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.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
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
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.
1990, Japanese
Softcover, 176 pages, 13 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Issue No.39 of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, founded in 1984 by Makoto Orui, who later became art director for Purple magazine in France and Rockin’on magazine in Japan. SALE2 was active for about 14 years during the 1980s—1990s, published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. With Orui's distinct design SALE2 developed an exclusive curated editorial set on ‘erotisism and its spiritual philosophy’, with each issue exploring different themes and features, heavy on fetishism and erotic art.
Issue No.39, the "Lesbianism" issue features writings by Rita Mae Brown, Alice Walker, Simone de Beauvoir, and many more, interspersed with erotic female imagery (photography, film stills, drawings, paintings) with facing images of flowers by famed German photographer Karl Blossfeldt. Also includes John Kacere, and catalogue/advertisments/clippings of Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Cerf, Carlo Mollino, Pierre Molinier, Irving Claw, Jim, Betty Page, Sweet Gwen, Diva Bizarre, Centurian, Bizarre Comix, and much more...
Very heavily illustrated throughout with erotic photography and artwork, all texts in Japanese.
Very Good copy.
1991, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$54.00 - In stock -
Most Anglo-American readers know Bataille as a novelist. The Accursed Share provides an excellent introduction to Bataille the philosopher. Here he uses his unique economic theory as the basis for an incisive inquiry into the very nature of civilization. Unlike conventional economic models based on notions of scarcity, Bataille's theory develops the concept of excess: a civilization, he argues, reveals its order most clearly in the treatment of its surplus energy. The result is a brilliant blend of ethics, aesthetics, and cultural anthropology that challenges both mainstream economics and ethnology.
Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include The Story of the Eye, The Blue of Noon, The Accursed Share, and Theory of Religion.
A serious book of political economy that also claims 'the sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.'... The Accursed Share is a brilliant product of [Bataille's] loony-tunes coupling of critical genres: pseudo/antisurrealist manifestos, leftist political treatises, erotics, Hegel 'n' Nietzsche studies, mysticism, anthropology, and sun worship. - Erik Davis, The Voice Literary Supplement
1993, English
Softcover, 464 pages, 15.3 x 22.7 cm
Published by
Zone Books / New York
$69.00 - In stock -
The three volumes of The Accursed Share address what Georges Bataille sees as the paradox of utility: namely, if being useful means serving a further end, then the ultimate end of utility can only be uselessness. The first volume of The Accursed Share, the only one published before Bataille's death, treated this paradox in economic terms, showing that "it is not necessity but its contrary, luxury, that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems." This Zone edition includes in a single volume a reconstruction, based on the versions published in Bataille's posthumous collected works, of his intended continuation of The Accursed Share.
In the second and third volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility, respectively from an anthropological and an ethical perspective. He first analyzes the fears and fascination, the prohibitions and the transgressions attached to the realm of eroticism as so many expressions of the "uselessness" of erotic life. It is just this expenditure of excess energy that demarcates the realm of human autonomy, of independence relative to "useful" ends. The study of eroticism therefore leads naturally to the examination of human sovereignty, in which Bataille defines the sovereign individual as one who consumes and does not labor, creating a life beyond the realm of utility.
Georges Bataille (1897-1962) was a French writer, essayist, and philosopher whose works include The Story of the Eye, The Blue of Noon, The Accursed Share, and Theory of Religion.
1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 127 pages, 13.5 x 22 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$160.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful first English hardcover edition of George Bataille's Story of the Eye, published by Marion Boyars, London, in 1979. Translated by Joachim Neugroschal with accompanying essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes.
"The caress of the eye over the skin is so utterly, so extraordinarily gentle, and the sensation is so bizarre that it has something of a rooster's horrible crowing." - G.B.
A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, Bataille's first novel, published under the pseudonym 'Lord Auch', is still his most notorious work. Called a "metaphysician of evil, Bataille wrote the 1928 novella "Story of the Eye (French: L'histoire de l'œil) as a psychoanalytical task. In this explicit erotic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacrilegious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille's obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.
