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:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Fluxus
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Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
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.
2024, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 22 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$59.00 - Out of stock
Sigríður Björnsdóttir met 22-year-old Dieter Roth in Copenhagen in 1952. A year later, Roth joined her in Reykjavík, and in 1957 they married. 50 years later, Björnsdóttir recounts their meeting, the ups and downs of their marriage, their life with their children and their eventual separation. 'Dieter Roth in My Life' is an honest and personal account of a period in Björnsdóttir’s life, shared with a man she describes as the love of her life who went on to become a successful and highly influential artist. Beyond her own artistic activities, Björnsdóttir describes her collaborative and experimental work with Roth, their encounters with friends and peers within the tightly woven Icelandic creative community and the beginnings of Roth’s multifaceted practice. Sigríður Björnsdóttir is an art therapist and artist living in Reykjavík. She graduated from the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts in 1952 and went on to become a pioneer in art therapy, practicing in Iceland and lecturing worldwide.
2024, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 17.27 x 10.92 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$29.00 - In stock -
Introduction by Jean-Luc Nancy
Translated by Stéphanie Boulard and Timothy Lavenz
In 1902, Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s “Lord Chandos Letter” articulated a deep crisis of faith in language; having “lost completely the ability to think or speak of anything coherently,” the titular character abandons literature in favor of silence. In The Answer to Lord Chandos, a text the author spent forty-one years meticulously crafting, Pascal Quignard passionately challenges this withdrawal and urges us not to forsake the power of poetry. By uniting us with the tremendous cry at nature’s birth, literature rejuvenates our connection to the universe and transcends the strictures of acquired speech. In this exhilarating exhortation, which meditates on Emily Brontë, Handel, Rembrandt, and the legend of Bluebeard, Quignard inspires us to resurrect the ecstatic eruption of nature through the written word.
In an introduction to this first English edition, French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy illuminates the core question animating this debate, which has resonated within literature since its inception: Can poetry give access to the real? Quignard’s resounding answer offers a testament to the immense value of literary expression.
Pascal Quignard (b. 1948) is the French author of over sixty books of fiction, essays, and his own genre of fragmented philosophical reflection: an amalgamation of personal journal, historical narrative, and poetic theory. His books in English include The Hatred of Music, All the World’s Mornings, Sex and Terror, and The Sexual Night, as well as the multiple volumes of his ongoing book project The Last Kingdom, which to date includes The Roving Shadows, The Silent Crossing, Abysses, The Fount of Time, and Dying of Thinking.
Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021) was a French philosopher. The subject of a monograph by Jacques Derrida, his long career saw a wide range of books on various thinkers, art, film, and the ideas of community, justice, and freedom. Nearly all his major works have been translated into English, including The Inoperative Community, The Birth to Presence, The Experience of Freedom, The Gravity of Thought, and Being Singular Plural.
2023, English
Softcover, 344 pages, 20.9 x 15 cm
Published by
Strange Attractor / London
$45.00 - In stock -
A revised edition of Phil Baker's critically lauded biography of artist and occultist, Austin Osman Spare.
London has harbored many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956).
A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man."
But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river. Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions, and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality.
Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologized since his death. This groundbreaking biographical study offers wide-ranging insights into Spare's art, mind and world, reconnecting him with the art history that ignored him and exploring his parallel London; a bygone place of pub pianists, wealthy alchemists, and monstrous owls.
This richly readable and illuminating biography takes us deep into the strange inner world that this most enigmatic of artists inhabited, shedding new light while allowing just a few shadowy corners to flourish unspoiled.
Revised, updated, and with a new afterword by the author, this is the definitive edition of Phil Baker's critically lauded Austin Osman Spare: The Life and Legend of London's Lost Artist.
Industry Reviews
"Phil Baker's study is a first-rate performance, scrupulously researched, judicious and refreshingly sane... Spare comes to seem a strangely attractive figure: talented, stoical, randy, cantankerous, gentle and a magnificent English eccentric."
