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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
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World Food Books
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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.
1967, Japanese
Softcover, 6 page card fold-out w. insert, 23.8 x 23.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Tokyo Gallery / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Incredibly scarce catalogue published on the occasion of the 1967 exhibition "19 Surrealists" held at Tokyo Gallery, Japan. Fold-out catalogue with insert, illustrated with the exhibited works (along with biographies in Japanese) by Enrico Baj, Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Wifredo Lam, Felix Labisse, René Magritte, Man Ray, Andre Masson, Roberto Matta, Joan Miro, Taro Okamoto, Francis Picabia, Kurt Schwitters, Max-Walter Svanberg, Yves Tanguy, Wols.
Very Good with light wear and mild spotting and a couple of pencil notations in Japanese. Preserved in sleeve.
1973, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 14 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Graphiques Gallery / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue issued on the occasion of the exhibition of Hans Bellmer's etchings and drawings, published by Editions Graphiques Gallery, London, in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Illustrated throughout with many of the 43 exhibited items, including his important series "à Sade", "Madame Edwarda" (Georges Bataille), and "Les Marionettes", amongst others, alongside detailed work list, and introductory text by Victor Arwas.
Very Good copy.
1971, French
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 88 pages, 25 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editions Filipacchi / Paris
$90.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this great monographic book on the work of Surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer, published in 1971 by Editions Filipacchi, Paris. Heavily illustrated throughout with wonderful reproductions of Bellmer's incredible drawings, photography, sculptures, paintings, alongside texts in French, biography and bibliography.
German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 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)."
Very Good copy in Good but worn dust jacket with tanning and a few small tears/wear. Very Good copy otherwise, with only edge tanning, preserved under Mylar wrap.
2003, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 18 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$74.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
Surrealism in its late phase often abandoned neutral exhibition spaces in favor of environments that embodied subjective ideologies. These exhibitions offered startled viewers an early version of installation art before the form existed as such. In Displaying the Marvelous, Lewis Kachur explores this development by analyzing three elaborate Surrealist installations created between 1938 and 1942. The first two, the "Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme" (1938) and the "Dream of Venus" at the New York World's Fair (1939), dealt with the fetishization of the female body. The third, "First Papers of Surrealism" (1942), focused not on the figure but on the entire expanse of the exhibition space, thus contributing to the development of nonfigurative art in New York. Kachur presents a full visual and verbal reconstruction of each of the exhibitions, evoking the sequence that the contemporary viewer would have encountered.
The book considers Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, two artists who are not usually compared, within a common framework. Duchamp specialized in frustrating the spectator, using his ironic wit to call into question the definition of the work of art. Dali was a master at disorienting the senses by establishing and then undermining everyday spatial and object properties. The Surrealist challenge, as voiced by Andre Breton, was to evoke the marvelous. Duchamp and Dali extended that challenge to the physical and commercial realm of the exhibition installation.
About the Author
Lewis Kachur is Associate Professor of Art History at Kean University, New Jersey.
“Lewis Kachur hands us a free time-travel ticket, with himself as marvelous pilot. Transporting us into the thick inventions of late Surrealist exhibitions, he gives us the ravishing gift of being there, present at the birthing and, as well, the seeding of so much installation and site-specific art to come decades later. For artists now who feel tied to Grandfather Marcel without having known him, Kachur's work vividly opens up the real moves of Duchamp's reinvention of what it is to be an artist. Revealing secret interior paths of communication among artists that flow synaptically across generations, this sumptuous work points to a new holistic way to understand art.”
—Mierle Laderman Ukeles, artist
“A splendid analysis of the late Surrealist exhibitions. Anyone interested in Surrealist art would want this book; anyone interested in the consideration of display in twentieth-century art must have this book.”
—Richard Martin (1945-1999), former curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Perceptive, fascinating, and written with pleasure and delight. The reciprocal exchange between art work and its context is presented with a steady, at times inspired, sense of inquiry.”
—Brian O’Doherty, writer
Out-of-print
1966, English
Softcover, 148 pages, 21.5 x 22.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
LACMA / Los Angeles
$55.00 - Out of stock
The great catalogue for a major exhibition held in Los Angeles in 1966 on the work of Man Ray. Published by LACMA for the occasion, this 148 page English catalogue is very generous in its content, with reproductions of much of Man Ray's work across painting, sculpture and photography, amongst much more, it also features an introduction byJules Langsner, Man Ray's writings on his own work and observations, texts about Man Ray by his friends (Paul Éluard, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Rrose Sélavy, Tristan Tzara, Hans Richter), plus other texts, catalogue of the exhibition, Chronology, Major Exhibitions, and Selected Bibliography.
Good-Very Good copy.
1968, English
Softcover, 124 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Lorrimer / London
$40.00 - In stock -
First edition of the Luis Buñuel volume of Classic Film Scripts, dedicated entirely to his masterpieces "Un chien andalou" and "l'Age d'or" (both co-scripted by Salvador Dali). Illustrated throughout with stills from these iconic surrealist films, accompanied by their full scripts translated from French by Marianne Alexandre. Surrealist cinema, as epitomised by Un Chien Andalou and L'Age D'Or, was a knife through the very heart of the establishment - a scorpionic, scatological black joke galvanised by the irrational, the uncanny and the spectre of de Sade.
