -
Between art, engineering and architecture: recent works by Robert Grosvenor
This new hardcover monograph on Robert Grosvenor (born 1937)—known for his large-scale architectural sculptures—accompanied his third solo exhibition at Karma, New York, and concurrent exhibition at Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, presenting recent works of sculpture alongside an essay by renowned curator and critic Bob Nickas.
Texts by Bob Nickas, Suzan Frecon, Rachel Kushner.
Robert Grosvenor (b. 1937, New York, NY) is an American sculptor and photographer known for his surreal captures of vernacular architecture and modernist retrofuturisms. Grosvenor’s monumental sculptures transform a bevy of mid-century technologies, structures, and cultural lores into simple, streamlined forms. These idiosyncratic forms challenge the sculptural conventions of weight, line, movement, and inertia. Grosvenor was included in the historic 1966 Primary Structures survey exhibition at the Jewish Museum, which famously introduced Minimalist art to a broader public. Although his work builds on the aesthetic program of Minimalism, Grosvenor playfully resists the cool austerity emblematic of the genre. Rather he explores the sensuousness of his materials and the nostalgic qualities of their color and design. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Karma, New York (2020); Galerie Max Hetzler, Paris (2020); Consortium Museum, Dijon (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2019); Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2018); and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017), among others. Grosvenor’s work is represented in various public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and the Direction Régionale des Affaires Rennes.
As the 2020 recipient of the Ezratti Family Prize for Sculpture, Grosvenor’s work will be featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in the spring of 2021.
2024, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 17.7 x 12.3 cm
Published by
un / Naarm
$30.00 - In stock -
Double issue un 18.4 / un 18.5
un 18.3 — Sabaar
Edited by Nadia Refaei
Contributions by Caine Chennatt, Dean Greeno, Hasib Hourani and Jeanine Hourani, Monica Rani Rudhar, Grace Gamage, Kiera Brew Kurec, Jess Clifford, Brooke Pou, Sara Jajou, Juliette Berkeley, Ronen Jafari, Nadia Refaei.
un 18.4 — good grief
Edited by Olivia Koh
Contributions by Zainab Hikmet and Anna Emina El Samad, Peta Clancy and Olivia Koh, Mihret Kebede, Lana Nguyen, Ellen van Neerven, Benjamin Bannan, Jacqui Shelton, Lily Golightly and Jemi Gale, Laniyuk, Tristen Harwood, Tamsen Hopkinson, Olivia Koh.
2024, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 17.7 x 12.3 cm
Published by
un / Naarm
$30.00 - In stock -
Double issue un 18.1 / un 18.2, August 2024
un 18.1
Edited by Tara Heffernan
Contributions by Scott Robinson, Daniel McKewen, Elyssia Bugg, Georgia Puiatti, Vincent Lê, Yannick Blattner, Aimee Dodds, Sam Beard, Eugene Hawkins, Francis Russell, Tara Heffernan, Carmen-Sibha Keiso, Alexandra Peters.
un 18.2
Edited by Joel Sherwood Spring
Contributions by SJ Norman, Enoch Mailangi, Ragnar Thomas, Georgia Hayward, Hideko G. Ono, Suvani Suri, Diego Ramírez, roxxy marsden, Nadia Demas, Joel Sherwood Spring.
2025, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 28 x 28 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
Hauser & Wirth / Los Angeles
$160.00 - In stock -
Hammons' body prints, flags and found-object sculptures come together in this artist's book documenting his thought-provoking conceptual exhibition.
This post-exhibition catalog revisits David Hammons’ 2019 show at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. A singular book created entirely under the artist’s direction, this publication illustrates the most expansive exhibition of this legendary artist’s work to date.
Said critic Jonathan Griffin of the original exhibition, "Alongside finished artworks, including framed examples of Hammons’s sublime drawings made with bounced basketballs and powdered Kool-Aid, there are plenty of apparently ad hoc, readymade interventions, installations in which it is unclear where one ends and the next begins. … Hammons, it seems, wants his viewers to relax, historiography be damned."