-The Literary Review
"[Told with] zest and insight... Ever determined to break down the barriers between reality and fantasy, Spare has finally achieved it-not by elaborate psychic exercises, but through biography."
-Matthew Sturgis, Times Literary Supplement
"I cannot recommend Austin Osman Spare too highly. Phil Baker has done a wonderful job of bringing the complexities and contradictions of Spare's life to the fore, and in making the London of Spare's time come to life vividly and richly."
-Phil Hine, enfolding.org
"Phil Baker's book is excellent; it's the one many Spare enthusiasts such as I had been waiting for."
-John Coulthart, London Society Journal
"So many of Spare's works look like sketches for a masterwork rather than the finished article. Perhaps the finished article was Spare's life itself, an extraordnary carnival of strange chacters and incidents, some of them semi-mythical. It is as good as a novel."
-Reggie Oliver, Wormwood
2024, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 21.6 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Afterall / London
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$38.00 - In stock -
A strikingly original analysis of Isa Genzken’s move towards merging sculptural and architectural morphologies into a trailblazing practice of contemporary assemblage.
Fuck the Bauhaus, a series of audacious architectural models for future high-rise buildings in Manhattan, marks a poetic and provocative shift in Isa Genzken’s artistic oeuvre. Made in the year 2000, out of quotidian objects and cheap materials foraged in the streets and stores of New York, these sculptural assemblages depart from the German artist’s ‘post-Minimalist’ works begun in the 1970s. The earlier works conjured the haunting spectres of catastrophe, destruction and failed utopia, as well as the potential for freedom amidst the ruins of post-War reconstruction culture.
Analysing Genken’s post–2000 penchant for appropriation, collage and montage, André Rottmann draws on the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, Bruno Latour and other theorists of "assemblage," to show how her ‘late style’ is not a return to (neo-)avant-garde traditions but a powerful reimagining of them for the contemporary moment.
André Rottmann is an Assistant Professor for Art and Media Theory at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and the editor of the October Files volume John Knight.
1970, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 478 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Routledge / London
$85.00 - In stock -
First 1970 hardcover edition of Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850—1900, edited by Brian Reade and published by Routledge, London. The years between 1850 and 1900 were the vintage years of a discreet homosexual culture in England. In this period, educational, personal and foreign influences all contributed to the establishment of a trend expressed in the works of authors such as John Addington Symonds, Walter Pater, and A.E. Housman, and in those of lesser writers, now largely forgotten. Sexual Heretics discusses a growing clandestine literature on the topic of male homosexuality (termed "Uranianism" at the time), in English literature and the growth of a homosexual subculture in England from the 1850s, ending shortly after the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895. Forst published in 1970, this heavy anthology has been described by E. M. Forster biographer Wendy Moffat as "the first serious attempt to recuperate a lost gay canon in print". Containing 89 selections of prose and poetry, it includes works of prose, scholarly literature and ribald poetry, either homosexual in tone or providing a vehicle for homosexual emotions, and in several examples even overtly and experimentally frank. The book includes an introduction by Brian Reade explaining the network of friendships and associations which underlay this development and tracing some of its origins. Reade attributes the emergence of a homosexual subculture to the "sexually inhibitive" and controlling matriarchs within Victorian households, as well as the rise of middle-class families who sent their sons to colleges such as Winchester and Harrow "where homosexuality flourished because it was expedient", and the rise of neoclassicism which romanticised pederasty in ancient Greece.
Includes Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Addington Symonds, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Richard Francis Burton, Aleister Crowley, William Shakespeare, and many others, including anonymous works.
Good copy in rarely preserved dust jacket, also Good, with wear/age to extremities. Book in preserved purple cloth, tightly bound with some foxing/spotting throughout.