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France. When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture made in the silent era was called "the most famous short film ever made" by critic Roger Ebert, and his last film made 48 years later won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films from the 1920s through the 1970s. His work spans two continents, three languages, and an array of genres, including experimental film, documentary, melodrama, satire, musical, erotica, comedy, romance, costume dramas, fantasy, crime film, adventure, and western. Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, "Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films".
1974, English / Spanish / French / German / Italian
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 114 pages, 24 x 30.5 cm
Signed by Artist,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Artes de México / México
$440.00 - Out of stock
Very rare Mexican hardcover major monograph on the work of self-taught Mexican surrealist painter Sofía Bassi, published in 1974 by Artes de México. This copy exceptionally special with inscription and signature on the title page by the artist herself. Profusely illustrated throughout with Bassi's visionary oil paintings, accompanied by texts from Salvador Elizondo and literary quotes (Apollinaire, etc.). Texts in English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including biography, exhibition history, press, and portrait. A wonderful book on this fantastic, little-known Mexican painter.
Sofía Bassi (1913 – 1998) was a self taught Mexican painter and writer noted for her surrealist work as well as her personal life, which included five years in prison for murder of Count Cesare D’Aqequarone, the husband of her daughter Claire, an incident that she stated was an accident, although rumors stated that her daughter was the one that shot Bassi's husband. Bassi maintained an active career despite incarceration, painting her first mural in prison in Acapulco in 1969, with the assistance of Alberto Gironella, José Luis Cuevas, Rafael Coronel and Francisco Corzas. Not belonging to any particular art movement, Jean Michel Cropsal in 1972 called her work “magical impressionism,” but it is more often classified as a style of Surrealism. Bassi described art as an elixir that she wants to drink until the end of her career, to keep from dying. She painted anthropomorphic landscapes and beings representing lost continents and cities. Later in her life she worked as a member of the World Human Rights Committee based in New York City. In 1991, she received a medal from the Mexican government for her work with the elderly. She lived in Lomas de Chapultepec, painting and writing up until her death. These last few years were spent living with her daughter Claire. They had few visitors and enjoyed each other's company while Sofia painted. She often used Claire as a model for her works. About twelve years before her death, she designed and painted a fiberglass “egg-sarcophagus” to be used for her funeral. She considered the egg as a sign of fertility and rebirth, an image of such appears in a painting she did for NASA.
Very Good copy with wear and chipping to dust jacket edges. Signed copy!
2016, English
Hardcover, 360 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$75.00 - Out of stock
This groundbreaking and richly illustrated book tells a new story of the twentieth century’s most influential artist, recounted not so much through his artwork as through his “non-art” work. Marcel Duchamp is largely understood in critical and popular discourse in terms of the objects he produced, whether readymade or meticulously fabricated. Elena Filipovic asks us instead to understand Duchamp’s art through activities not normally seen as artistic—from exhibition making and art dealing to administrating and publicizing. These were no occasional pursuits; Filipovic argues that for Duchamp, these fugitive tasks were a veritable lifework.
Drawing on many rarely seen images, Filipovic traces a variety of practices and projects undertaken by Duchamp from 1913 to 1969, from his invention of the readymade to the release of his last, posthumous work. She examines Duchamp’s note writing, archiving, and quasi-photographic activities, which resulted in the Box of 1914 and the Green Box; his art dealing, marketing, and curating that culminated in experimental exhibitions for the Surrealists and his miniature museum, The Boîte-en-valise; and his administrative efforts and clandestine maneuvering in order to posthumously embed his Étant donnés into a museum. Demonstrating how those activities reflect the artist’s questioning of reproduction and originality, as well as photography and the exhibition, Filipovic proposes that Duchamp’s “non-art” labor, and in particular his curatorial strategies, more than merely accompanied his more famous artworks; in a certain sense, they made them.
Through Duchamp’s elusive but vital activities he revised the idea of what a modern artist could be. With this fascinating book, Filipovic in turn revises the very idea of Duchamp.
About the Author
Elena Filipovic, an art historian, is Director and Chief Curator of the Kunsthalle Basel. Among her curatorial projects is the traveling retrospective “Marcel Duchamp: A Work That Is Not a Work ‘of Art'” (2008-2009).
Endorsements:
“In the 1970s Lucy Lippard remarked that Duchamp was already too much written about. How, then, is one to contribute effectively to the Duchamp literature today, given that it has become all the more voluminous since? In The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp Elena Filipovic finds a way, and does so with great intelligence. She claims, rightly, that the dominant readings of Duchamp have led to an occlusion of the ‘fugitive actions’ undertaken by Duchamp vis-à-vis the institution of art, and it is there that she locates her incisive study—specifically on ‘his role as administrator, archivist, art advisor, curator, publicist, reproduction maker, and salesman.’ Rather than see these activities as ancillary to his life as an artist, Filipovic locates them, brilliantly, at its center; they are indeed only ‘apparently marginal.’ This is just the book to reanimate discourse around Duchamp.”
—Hal Foster, Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor, Princeton University, author of Compulsive Beauty and Prosthetic Gods
“When an artist becomes a curator today, the exhibition is often treated like an extension of the artist’s medium. A century ago when Duchamp, having ceased to consider himself a professional artist, undertook to help out his friends by designing their exhibitions, did he think like a modernist fixated on medium specificity? This is the classic question that lies behind Elena Filipovic’s careful research in the archives. In light of her new syntheses, she rewrites the question to read: just how did Duchamp open up new possibilities for curators? The answer: the medium was not his message. Duchamp worked without professing, in a series of small, nonretinal steps; he avoided creating a single, prototypical model. He left behind a panorama of new ideas. Filipovic has collected them into a book that curators will come to regard as a resource.”
—Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art History, Vassar College, author of Their Common Sense
“In 1959, Marcel Duchamp referred to himself as ‘a non-artist.’ Exactly what he meant by this has never been fully explained until now, a lacuna in the vast literature on this artist that finally has been filled by Elena Filipovic’s marvelous new book, the first to deal with the various activities that preoccupied Duchamp when he wasn’t making art, particularly in the realm of curating (not only his own work, but that of his fellow artists in various exhibitions that he oversaw). Filipovic argues that these activities occur with such frequency and consistency in Duchamp’s life that they must be considered an integral component of his creative endeavors. The result is an entirely new way to look at the work of this important and highly influential artist.”
—Francis M. Naumann, author of The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost
“Yes, another Duchamp book. The one we least expected, but perhaps the one that we now need the most. Elena Filipovic’s brilliant book locates a ‘curatorial’ logic at the heart of Duchamp’s (deeply fascinating, often confusing, and impossibly disparate) activities. But more crucial even than its tracing of a long-ignored curatorial modernism, this book will in turn challenge what it might mean to curate today, at precisely the moment curators increasingly claim an artistic dimension for their own work.”
—George Baker, Professor of Art History, UCLA, author of The Artwork Caught by the Tail
1965, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket, cloth-bound), 116 pages, 28 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Éditions Denoël / Paris
$70.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Les Dessins Magiques de Victor Brauner, published in France in 1965 and dedicated entirely to the drawings of Romanian Surrealist artist Victor Brauner. Known as the "avant-God of Surrealism", which he predated by 15 years, this book illustrates Brauner's lifelong interest in magic and the occult through a wonderful collection of his bizarre line drawings, alongside commentary by the French art historian Sarane Alexandrian. Numbered edition 2410.
Victor Brauner (1903-1966) was a Romanian Surrealist painter and sculptor, and one of the most important members of the Romanian avant-garde. Born on June 15, 1903 in Piatra Neam?, Romania, he studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest from 1916 to 1918. Soon after, he began painting landscapes and, as he put it, went through all the "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist" idioms. Brauner helped found the Dadaist review 75 HP in Bucharest. In Bucharest in 1929 Brauner was associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist review UNU. Brauner settled in Paris in 1930 and became a friend of his compatriot Constantin Brancusi. Then he met Yves Tanguy, who introduced him to the Surrealists by 1933. André Breton wrote an enthusiastic introduction to the catalogue for Brauner’s first Parisian solo show at the Galerie Pierre in 1934. The exhibition was not well-received, and in 1935 Brauner returned to Bucharest, where he remained until 1938. That year he moved to Paris, lived briefly with Tanguy, and painted a number of works featuring distorted human figures with mutilated eyes. Some of these paintings, dated as early as 1931, proved gruesomely prophetic when he lost his own eye in a in violent argument between Oscar Domínguez and Esteban Francés in 1938. At the outset of World War II Brauner fled to the South of France, where he maintained contact with other Surrealists in Marseilles. Later he sought refuge in Switzerland; unable to obtain suitable materials there, he improvised an encaustic from candle wax and developed a graffito technique. Brauner returned to Paris in 1945. He was included in the Exposition internationale du surréalisme at the Galerie Maeght in Paris in 1947. His postwar painting incorporated forms and symbols based on Tarot cards, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and antique Mexican codices. In the fifties Brauner traveled to Normandy and Italy, and his work was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1954 and in 1966. He died in Paris on March 12, 1966. The artist is buried in the famed Montmartre cemetery, where his epitaph reads: “Painting is life, the real life, my life.”
Very Good ex-library copy w. light stamping and plastic covered dust jacket. Clean and tight throughout.
1989, English
Softcover (staple bound), 72 pages, 23.3 x 33.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 18 includes features on Peter Tyndall by Ashley Crawford, Howard Arkley by Richard Brown, Recent Australian Painting by Charles Green, Robert McPherson by Ingrid Perez, Neil Emmerson by Chris McAuliffe, Colin McCahon by Tony Green, Imants Tillers by Jenny Harper, Ken Orchard by Nicholas Baume, Robert Jesson by Ashley Crawford, reviews on Jenny Watson/Lindy Lee/Maria Kozic, John Dunkley-Smith, Brent Harris, Herb Ritts, and so much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1990, English
Softcover, 76 pages, 23 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Tension / South Yarra
$30.00 - Out of stock
Tension 21 (June 1990) features "The Readymade Disaster" by John Sampson, "Paraculture" by Chris McAuliffe, Neil Dawson by Jim and Mary Barr and Robert Leonard, Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals by John Sampson, 8th Biennale of Sydney : Certain Relations in 20th Century Art by Catharine Lumby, Christina Davidson, Max Delany, John Young and Dale Frank, Marcel Proust by Gerald Murnane, Martin Heidegger by Fergus Armstrong, Giorgio de Chirico by Tony Clark, Marcel Duchamp by Peter Tyndall, Surrealism by Rosslynd Piggott, Peter Ellis, and Jon Cattapan, "Rock'n'Roll" by Kevin Murray, Roger Taylor, Chris Dyson and Jon Campbell, "New Wave Cinema" by Ross Harley and Scott Murray, "Gilles Deleuze and Cinema" by Adrian Martin, Tim Jones by Ashley Crawford, reviews, and much more.