This edition also includes Susan Sontag's superb study of pornography as art, 'The Pornographic Imagination', as well as Roland Barthes' essay 'The Metaphor of the Eye', which was first published in Bataille's own journal Critique, shortly after Bataille's death in 1962. Barthes' analysis focuses on the centrality of the eye to this series of vignettes, and notices that it is interchangeable with eggs, bulls' testicles and other ovular objects within the narrative. He also traces a second series of liquid metaphors within the text, which flow through tears, cat's milk, egg yolks, frequent urination scenes, blood and semen.
Georges Bataille (1897-1962), French essayist and novelist, was born in Billom, France. He converted to Catholicism, then later to Marxism, and was interested in psychoanalysis and mysticism, forming a secret society dedicated to glorifying human sacrifice. Leading a simple life as the curator of a municipal library, Bataille was involved on the fringes of Surrealism, founding the Surrealist magazine Documents in 1929, and editing the literary review Critique from 1946 until his death.
Very Good copy in original VG dust jacket, preserved under mylar wrap. Scarce in this edition with dust jacket.
1987, English
Softcover (French-fold), 169 pages, 22 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Eridanos Press / Colorado
$60.00 - Out of stock
Long out-of-print 1987 Eridanos Press edition, the first in English, of French surrealist writer and ethnographer Michel Leiris' Nights as Day Days as Night.
Nights as Day is a diary of over a hundred short dreams composed over the course of four decades. As the title implies (Nuits sans nuit, et quelques jours sans jour is literally "Nights without darkness, and a few days without light"), the texts in this volume pursue an extended pun on the porous demarcation between waking and dreaming. By transcribing the events of his daily life as if they were episodes in an ongoing dream, by recording his dreams as if they embodied the true narrative of his waking existence, Leiris in effect defuses the distinction between the two. "I have always behaved as if I were on stage," Leiris confesses in Manhood, and the roles he executes in these texts are various: he is a hero of Greek or Racinian tragedy, martyr of the French Resistance, matador, bantamweight champion of the world, Chaplinesque victim of the Eternal Feminine, Ben Turpin, Gary Cooper, but most frequently he simply plays a mild-mannered minor functionary and author beset by the usual anxieties and fantasies of the average homme moyen sensuel. One of the most striking aspects of these texts is their ordinariness, their deliberate dailiness, their eschewal of lyricism in favor of the unprepossessing prose of the world. Whatever the setting (music halls, fairgrounds, circus shows, boxing matches, museum exhibitions, exotic lands, brothels, streets of Paris or Hollywood movies), Leiris concentrates on estranging the familiar, on unsettling the commonplace, on eliciting the foreignness of the most domestic, local detail. And it is thus that Nights as Days, Days as Night rejoins Leiris's autobiographical and ethnographic enterprises: all it takes is a minor adjustment of lighting or a slight troping of rhetoric for daily life to take on the uncertain distance of dreams, and conversely, for dream to be de-mystified into the quotidian.—R.S.
Michel Leiris (1901—1990) grew up in comfortable Parisian bourgeois surroundings. The earnest student of chemistry was soon seduced by the exciting world of cafés and cabarets, and particularly by the heady stimulus of Dada and Surrealism. Introduced to surrealist circles by his lifelong friend André Masson, Leiris by the late 1920s had become one of the earlier defectors from the movement. Subsequently, he co-founded, with George Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, Pierre Klossowski and Roger Caillois the College de Sociologie. His continuing ethnographic fascination with the cultures of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America, as well as his extensive fieldwork in Sudan and Ethiopia, have produced such literary fruits as his unique travel account L'Afrique Fantôme (1933). He is also author of a four-volume autobiography, La Règle du Jeu, of which the first volume was published in English as Manhood. Michel Leiris lived in Paris with his wife, owner of the Galérie Louise Leiris, a major art institution in the post-war period. Leiris has written extensively on major modern artists-among them Miró, Giacometti, Duchamp, Lam, and Bacon.
Richard Sieburth has translated Hölderlin's Hymns and Fragments and Benjamin's Moscow Diary, as well as works by Michaux and Guillevic. He is also the author of a study of Ezra Pound and Remy de Gourmont. He teaches French and Comparative Literature at New York University.
Good—Very Good copy with some light buggery (insect nibbles to cover edge and spine), light foxing to block edge, clean interior, uncreased spine. Stiff French-fold covers.