2024, English
Softcover, 596 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Headpress / Oxford
$62.00 - In stock -
In the early 1980s, video technology forever changed the face of home entertainment. The videocassette - a handy-sized cartridge of magnetic tape inside a plastic shell - domesticated cinema as families across Britain began to consume films in an entirely new way. Demand was high and the result was a video gold rush, with video rental outlets appearing on every high street almost overnight. Without moderation their shelves filled with all manner of films depicting unbridled sex and violence. A backlash was inevitable. Video was soon perceived as a threat to society, a view neatly summed up in the term 'video nasties'.
CANNIBAL ERROR chronicles the phenomenal rise of video culture through a tumultuous decade, its impact and its aftermath. Based on extensive research and interviews, the authors provide a first-hand account of Britain in the 1980s, when video became a scapegoat for a variety of social ills. It examines the confusion spawned by the Video Recordings Act 1984, the subsequent witch hunt that culminated in police raids and arrests, and offers insightful commentary on many contentious and 'banned' films that were cited by the media as influential factors in several murder cases. It also investigates the cottage industry in illicit films that developed as a direct result of the 'video nasty' clampdown.
CANNIBAL ERROR, a revised and reworked edition of SEE NO EVIL (2000), is an exhaustive and startling overview of Britain's 'video nasty' panic, the ramifications of which are still felt today.
1996, English
Softcover (staple bound), unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
A Constructed World / St. Kilda
$10.00 - In stock -
Artfan No. 5 (Autumn 1996) — "Public Art" issue. Features contributions by Callum Morton, Rose Nolan, Mutlu Çerkez, John Nixon, Eliza Hutchison and David Noonan, Charlotte Day, Jon Campbell, and many others. "The global is often represented as an oppressive culturally controlling influence yet it has often been known to relieve oppression from overly uniform and diminishing alternatives. Apart from audience, Public Art is usually, in some way, about place and in this issue of Artfan there are contributions from many places including Estonia, India, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Sweden, Jordan, and Israel.”—From the editors (Jacqueline Riva, Geoff Lowe, D. H. Thomas)
Artfan (Contemporary Art Review Magazine to Read) is a magazine published by artists Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva in St. Kilda, Melbourne, who have been working together as A Constructed World since 1993 when they founded the magazine. Each issue is an international collaboration between the contributing editors, filled with artworks and texts, the magazine is largely centred around illustrated exhibition reviews by artists and writers, and many memories of a bygone Melbourne.
A Constructed World is the collaborative project, founded in 1993, of Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva, based in Paris, France. ACW believe in the notion of collectivity. Their practice is concerned with the multiple narratives we use to construct and understand our world. They encourage the exchange of ideas and embrace the idea of chaos. Influenced by post-structuralism and relational aesthetics, ACW explores how reality is perceived through cultural models.
As New.
1998, English
Softcover (staple bound), unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Artfan / Melbourne
A Constructed World / St. Kilda
$10.00 - In stock -
Artfan No. 7 (Autumn 1998) — "Rock On" issue. Features artworks by Callum Morton, Marco Fuscinato, Stephen Prina, Mutlu Çerkez, and many others. "Rock and Roll’s utopian drive, charged by solid state and valve technology, sexuality, pleasure and drugs, has powered a global sense of desire and community since the 50’s. Artfan 7 is a collaboration between contributing editors, Callum Morton (Melbourne), Sarah Seager (Los Angeles), and Terry Urbahn (Wellington). Using Rock On as the point of entry, artists from three countries tell something about their recent history, vinyl, unfulfilled desires, and other sexy stuff."
Artfan (Contemporary Art Review Magazine to Read) is a magazine published by artists Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva in St. Kilda, Melbourne, who have been working together as A Constructed World since 1993 when they founded the magazine. Each issue is an international collaboration between the contributing editors, filled with artworks and texts, the magazine is largely centred around illustrated exhibition reviews by artists and writers, and many memories of a bygone Melbourne.