TENSION (1983-1990) was one of the central "popular" culture arts periodicals to come out of Melbourne in the 1980s, emerging from the ashes of Virgin Press. Independently published and edited by critic Ashley Crawford, Tension magazine lasted for 25 bi-monthly issues dedicated to Art, Music, Fashion, Theatre, Film, Photography, across reviews, interviews, reports, critical essays and artist pages. Now an important document of culture in Australia, and especially Melbourne in the 1980s, issues featured the writing and contributions of Paul Taylor, McKenzie Wark, Mike Parr, John Nixon, Catharine Lumby, Philip Brophy, Adrian Martin, Ashley Crawford, Peter Tyndall, Jean Baudrillard, Timothy Leary, Gerard Malanga, Keith Haring, Gerald Murnane, and many more. In 1985 Crawford, with John Buckley, staged an exhibition issue of the magazine, 'Visual Tension', at ACCA featuring the work of Howard Arkley, Marianne Baillieu, Peter Booth, Paul Boston, Peter Cripps, Richard Dunn, Maria Kozic, John Lethbridge, Geoff Lowe, Linda Marrinon, John Matthews, John Nixon, Stieg Persson, Robert Rooney, Gareth Sansom, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Imants Tillers, Peter Tyndall, Jenny Watson, John Young.
1972, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 110 pages, 20.5 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Academy Editions / London
$140.00 - In stock -
Beautifully produced, scarce hardcover monographic volume dedicated entirely to reproductions of Surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer's incredible drawings. This is the first English edition, published by Academy Editions London in 1972 following the 1966 French edition. With an introduction by Constantin Jelenski. A stunning book.
German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 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)."
Very Good in original dust jacket, light tanning/wear to jacket. Small notation to front endpaper.
1989, Japanese
Softcover, 96 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Art Vivant / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
Issue 32 (1989) of Japan's great Art Vivant quarterly journal. This very special issue dedicated entirely to the work of Spanish surrealist artist Remedios Varo (1908 – 1963). Heavily illustrated throughout with colour and black and white reproductions of Varo's paintings, also essays in Japanese, portraits, biography, and much more.
Very scarce and Fine copy of this collectible issue.
Remedios Varo Uranga (1908 – 1963) was a Spanish surrealist artist. Born in Anglès (north of Catalonia), Spain in 1908, she studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. Varo spent her formative years between France and Barcelona and was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement. The summer of 1935 marked Varo's formal invitation into Surrealism when French surrealist Marcel Jean arrived in Barcelona. While still married to her first husband Gerardo Lizarraga, Varo met her second partner, the French surrealist poet Benjamin Péret, in Barcelona. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris with Péret leaving Lizarraga behind (1937). It was through Peret that Remedios Varo met André Breton and the Surrealist circle, which included Leonora Carrington, Dora Maar, Roberto Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, and Max Ernst among others. Shortly after arriving in France, Varo took part in the International Surrealist exhibitions in Paris and in Amsterdam in 1938. She was forced into exile from Paris during the German occupation of France and moved to Mexico City at the end of 1941 when the Mexican president, Lázaro Cardenas, made it a policy to welcome Spanish and European refugees. In Mexico, she met native artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but her strongest ties were to other exiles and expatriates, notably the English painter Leonora Carrington and the French pilot and adventurer, Jean Nicolle. However, because Mexican muralism still dominated the country's art scene, surrealism was not generally well received. She worked as an assistant to Marc Chagall with the design of the costumes for the production of the ballet Aleko, which premiered in Mexico City in 1942. In 1947, Péret returned to Paris, and Varo traveled to Venezuela, living there for two years. She returned to Mexico and began her third and last important relationship with Austrian refugee Walter Gruen, who had endured concentration camps before escaping Europe. Gruen believed fiercely in Varo, and he gave her the economic and emotional support that allowed her to fully concentrate on her painting. In 1955, Varo had her first solo exhibition at the Galería Diana in Mexico City. Buyers were put on waiting lists for her work. Even Diego Rivera was supportive. In 1960, her representative, Juan Martín, opened his own gallery and showed her work there, and opened a second in 1962. Only a year after that opening, at the height of her career, she died from a heart attack in Mexico City. Her work is well known in Mexico, but not as commonly known throughout the rest of the world.
1970, German
Softcover (printed cloth), 154 pages, 23 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Württembergischer Kunstverein / Stuttgart
$70.00 - Out of stock
First printing of this wonderful cloth-covered, 1970 monograph on the work of German artist Max Ernst, published to accompany his solo exhibition at Württembergischer Kunstverein, in Stuttgart in 1970.
Max Ernst "Gemälde, Plastiken, Collagen, Frottagen, Bücher" ("Paintings, Sculptures, Collages, Frottage, Books") is a handsomely designed and profusely illustrated book covering much of his diverse career of work in full-colour and black and white plates. Includes a chronology (1909-1968), bibliography, list of works, and texts by Werner Spies, Lothar Pretzell, Helmut R. Leppien, Uwe M. Schneede, and a series of texts by Max Ernst himself, covering topics of Dada, Nature, Collage, Surrealism, etc. All texts in German.
Max Ernst (2 April 1891 – 1 April 1976) was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism.
Very Good, well preserved and clean copy.