2012, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
Poet, novelist, playwright, and chess enthusiast, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was one of the French belle époque’s most compelling literary figures. During his lifetime, Roussel’s work was vociferously championed by the surrealists, but never achieved the widespread acclaim for which he yearned. New Impressions of Africa is undoubtedly Roussel’s most extraordinary work. Since its publication in 1932, this weird and wonderful poem has slowly gained cult status, and its admirers have included Salvador Dalì — who dubbed it the most “ungraspably poetic” work of the era — André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Michel Foucault, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery.
Roussel began writing New Impressions of Africa in 1915 while serving in the French Army during the First World War and it took him seventeen years to complete. “It is hard to believe the immense amount of time composition of this kind of verse requires,” he later commented. Mysterious, unnerving, hilarious, haunting, both rigorously logical and dizzyingly sublime, it is truly one of the hidden masterpieces of twentieth-century modernism.
This bilingual edition of New Impressions of Africa presents the original French text and the English poet Mark Ford’s lucid, idiomatic translation on facing pages. It also includes an introduction outlining the poem’s peculiar structure and evolution, notes explaining its literary and historical references, and the fifty-nine illustrations anonymously commissioned by Roussel, via a detective agency, from Henri-A. Zo.
1983, English
Softcover, 317 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
John Calder / London
Riverrun Press / New Jersey
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1983 Calder / Riverrun Press US paperback edition in English of Raymond Roussel's classic, Impressions of Africa : A Novel, translated by Lindy Foord and Rayner Heppenstall.
"Although never a member of the official surrealist movement, Raymond Roussel is undoubtedly one of the most important surrealist writers. A contemporary of Marcel Proust, he is beginning to be considered a writer whose influence could well be of the same importance, and such modern innovators as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Eugene lonesco have acknowledged their debt to him as one of the principal fathers of the nouveau roman and the 'theatre of the absurd'. Raymond Roussel wrote several novels, some in verse and some in prose, and Impressions of Africa is the first of the two major prose works. It makes easy and enjoyable reading, being an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion with an unusual time sequence, making use of fortuitous wit and jeux de mots and using all the surrealist techniques of automatic writing and private allusion, that while not spoiling the enjoyment of the casual reader add an extra dimension to the book for the student of literature.
Raymond Roussel, a man of great wealth, was born in 1877 and spent most of his life in Paris. An eccentric who made two world tours during which he hardly ever left his stateroom or hotel, he believed that a work of fiction should be a pure product of the imagination and this is certainly true of Impressions of Africa. Always impeccably dressed, he liked his clothes to be always brand new, and his conversation was as fastidious in that he avoided all general topics for fear of being involved in morbidity of any kind. This retreat from life is obvious in the fantastical nature of his work. The publication of his books was originally financed by himself, but in recent years he has had an important revival in France and he is undoubtedly one of the really unusual seminal minds of the modern movement in literature. This translation has been made by Lindy Foord and her father Rayner Heppenstall, the well-known novelist and critic. Mr Heppenstall has been a Roussel specialist for many years and was the first to bring him to the attention of the readers of British literary journals."—publisher's 1983 blurb.
Very Good copy.
1983 / 2003, English
Softcover, 254 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Calder and Boyars / London
Riverrun Press / New Jersey
$60.00 - Out of stock
First 1983 Calder / Riverrun Press paperback edition in English of Raymond Roussel's classic, Locus Solus (1914), translated by Rupert Copeland.
Cuningham Canterel, a scholarly scientist whose enormous wealth imposes no limits upon his prolific ingenuity, is showing a group of visitors round Locus Solus, his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture representing a naked child, a road-mender's tool which, activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth, a vast aquarium in which human beings can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory — by each item in Canterel's exhibition there hangs a tale, a tale such as only that amazing genius Roussel, one of the founding fathers of the modern novel, could tell. As Canterel's devices become more and more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of Roussel's stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood, until the reader finds himself swept along in a torrent of mingled wonder and hilarity.
Locus Solus, first published in 1914, is perhaps Roussel's most perfect masterpiece. Based, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition (which the interested reader will find outlined in Rayner Heppenstall's Raymond Roussel), this book invites the reader to enter a very special world of the imagination, a hauntingly unforgettable world which in its innocence, extravagance and deep reasonableness is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century. This accurate yet colloquial translation by Rupert Copeland Cuningham perfectly captures the unique eccentricity of the original.