A Constructed World is the collaborative project, founded in 1993, of Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva, based in Paris, France. ACW believe in the notion of collectivity. Their practice is concerned with the multiple narratives we use to construct and understand our world. They encourage the exchange of ideas and embrace the idea of chaos. Influenced by post-structuralism and relational aesthetics, ACW explores how reality is perceived through cultural models.
As New.
1999, English
Softcover (staple bound), unpaginated, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
A Constructed World / St. Kilda
$10.00 - In stock -
Artfan No. 9 (Autumn 1999) — "Hot Tub" issue. Features contributions by Constance Zikos, Sharon Goodwin, John Wolseley, and many others. "This issue of Artfon began with ACW's involvement in the XXIV Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil 1998. Its theme of cannibalism - a sprawling hymn to a practice we haven't seen and yet know about - is celebrated in a Hot Tub insert and Q&A that anticipate the dangers and pleasures of cultural cannibalism."—The Editors (Jacqueline Riva, Geoff Lowe)
Artfan (Contemporary Art Review Magazine to Read) is a magazine published by artists Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva in St. Kilda, Melbourne, who have been working together as A Constructed World since 1993 when they founded the magazine. Each issue is an international collaboration between the contributing editors, filled with artworks and texts, the magazine is largely centred around illustrated exhibition reviews by artists and writers, and many memories of a bygone Melbourne.
A Constructed World is the collaborative project, founded in 1993, of Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva, based in Paris, France. ACW believe in the notion of collectivity. Their practice is concerned with the multiple narratives we use to construct and understand our world. They encourage the exchange of ideas and embrace the idea of chaos. Influenced by post-structuralism and relational aesthetics, ACW explores how reality is perceived through cultural models.
As New.
1992, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$80.00 - Out of stock
1992 issue of Parkett (Vol. 31), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists David Hammons and Mike Kelley, lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by with texts by Robert Farris Thompson, Iwona Blazwick & Emma Dexter, John Ffarris, Lynne Cooke, Louise Neri in conversation with David Hammons, Diedrich Diederichsen, Lane Relyea, Bernard Marcadé, Mike Kelley & Julie Sylvester talking about “Failure.” The Insert artist is Candida Höfer and the spine artist is Niele Toroni. Also in this issue: Vija Celmins by Sheena Wagstaff, Larry Clark, What is This? by Jim Lewis, Jean-Pierre Bordaz “Imi Knoebel, Isa Genzken, Gerhard Merz,” Claude Ritschard “Rémy Zaugg.” Imi Knoebel: Working With Success – Working With Unsucces by Rudolf Bumiller, Imi Knoebel and Grace Kelly, The High by Rainer Crone & David Moos, Imi Knoebel First Impressions by Lisa Liebmann, Sherrie Levine: The Transgressions of Sherrie Levine by Daniela Salvioni, Presence Withdrawn by Erich Franz, Looking After Sherrie Levine by Howard Singerman, Damien Hirst — Insert, Making Work and Turning Your Back on it : Bethan Huws by Liam Gillick, The Work of Art as the Ideal Center for Human Beings, Walter de Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture by Thomas Kellein, International Time Capsule Society, Les Infos du Paradis, Inside the White Cube, Cumulus from America by Ralph Rugoff, Cumulus from Europe by Robert Fleck, Talk o’ the Town by Jeanne Sliverthorn.
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Average—Good copy with some marking and wear. Ex-sticker resudue to cover.
1994, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
$50.00 - In stock -
1994 issue of Parkett (Vol. 42), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread, lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by Brooks Adams, Frances Richard, Dieter Schwarz, Daniela Salvioni, Lane Relya, Edward Leffingwell, Neville Wakefield, Rudolf Schmitz, Trevor Fairbrother, Simon Watney. Amazing colour insert by Nan Goldin, Robert Frank: From Compromise to Collaboration by Vince Leo, Cursive by Ingrid Schaffner, Recent Sculptures of Markus Raetz – On the Subject of Metamorphoses, Les Infos du Paradis by Claude Ritschard, New Measures, Cumulus from Europe by Guy Brett, The Spirit & The Letter & The Evil Eye, Cumulus from America by Martha Fleming, Intriguing Artists by Roberto Ohrt, and more...