1970, German
Softcover, 92 pages, 11 x 17 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Galerie Rudolph Zwirner / Köln
$55.00 - Out of stock
"Z" is a great, unsuspecting pocketbook from Galerie Rudolph Zwirner in 1970, collecting together a wonderful group of works by 78 artists (Yves Klein, Richard Tuttle, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, René Magritte, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Kenneth Noland, Daniel Spoerri, Frank Stella, Jean Tinguely, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Linder, Jasper Johns, Martial Raysse, Dieter Rot, Franz Erhart Walther, Bruno Goller, Morris Louis, Jim Dine, Otto Dix, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Konrad Klapheck, Lucio Fontana, Blinky Palermo, Hundertwasser, Gerhard Richter, Antoni Tapies, Andy Warhol, George Grosz, Robert Graham, Allen Jones, Henri Michaux, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Oskar Schlemmer, Yves Tanguy, Louis Soutter, Tom Wesselmann, Toyen, Wols, Larry Bell, Dan Flavin, Panamarenko, Sol Lewitt, etc.) across painting, sculpture, drawings, collage and multiples, all reproduced in black and white across this almost entirely visual volume.
1971, French
Hardcover (clothbound w. dustjacket), 88 pages, 25 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Filipacchi / Paris
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this great monographic book on the work of Surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer, published in 1971 by Editions Filipacchi, Paris. Heavily illustrated throughout with wonderful reproductions of Bellmer's incredible drawings, photography, sculptures, paintings, alongside texts in French, biography and bibliography.
German artist Hans Bellmer (13 March 1902 – 23 February 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)."
1947, French
Softcover, 142 pages, 24 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Maeght Editeur / Paris
$480.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce copy of the legendary "Le Surréalisme en 1947 : Exposition Internationale de Surréalisme présentée par André Breton et Marcel Duchamp", published by Maeght Editeur, Paris, in conjunction with an important exhibition of Surrealist artists in 1947. Features the cover design by Marcel Duchamp - a photographic reproduction by Rémy Duval of "Prière de toucher (Please touch)", the famous Duchamp rubber breast edition, created with Italian-born painter Enrico Donati, that adorned the first 999 copies of the catalogue. This gorgeous catalogue features the work of artists from 24 countries including Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, Jacqueline Lamba, Jacques Hérold, Wilfredo Lam, Joan Miró, Hans Bellmer, Marcel Jean, Maria Martins, Yves Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, Hans Arp, Hector Hyppolite, Serge Brignoni, Alexander Calder, Bruno Capacci, Elizabeth van Damme, Jacques Halpern, Julio de Diego, Enrico Donati, Francis Bouvet , David Hare, Iaroslav Serpan, Jacqueline Lamba, Taro Okamoto, Roberto Matta, Kay Sage, Toyen, Vilhelm Bjerke-Petersen, Leonard Baskin, Jindrich Heisler, Jeanne Reynal, Roger Brielle, Jindrich Styrsky, Bruno Capacci, Jean Guerin, Isamu Noguchi, Gerome Kamrowski, Eugenio Granell, Francis Picabia, Remedios Varo, Hans Richter, Arshile Gorky, and many more,, along with the folding sheet catalogue loosely inserted.
Good copy considering age. Very tanned edges and wear to corners, edges and spine.
2009, English
15 postcard set (in plastic pocket), 10.8 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
SFMOMA / San Francisco
$40.00 - In stock -
In conjunction with Not New Work: Vincent Fecteau Selects from the Collection, 2009, SFMOMA commissioned Vincent Fecteau to create an artist's book, in which he chose to focus on a particular work in the exhibition—Christopher Wilmarth's plywood-and-glass sculpture New (1968). The publication consists of approximately a dozen loose postcards depicting Wilmarth's sculpture, enclosed in a plastic sleeve. Works from the exhibition photographed by way of Wilmarth's foregrounding sculpture are by Lynda Benglis, Judy Chicago, Friedel Dzubas, Max Ernst, Richard Faralia, Ralph Goings, Joe Goode, Charles Howard, Ralph Humphrey, Jess, Ron Nagle, Robert Overby, Dorothy Reid, Diego Rivera, Erio Rudd, George Segal, Wayne Thiebaud, Tom of Finland, H.C. Westermann, and Peter Young.
As New copies, long unavailable.
2012, English
Softcover, 486 pages, 17 x 23 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$70.00 - Out of stock
Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, Andre Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. I Am a Beautiful Monster is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator. Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational carpe diem. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura.
I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations.
1980, French / German
Softcover, 140 pages, 19 x 15.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Diogenes / Zürich
$30.00 - Out of stock
“Toxicologie” by the great French illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, Roland Topor (1938–1997) was first published in 1970 and forms one of the classic collections of the absurdist, surrealistic illustrations he is so well known for.
Preface by fellow Mouvement Panique member Fernando Arrabal and postface by French poet Jacques Prévert.
1980 softcover edition published by Diogenes in Zürich.
Roland Topor was one of the most unique and versatile French artists of the second half of the 20th century, working prolifically as a provocative and spirited illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, and much more. Son of a Parisian painter and sculptor of Polish-Jewish descent, in 1941, Topor's father was arrested and sent to camp Pithiviers. Two years later, the family moved to Savoy, where they baptised their son to hide his real identity. After the war, he studied art at the Institute of Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered surrealism, Hieronymus Bosch and the scatological plays of Alfred Jarry, which would influence his work and his attitude to life in general.