Very Good copy.
1966, English
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 98 pages, 14 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Calder and Boyars / London
$45.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of Raymond Roussel : A Critical Study by Rayner Heppenstall, published in 1966 by London's Calder and Boyars as part of their 'French Surrealism' series of books. This sympathetic study by Rayner Hoppenstall, a British novelist, critic and Roussel translator whose work has much in common with modern French literature, was the first to appear in the English language.
Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his works he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau roman.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket. Some tanning to edges.
1995, English
Softcover, 314 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
October Books / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
First 1995 edition of this long out-of-print study by Hal Foster, published The MIT Press and October Books. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death.
Surrealism has long been seen as its founder, André Breton, wanted it to be seen: as a movement of love and liberation. In Compulsive Beauty, Foster reads surrealism from its other, darker side: as an art given over to the uncanny, to the compulsion to repeat and the drive toward death. To this end Foster first restages the difficult encounter of surrealism with Freudian psychoanalysis, then redefines the crucial categories of surrealism—the marvelous, convulsive beauty, objective chance—in terms of the Freudian uncanny, or the return of familar things made strange by repression. Next, with the art of Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, and Alberto Giacometti in mind, Foster develops a theory of the surrealist image as a working over of a primal fantasy. This leads him finally to propose as a summa of surrealism a body of work often shunted to its margins: the dolls of Hans Bellmer, so many traumatic tableaux that point to difficult connections not only between sadism and masochism but also between surrealism and fascism. At this point Compulsive Beauty turns to the social dimension of the surrealist uncanny. First Foster reads the surrealist repertoire of automatons and mannequins as a reflection on the uncanny processes of mechanization and commodification. Then he considers the surrealist use of outmoded images as an attempt to work through the historical repression effected by these same processes. In a brief conclusion he discusses the fate of surrealism today in a world become surrealistic. Compulsive Beauty not only offers a deconstructive reading of surrealism, long neglected by Anglo-American art history, but also participates in a postmodern reconsideration of modernism, the dominant accounts of which have obscured its involvements in desire and trauma, capitalist shock and technological development.
Very Good copy.
1965, French
Softcover, 34 pages, 21 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Alexander Iolas / Paris
$65.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Un Hommage a Wols" at Alexandre Iolas Gallery, Paris, in February 1965. Illustrated throughout with the paintings and drawings of German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols, alongside an excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's text "Wols in person", Gallery Europe, Paris. This copy includes "Oevres exposées" booklet inserted, listing the works exhibited at the Galerie Alexandre Iolas. Texts in French.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Very Good copy with light tanning.
2023, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 16.5 x 23.6 cm
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$28.00 - Out of stock
Sibylle Ruppert's "Autodévoration" zine, published by Innen Books, Zürich, in 2023. First Edition. Supported by Blue Velvet Projects.
Sibylle Ruppert (1942, Frankfurt — 2011, Paris) created a radical oeuvre of paintings, drawings and collages throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's in a brutal aesthetic between dark surrealism, eroticism and an intimate but fierce processing of her own private traumas. Ruppert was born during an air raid on September 8th, 1942. It was the night of the first massive bombing of Frankfurt during World War II. In 1959, at the age of 17, Sibylle was admitted to the Städelschule in Frankfurt. Shortly after, she left for Paris, where she enrolled in a ballet school. During a visit to New York, she decided to give up her dancing career, returned to Europe and became a full-time artist. In the 80’s she started giving art classes in prisons, mental hospitals, and drug addiction rehabilitation centers. Her large format charcoal drawings and etchings are all characterized by an extremely detailed and elaborate depiction. Her oeuvre is inspired by the morbid and obscene writings of Marquis de Sade, Lautréamont and Georges Bataille. As well as the literary influences cited above visual traces and echoes can be observed of Hieronymus Bosch, H.R. Giger, Henry Fuseli, Hans Bellmer, William Blake and Francis Bacon, though this does not in any way detract from her singularly visceral and kinetic imagination. In her surrealistic works, the bodily depictions are always in motion; writhing, straining, collapsing, and seemingly undergoing a monstrous transformation from human anatomies into distorted masses of abstract shape. Sibylle Ruppert died in 2011, withdrawn from any social and public life.