Born in 1943 in Springfield, Illinois, David Hammons moved to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of 20 and began making his body prints several years later. He studied at Otis Art Institute with Charles White and became part of a younger generation of Black avant-garde artists loosely associated with the Black Arts Movement. In Los Angeles, Hammons was a cofounder of Studio Z, a group which included Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, Joe Ray and others. Hammons has lived in New York since 1978.
2021, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 30 x 22 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Kunstforum / Vienna
$85.00 - In stock -
This extensive hardcover overview of Swiss Romanian artist Daniel Spoerri's (b. 1930) 60-year-long career, presents reproductions of archival material as well as rarely seen artworks from Spoerri's incredible artistic history of installations, assemblages, (including his famous "snare works"), performances, editions, and other activities as a protagonist of Fluxus, Nouveau réalisme and Eat Art. Includes texts by Ingried Brugger, Veronika Rudorfer, Hans Peter Hahn, Barbara Räderscheidt, Daniel Spoerri, Katerina Vatsella.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. acetate dust jacket), 128 pages, 33 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppan-sha / Japan
$190.00 - In stock -
First edition of the incredible book of Japanese doll artist Simon Yotsuya, Doll Love / L'amour des Poupées, shot by Kishin Shinoyama, published in 1985 by Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, Tokyo. This stunning over-sized book is the finest photographic document of Simon's dolls created throughout his career, all dramatically shot by legendary Japanese photographer, and close friend of Yotsuya, Kishin Shinoyama, profusely illustrated in full colour gloss with each doll, including various angles, details, and display cases, accompanied by a section of Japanese texts by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yoshiaki Tono, Minoruyoshioka, Shuzotakiguchi, and Kunio Iwaya, illustrated in b/w with portraits of Simon Yotsuya in his studio, his drawings and graphic works. Our favourite book on this magical artist.
Simon Yotsuya (b. 1944, Tokyo) started making dolls as a child, visiting exhibitions of dolls, and reads all the books he can find on the subject. In his mid-teens he visited Puppe Kawasaki, a doll maker and animator he greaty admired, devoting himself to the craft and becoming a poor high school student. In the early '60s, while working at a jazz coffee shop in Shinjuku, Yotsuya earned the nickname "Simon" (pronounced “Simone”), after his love for singer Nina Simone. He befriends Kuniyoshi Kaneko (painter) and Junko Koshino (fashion designer) and joins in the arts and literary scene. In 1965, he discovers the work of German Surrealist Hans Bellmer through an article authored by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in the magazine “Shinfujin”, promptly abandoning his previous methods of doll-making to find his way as an artist, incorporating ball-joints into his dolls. Thereafter he becomes an admirer of Surrealism and immerses himself in the controversial Shibusawa's litterary works. In 1965, he also goes to see Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh Performance for the first time. In the late 60s—early 70s Yotsuya pursued a parallel career to his doll-making as an actor and member of Juro Kara's legendary underground theater company Jokyo Gekijo, Situation Theater, regularly portraying a female doll. He appears in the movie "Diary of a Shinjuku Thief" directed by Nagisa Oshima with the actors of the Situation Theater, but by 1971 he leaves the stage to concentrate on his own work. Simon exhibited at Expo 1970 in Osaka, the Tokyo Biennale in 1974 and by the end of the decade had opened his own doll-making school in Harajuku.
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), the author of the influential Bellmer article (and novelist, editor, art critic, and translator of Bataille and Marquis de Sade), become a life-long friend of Yotsuya's and his most important advocate, editing the first major book of Yotsuya's work, entitled Pygmalionisme, in 1985. Devastated by Shibusawa's death in 1987, Yotsuya found it impossible to work for nearly two years. He eventually found solace in the Eastern Orthodox Church and was inspired to make a series of angels, which he dedicated to Shibusawa, and straightforward images of Christ. Having carved out his own masterful and unique form of expression, today Yotsuya enjoys international renown as the first ball-jointed doll maker in Japan.
Very Good copy with light edge wear to cover and publisher's jacket.