In 1958, he published his first work in magazines such as Bizarre and later Elle. Three years later, he joined the anarchic group of artists who created the controversial magazine Hara-Kiri, publishing his surreal juxtapositions of people, animals, plants and objects. Topor seldom used words in his illustrations, leaving all power to the visual. In February 1962, Topor, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Olivier O. Olivier, Jacques Sternberg, Christian Zeimert, Abel Ogier and Fernando Arrabal founded the "Mouvement Panique" ("Panic Movement"). This collective focused on creating absurd and bewildering performances to reject the commercialization of surrealism. The founders created many provocative and surreal works in the next decade before Jodorowsky dissolved the movement in 1973. However, Topor continued making scandalous plays afterwards, including 'Le Bébé de Monsieur Laurent' (1975) and 'Vinci avait raison' (1976).
In print, Topor's history is legendary. In 1964 Topor published his debut novel 'Le Locataire Chimérique' ('The Tenant', 1964), a psychological horror story about a man moving in an apartment where he is gradually pestered into madness by the other inhabitants. The work was adapted to film in 1976 by Roman Polanski and both the book as well as the picture are cult classics to this day. His 1980s pamphlet '100 Bonnes Raisons Pour Me Suicider' ('100 Good Reasons To Commit Suicide') is another example of his taste for black comedy. The most unique and unusual book in Topor's oeuvre must be 'Souvenir' (1972), a kind-of Fluxus obscurity featuring a text with all the sentences scratched out to the point of being unreadable. When the artist was interviewed on Dutch television by Adriaan van Dis to read some extracts from it Topor accepted the request by holding his hand in front of his mouth and mumble through it. In 1966 Topor illustrated 'Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard' (Anecdoted Topography of Chance) by Swiss assemblage artist Daniel Spoerri. Following a rambling conversation with his friend Robert Filliou in 1961, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories and anecdotes from both the original author and his friends Filliou, Emmett Williams, Dieter Roth and Roland Topor. Considered a "quasi-autobiographical tour de force", incredible book was published in 1966 by the Something Else Press in New York City. Topor added sketches of each object. Acknowledged as one of the most important and entertaining artists’ books of the postwar period, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance is a unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme movements.
Topor also had an interest in film. He designed the posters of movies such as 'L'Ibis Rouge' (1975), 'Ai no borei' ('The Empire of Passion', 1978) and 'Die Blechtrommel' ('The Tin Drum', 1979). His drawings can also be seen during the opening titles of Fernando Arrabal's experimental film 'Viva La Muerte' (1971) and during the magic lantern sequence in Federico Fellini's 'Il Casanova di Fellini' (1976). He also worked as an actor, appearing in Dusan Makavejev's 'Sweet Movie' (1974) and as Dracula's assistant Renfield in Werner Herzog's horror remake of 'Nosferatu' (1979). The latter film has also immortalized his notorious hysterical and chilling laugh.
Together with René Laloux, he created the animated shorts 'Les Temps Morts' (1964) and 'Les Escargots' ('The Snails', 1965) and the full length animated feature 'La Planète Sauvage' ('Fantastic Planet', 1973). The latter work was based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel 'Oms en Série' and takes place on a surreal planet where gigantic blue aliens treat humans as pets. 'La Planète Sauvage' won the special jury prize at the Festival of Cannes and has achieved cult status over the years.
Topor was a frequent guest in the philosophical radio show 'Des Papous dans la tête' (1984) at France Culture. Together with his good friend and playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, he wrote scripts for the satirical TV sketch series 'Merci Bernard' (1982-1984) on France 3 and 'Palace' (1988-1989) on Canal +. They wrote the theatrical play 'Batailles' (1983) about people of different social classes stranded on a raft, which was a satirical allegory of capitalism. Another collaborative project was the comedy film 'La Galette du Roi' (1985). In 1975 he recorded an album with his Belgian friend Freddy De Vree called 'Panic (The Golden Years)'. It features Topor being interviewed by De Vree on the Flemish public radio channel BRT 3. Apart from talking he also recites some nonsensical songs, including the Dutch nursery rhyme 'Iene miene mutte' and the tongue twister 'De kat krabt de krullen van de trap.' Topor also wrote two songs, 'Je m'aime' and 'Monte dans mon ambulance', which were set to music by François d'Aime and recorded by Japanese singer Megumi Satsu in 1980.
In the 1980s, Topor published in Le Petit Psikopat Illustré, an alternative review, and also teamed up with Belgian film director Henri Xhonneux to create the cult children's series 'Téléchat', a news show featuring anthropomorphic animals and objects and marionets presenting news. The program received various awards, including the 1984 award for best French broadcast for children and adolescents at the Festival of Cannes. It was also nominated for an Emmy in 1985.
Topor and Xhonneux joined forces again in 1989 to create the film 'Marquis', which was loosely based on the life and work of the notorious Marquis de Sade. The actors performed in animal masks and De Sade's penis was made into a separate puppet with a human face and the ability to talk. Due to the unusualness of its execution it became a cult favorite.
Very good copy with light wear.
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 250 pages, 23.5 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of Underground Film: A Critical History by Parker Tyler and published in London in 1971.