2018, English
Softcover, 40 pages, 16.5 x 23.6 cm
Ed. of 500,
Published by
Innen Books / Zürich
$28.00 - In stock -
Limited edition publication from Innen Books in Zürich dedicated to the erotic drawings of the great Francis Picabia. Selected works from 1922 to 1950, published in an edition of 1000 copies only.
Francis Picabia (22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet, typographist, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence. After experimenting with Impressionism and pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the defining figures in the Dada movement in the United States and in France; indeed, Andre Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. He was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.
1988, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 20 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
1988 edition of the 1978 translation of Comte de Lautréamont's Maldoror and Poems.
"Darkly poetic, this modern translation conveys the unique eloquence of the original text. This volume also contains a translation of the epigrammatic Poésies.
Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece."—publisher's blurb
Very Good copy.
1965, English
Softcover, 342 pages, 20.2 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
New Directions / New York
$55.00 - Out of stock
First New Directions English translation, published by New Directions in 1965. With a contribution by James Laughlin.
The macabre but beautiful work, Les Chants de Maldoror, has achieved a considerable reputation as one of the earliest and most extraordinary examples of Surrealist writing. It is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religious fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautréamont: “He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance.”
Little is known of the author of Maldoror, Isidore Ducasse, self-styled Comte de Lautréamont, except that he was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1846 and died in Paris at the age of twenty-four. When first published in 1868-9, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the nineties the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Léon Bloy, Maeterlinck, and Rémy de Gourmont. Later still, Lautréamont was to be canonized as one of their principal “ancestors” by the Paris Surrealists.
This edition, translated by Guy Wernham, includes also a long introduction to a never-written, or now lost, volume of poetry. Thus, except for a few letters, it gives all the surviving literary work of Lautréamont.
Very Good with light wear and tanning.
1996, English
Softcover, 285 pages, 22.5 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Amok Books / Los Angeles
$35.00 - Out of stock
Georges Bataille presents the case of the most infamous villain of the Middle Ages: Gilles de Rais. Fascinated with the depths of human experience—the meeting points of sexuality, violence, ritual, spirituality, and death—Bataille examines with dispassionate clarity the legendary crimes, trials and confessions of this grotesque and still-horrifying 15th-century child-murderer, sadist, alchemist, necrophile and practitioner of the Black Arts. Gilles de Rais began his remarkable career as lieutenant to the devout martyr and saint Joan of Arc; after her execution, he fled to his estates in the countryside of France, where he began to ritually slaughter hundreds of children. After his arrest and subsequent trials, he was hanged and burned at Nantes, France on October 25, 1440. The latter section of The Trial of Gilles de Rais consists of the actual ecclesiastical and secular trial transcripts, annotated by Bataille, and translated from the ecclesiastical Latin by Pierre Klossowski.
All editions now out-of-print.
1974, German
Softcover, 128 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Bündner Kunsthaus / Chur
$200.00 - Out of stock
Very rarely seen, first and only edition of Giger's Passagen: Werkkatalog 1971-1974, designed entirely by Giger himself and published in a limited edition in 1974 as the continuation of the first oeuvre catalog, 'A Rh +' published in 1971. Packed with amazing content, much not documented elsewhere), this book first and foremost features a fully illustrated catalogue of Giger's iconic Passagen works in colour and b/w. Alongside texts by various critics, writers, and colleagues, including Sandro Fischli, H. Hartmann, Fritz Billeter, and Sergius Golowin, the book traverses many different projects, exhibits, happenings and social gatherings, mostly photographed by Giger himself, including the work of (and/or his collaborations with) Walter Wegmüller, Li Tobler, Claude Sandoz, Timothy Leary, Friedrich Kahn, Wolfgang Hausamann, and more. Also catalogued in colour and b/w are Giger's magnificent landscape works dating from 1972-1974. Includes a biography, bibliography, full work listings and photo credits, closing with a lovely portrait of Swiss stage actress, gallerist, partner and model for many of Giger's paintings, Li Tobler (30 November 1947 – 19 May 1975).
Good copy.
1989, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$180.00 - Out of stock
Rare first 1989 Japanese edition of H. R. Giger's Biomechanics. In his classic series of oversized and visually overwhelming early art volumes, this book comprises a retrospective showcase, from 1964—88, of Giger's work, designed by and with running commentary by Giger himself, with over 200 drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and including concept art for the film Poltergeist II, and design paintings for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer albums. With a foreword by legendary Science Fiction author and longtime Giger fan Harlan Ellison, who dubs him "out latter-day Hieronymus Bosch."
Note: the Japanese editions of these books often had better reproductions from the original plates than the German and English language editions.
Very Good copy some light wear.
1964, Spanish
Softcover (staple-bound), 36 pages, 21.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Museo de Arte Moderno / Mexico City
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes / Mexico City
$300.00 - In stock -
Very rare 1964 catalogue of surrealist Remedios Varo (1908—1963), recorded as the first book devoted solely to the work of Varo, published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition presented by the Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, August 3—31, 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with the paintings of Varo reproduced in colour and b/w, plus portrait of the artist. Introduction by Horacio Flores-Sanchez, essays by Raul Flores Guerrero and Carlos Pellicer. Texts in Spanish. A wonderful historical document of a visionary artist.
Remedios Varo (1908—1963)
During her childhood in Spain, Varo was influenced by her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled. Following her graduation from art school, she pursued Surrealism and political change. She moved to Paris in 1937, later finding that she could not return to Spain following the Spanish Civil War. Varo associated and exhibited with the Surrealists, exploring magic, alchemy, and analytical psychology. As World War II threatened Paris, Spanish refugees came under threat. Varo was arrested and held in early 1940. After her release, she fled Paris in the face of the Nazi invasion, and by late 1941 had secured passage to Mexico. In Mexico, Varo remained friends with fellow refugees from her European Surrealist circle, including artist Leonora Carrington, who became her closest friend and collaborator. In the late 1940s, as she supported herself through commercial illustration, Varo began to develop her mature personal style. During succeeding decades, she devoted increased time and energy to her art, and she delved further into the fantastical sources that captured her imagination. Her death of a heart attack in 1963 occurred as she was reaching new renown.
Very Good copy with light wear to boards. Previous owner inscription to inside front cover.
1980, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 362 pages, 24.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Manfred Pawlak / Herrsching
$80.00 - In stock -
First edition of the deluxe, over-sized 1980 hardcover German re-print of The Philosophy in the Boudoir by Marquis de Sade (1740—1814), illustrated by Sibylle Ruppert (1942—2011), introduction by Guillaume Apollinaire and afterword by Jacques Lacan, published by Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching. German language.
Philosophy In The Boudoir (La philosophie dans le boudoir, 1795), is the most concise, representative text of all the Marquis de Sade's works, containing his notorious doctrine of libertinage expounded in full, coupled with liberal doses of savage, unbridled eroticism, cruelty and violent sexuality. The renegade philosophies put forward here would later rank among the cornerstones of Andre Breton's surrealist manifesto.
Though initially considered a work of pornography, La philosophie dans le boudoir has come to be considered a socio-political drama and perhaps the most representative of the Marquis de Sade's work and philosophy on religion and morality. Dedicated to "voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex", it tells of a young virgin ruthlessly stripped of virtue and schooled in the ways of sexual perversion and libertine philosophy. Continually throughout the work, Sade makes the argument that one must embrace atheism, reject society's beliefs about pleasure and pain, and further makes his argument that if any crime is committed while seeking pleasure, it cannot be condemned.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket. Tanning to page edges.
1981, English
Softcover, 204 pages, 21 x 13.34 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$38.00 - Out of stock
On a crowded bus at midday, Raymond Queneau observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated, the first man appropriates it. Later, in another part of town, Queneau sees the man being advised by a friend to sew another button on his overcoat. Exercises in Style retells this unexceptional tale ninety-nine times, employing the sonnet and the alexandrine, “Ze Frrench” and “Cockney.” An “Abusive” chapter heartily deplores the events; “Opera English” lends them grandeur. In 1947, when Exercises in Style first appeared in French, it led to Queneau’s election to the highly prestigious Académie des Goncourt. He once told Barbara Wright that of all of his books, this was the one he most wished to see translated. He rendered her his “heartiest congratulations,” adding: “I have always thought that nothing is untranslatable. Here is new proof. And it is accomplished with all the intended humor. It has not only linguistic knowledge and ingenuity, it also has that.”