Parker Tyler (1904-1974), one of the few great American film critics, was intimate with and enormously respected by many of the underground and experimental filmmakers of his time. In this book, Tyler evaluated the Underground in general (from "Le Folie de Docteur Tube" by Abel Gance (1915) to "I Am Curious (Yellow)" by Vilgot Sjoman (1969)) and the seminal films in particular, covering the history and scope of the genre with insight and verve. Like Tyler's Screening of the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies, Underground Film is one of the masterpieces of cinema literature.
From the book jacket:
Parker Tyler was the first critic to write seriously about the early Underground cinema, especially about Stan Brakhage, Sidney Peterson, Gregory Markopoulos, Willard Maas and Maya Deren. Here he assesses their work, together with that of Kenneth Anger, Stan Vanderbeek, Andy Warhol, Bruce Connor, Paul Sharis, Charles Boultenhouse and other new film-makers. He discusses specific films, showing the variety of aims and techniques, and tracing their origins in Dada and Surrealism and in the classics of Bunuel, Cocteau, Clair, Eisenstein and Wiene. Parker Tyler's early criticism (e.g. Magic and Myth of the Movies) was concerned with the hidden dreams within the Hollywood commercial "establishment". The dreams have now come to the surface in the Underground cinema, which is concerned with new ways of perceiving, new inventions in unusual form the sound, new experiences of a clandestine or libertine nature, new theories of aesthetics. With taste and judgement Mr Tyler picks his way through the achievements and failures of a desperate, fertile, explosive period in the history of the cinema.
Chapters:
1971, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 168 pages, 25.5 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Vista / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of this classic book by David Curtis, published by the great Studio Vista in 1971.
"In this wide-ranging survey, David Curtis traces the development of film experimentation from the pioneer narrative efforts of Edwin S. Porter and the fantasmagoric and special effects of Emile Cohl and Norman Dawn early in the twentieth century to the New American Cinema films of Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, Ron Rice, and Andy Warhol in the 1960s and now in the 1970s. Mr Curtis regards the experimental film as a dynamic contribution to modern art, and he describes the excitement and struggle of film-makers discovering and expanding their medium. Among the many forms, styles, and ways of working that he illustrates and analyses are Abel Gance's rapid-cutting technique, Walter Ruttmann's 'city symphonies', Oskar Fischinger's abstract approaches, Len Lye's hand-painted images and kinetic use of colour separations, Curtis Harrington's introspective cinema, Francis Thompson's artistry of distortion, the collage animations of Stan Vanderbeek, Mike Durford, and Victor and Silvio Loffredo, Bruce Conner's adaptation of montage, Scott Bartlett's and Pat O'Neill's use of the optical printer, the computer films of Vanderbeck, Ken Knowlton, Marc Adrian, and Denys Irving, and the structural films of Kurt Kren, George Landow, and Mike Snow. Also examined are the accomplishments of such significant figures as Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, and Dimitri Kirsanov in the 1920s; Jean Cocteau, Watson and Webber, and Mary Ellen Bute in the 1930s, and the key American experimentalists Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and the Whitney Brothers among them, and the Canadian Norman McLaren in the 1940s, as well as the shifting cinematic approaches of Luis Buñuel. Represented are film-makers from Japan, England, Russia, Canada, and the United States, in addition to many previously uncharted independent film-makers of Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and other countries of Europe."
1988, Japanese
Softcover, 80 pages, 22 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Seibu / Tokyo
$100.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
Very scarce catalogue for the only major exhibition on Kiyoshi Koishi and Naniwa Shashin Club, held in 1988 at Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art and Seibu Contemporary Art Gallery.
Kiyoshi Koishi (March 26, 1908 - July 7, 1957) was one of the most prominent Japanese photographers in the first half of the 20th century. He was born in Osaka and became a member of Naniwa Shashin Club (浪華写真倶楽部, Naniwa Photography Club) in 1928.
In 1933 he published the monograph Shoka Shinkei (初夏神経, "Early Summer Nerves"), one of the most important works for Japanese modernist photography and one of the most sought after volumes. In this work, he used many photographic techniques such as photomontage and photograms, succeeding in creating surrealistic images. From 1938, he worked for the Japanese government in the magazine Shashin Shūhō (写真週報, "Photo Weekly"). And he became a war photographer of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Therefore, he was no longer able to produce avant-garde photo. After World War II, he continued to take many photographs. But tragically, he couldn't leave the works from the effects of restricted activity due to the war. In 1957, Koishi died by accident, falling on the station platform in Moji, Fukuoka Prefecture.
Very rarely seen outside of Japan, and little printed document there either, this catalogue collects a valuable photographic history of Koishi's stunning work, alongside the work of his fellow Naniwa Shashin Club members from 1921-1950.
1984, German
Softcover, 130 pages, 19 x 12.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kiepenheuer & Witsch / Köln
$30.00 - Out of stock
“Les Masochistes” by the great French illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, Roland Topor (1938–1997) was first published in 1960 and features over 100 pages of his absurdly humorous, perverse, masochistic human actions.
1984 edition published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in Köln.
Roland Topor was one of the most unique and versatile French artists of the second half of the 20th century, working prolifically as a provocative and spirited illustrator, author, humorist, satirist, play-write, actor, poet, painter, performer, sculptor, and much more. Son of a Parisian painter and sculptor of Polish-Jewish descent, in 1941, Topor's father was arrested and sent to camp Pithiviers. Two years later, the family moved to Savoy, where they baptised their son to hide his real identity. After the war, he studied art at the Institute of Beaux-Arts in Paris. He discovered surrealism, Hieronymus Bosch and the scatological plays of Alfred Jarry, which would influence his work and his attitude to life in general.