Raymond Queneau was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo, notable for his wit and cynical humour. Born in Le Havre in 1903, Queneau went to Paris when he was 17. In 1924 Queneau met and briefly joined the Surrealists, but never fully shared their penchants for automatic writing or ultra-left politics. Like many surrealists, he entered psychoanalysis—however, not in order to stimulate his creative abilities, but for personal reasons, as with Leiris, Bataille, and Crevel. Now, seeing Queneau's work in retrospect, it seems inevitable. The Surrealists tried to achieve a sort of pure expression from the unconscious, without mediation of the author's self-aware "persona." Queneau's texts, on the contrary, are quite deliberate products of the author's conscious mind, of his memory, and his intentionality. Although Queneau's novels give an impression of enormous spontaneity, they were in fact painstakingly conceived in every small detail.
Re-print of the 1981 edition.
2002, English
Softcover, 220 pages, 13.5 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Twisted Spoon Press / Prague
$34.00 - Out of stock
Part psychological farce, Ungar tells a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life.
Set in Prague, The Maimed relates the story of a highly neurotic, socially inept bank clerk who is eventually impelled by his widowed landlady into servicing her sexual appetites. At the same time he must witness the steady physical and mental deterioration of his lifelong friend who is suffering from an unnamed disease. Part psychological farce, Ungar tells a dark, ironic tale of chaos overtaking one's meticulously ordered life. One of only two novels Ungar wrote, this translation marks the first time his work has appeared in English. His novellas and short stories are collected in Boys & Murderers.
"... a sexual hell, full of filth, crime and the deepest melancholy—a monomaniacal digression, if you will, but nevertheless the digression of an inwardly pure artistry, which one might hope will mature into a less one-sided view and representation of life and humanity." – Thomas Mann
"... great and terrible, alluring and repulsive—unforgettable, although one would like to forget it and flee the evil sense of oppression it creates." – Stefan Zweig
"The Maimed is a fascinating novel, rich in symbolism, rife with grievous suffering, and permeated with psychological torture ... Kevin Blahut's translation is exceptional given the many nuances that exist in Prague German." – Slavic and East European Journal
translated from the German by Kevin Blahut.
illustrated by Pavel Růt
Hermann Ungar (1893-1929) was a German-speaking Jew from Moravia who was active as a writer in Berlin and Prague in the 1920s. “The most important writer of the decade” were the words the Neue Freie Presse, the leading Viennese newspaper, called Ungar in 1927. This was high praise for a contemporary of Döblin, Kafka, and Musil. Feted in France after the publication of the translation of The Maimed in 1928, Ungar wrote three plays, two novels, and a collection of novellas and short stories, before he died from peritonitis at the age of thirty-six.
1964, German
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 22.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Galerie Dieter Brusberg / Hannover
$55.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful, scarce 1964 catalogue published on the occasion of the two-person exhibition between married artist-couple Unica Zürn and Hans Bellmer - "Unica Zürn: Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, Radierungen; Hans Bellmer im Studio: Druckgraphik, Zeichnungenheld", held at Galerie Dieter Brusberg, Hannover, April-June 1964. Profusely illustrated throughout with portraits of the artists together alongside biographies, a selection of featured works, plus a fully illustrated catalogue of their exhibited drawings and prints. Texts in German.
Very Good copy, light general wear and tanning.
1966/1967, German
Softcover, 21 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kestner Gesellschaft / Hannover
$65.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of this wonderful catalogue published on the occasion of a comprehensive exhibition of works by the German surrealist visionary Hans Bellmer (1902—1975) at the Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, April 1966—June 1967(!). Absolutely brimming with content, profusely illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with Bellmer's magnificent drawings, paintings, photographs, doll sculptures, and an extensive overview of his graphic works, alongside many texts, inc. notes by Bellmer himself, forward to Georges Bataille's "Madame Edwarda", list of Bellmer's works, exhibitions, bibliography, unseen photographic portraits, and many adverts for Bellmer's exhibitions and lithographic editions, evidence of the immense popularity of the master of European erotica surrealism in Europe. Texts in German.
Very Good copy.