In 1958, he published his first work in magazines such as Bizarre and later Elle. Three years later, he joined the anarchic group of artists who created the controversial magazine Hara-Kiri, publishing his surreal juxtapositions of people, animals, plants and objects. Topor seldom used words in his illustrations, leaving all power to the visual. In February 1962, Topor, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Olivier O. Olivier, Jacques Sternberg, Christian Zeimert, Abel Ogier and Fernando Arrabal founded the "Mouvement Panique" ("Panic Movement"). This collective focused on creating absurd and bewildering performances to reject the commercialization of surrealism. The founders created many provocative and surreal works in the next decade before Jodorowsky dissolved the movement in 1973. However, Topor continued making scandalous plays afterwards, including 'Le Bébé de Monsieur Laurent' (1975) and 'Vinci avait raison' (1976).
In print, Topor's history is legendary. In 1964 Topor published his debut novel 'Le Locataire Chimérique' ('The Tenant', 1964), a psychological horror story about a man moving in an apartment where he is gradually pestered into madness by the other inhabitants. The work was adapted to film in 1976 by Roman Polanski and both the book as well as the picture are cult classics to this day. His 1980s pamphlet '100 Bonnes Raisons Pour Me Suicider' ('100 Good Reasons To Commit Suicide') is another example of his taste for black comedy. The most unique and unusual book in Topor's oeuvre must be 'Souvenir' (1972), a kind-of Fluxus obscurity featuring a text with all the sentences scratched out to the point of being unreadable. When the artist was interviewed on Dutch television by Adriaan van Dis to read some extracts from it Topor accepted the request by holding his hand in front of his mouth and mumble through it. In 1966 Topor illustrated 'Topographie Anécdotée du Hasard' (Anecdoted Topography of Chance) by Swiss assemblage artist Daniel Spoerri. Following a rambling conversation with his friend Robert Filliou in 1961, Daniel Spoerri one day mapped the objects lying at random on the table in his room, adding a rigorously scientific description of each. These objects subsequently evoked associations, memories and anecdotes from both the original author and his friends Filliou, Emmett Williams, Dieter Roth and Roland Topor. Considered a "quasi-autobiographical tour de force", incredible book was published in 1966 by the Something Else Press in New York City. Topor added sketches of each object. Acknowledged as one of the most important and entertaining artists’ books of the postwar period, An Anecdoted Topography of Chance is a unique collaborative work by four artists associated with the Fluxus and Nouveau Réalisme movements.
Topor also had an interest in film. He designed the posters of movies such as 'L'Ibis Rouge' (1975), 'Ai no borei' ('The Empire of Passion', 1978) and 'Die Blechtrommel' ('The Tin Drum', 1979). His drawings can also be seen during the opening titles of Fernando Arrabal's experimental film 'Viva La Muerte' (1971) and during the magic lantern sequence in Federico Fellini's 'Il Casanova di Fellini' (1976). He also worked as an actor, appearing in Dusan Makavejev's 'Sweet Movie' (1974) and as Dracula's assistant Renfield in Werner Herzog's horror remake of 'Nosferatu' (1979). The latter film has also immortalized his notorious hysterical and chilling laugh.
Together with René Laloux, he created the animated shorts 'Les Temps Morts' (1964) and 'Les Escargots' ('The Snails', 1965) and the full length animated feature 'La Planète Sauvage' ('Fantastic Planet', 1973). The latter work was based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel 'Oms en Série' and takes place on a surreal planet where gigantic blue aliens treat humans as pets. 'La Planète Sauvage' won the special jury prize at the Festival of Cannes and has achieved cult status over the years.
Topor was a frequent guest in the philosophical radio show 'Des Papous dans la tête' (1984) at France Culture. Together with his good friend and playwright Jean-Michel Ribes, he wrote scripts for the satirical TV sketch series 'Merci Bernard' (1982-1984) on France 3 and 'Palace' (1988-1989) on Canal +. They wrote the theatrical play 'Batailles' (1983) about people of different social classes stranded on a raft, which was a satirical allegory of capitalism. Another collaborative project was the comedy film 'La Galette du Roi' (1985). In 1975 he recorded an album with his Belgian friend Freddy De Vree called 'Panic (The Golden Years)'. It features Topor being interviewed by De Vree on the Flemish public radio channel BRT 3. Apart from talking he also recites some nonsensical songs, including the Dutch nursery rhyme 'Iene miene mutte' and the tongue twister 'De kat krabt de krullen van de trap.' Topor also wrote two songs, 'Je m'aime' and 'Monte dans mon ambulance', which were set to music by François d'Aime and recorded by Japanese singer Megumi Satsu in 1980.
In the 1980s, Topor published in Le Petit Psikopat Illustré, an alternative review, and also teamed up with Belgian film director Henri Xhonneux to create the cult children's series 'Téléchat', a news show featuring anthropomorphic animals and objects and marionets presenting news. The program received various awards, including the 1984 award for best French broadcast for children and adolescents at the Festival of Cannes. It was also nominated for an Emmy in 1985.
Topor and Xhonneux joined forces again in 1989 to create the film 'Marquis', which was loosely based on the life and work of the notorious Marquis de Sade. The actors performed in animal masks and De Sade's penis was made into a separate puppet with a human face and the ability to talk. Due to the unusualness of its execution it became a cult favorite.
Very good copy with tanning to spine and page edges.