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Good copy with some marking and wear.
1990, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$30.00 - In stock -
1990 issue of Parkett (Vol. 25), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists Katharina Fritsch and James Turrell , lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by with texts by Gary Garrels, Julian Heynen, Dan Cameron, Jean-Christoph Ammann, David Hickey, Frederick Ted Castle, and James Turrell in a conversation with Richard Flood and Carl Stigliano. Beat Streuli is the insert artist. And further contributions by Patrick Frey “On Schnyderian Art,” Dieter Schwarz “James Coleman: Charon,” Lynn Cooke “Richard Hamilton.” Louise Neri, Kim Levin and Andrei Kvalyov are the authors of the Cumulus from America and Europe and the Balkon.
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Good copy with some marking and wear.
1995, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$20.00 - In stock -
1995 issue of Parkett (Vol. 43), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists Juan Muñoz and Susan Rothenberg, lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by with texts by (on Juan Muñoz) Lynne Cooke, Alexandre Melo, Juna Muñoz & James Lingwood in conversation, A Man in a Room by Gavin Bryars, (on Susann Rothenberg) Robert Creeley, Ingrid Schaffner, Jean-Christoph Ammann, Joan Simon & Susan Rothenberg. Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Fabrice Hybert, Carsten Höller – Getting Real by Michelle Nicol,
Carsten Höller – Getting Real by Michelle Nicol, Yucatan is Elsewhere, On Robert Smithson’s Hotel Palenque, Les Infos du Paradis by Neville Wakefield, Whirling Dervishes by Lisa Liebmann, Celebrating the opening of the new SFMOMA by Daniela Salvioni, On the lack of British public institution interested in contemporary art by James Roberts, and more...
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Good copy with some marking and wear. Ex-shop sticker on back cover.
1991, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$50.00 - Out of stock
1991 issue of Parkett (Vol. 30), deluxe issue created in collaboration with Sigmar Polke, lavishly illustrated with Polke's works alongside texts by Bice Curiger, Thomas McEvilley, Gary Garrels, Laszlo Glozer, Dave Hickey, Gabriele Wix, G. Roger Denson, Anne Rorimer, Laura Cottingham. And an Insert by Glenn Ligon. Spine by Niele Toroni. Additional texts are by Edward Leffingwell and Lawrence Weiner “When You Offer Stones You Get Stones,” Andrei Kowaljow “François Boucher.” Also feature articles: When You Offer Stones You Get Stones by Edward Leffingwell & Lawrence Weiner; François Boucher by Andrei Kowaljow; On curating exhibitions of site-specific public sculpture by Dan Cameron; Reflections on a space for creation by Gloria Moure; Michael Asher by Anne Rorimer; Overstepping, Les Infos du Paradis by Carin Kuoni; December, 1989: After the Fact by Richard Flood; and more.
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, , Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Average—Good copy with marking and wear.
199?, Polish/English/German
Softcover (staple-bound), 24 pages, 22.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Carmina Académica / Poland
$150.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare, self-published, undated (presumably around 1992) publication "Spiral Form" by Leoncjusz Ciuciura, one of Poland's most visionary composers of contemporary music. The message of his compositions relates to infinity, and "Spiral Form", outlined in this theoretical "score", is the most perfect instillation of this concept. Written in 1964 but according to the author's idea the piece started in the beginning of the universe and will play literally forever. "The basic feature of the spiral form is the dynamic intergrating tendency of all elements to an inner unity, cohesion and substantial perfection. The spiral form is a total form "in statu nascendi" and transits from micro to macro form."
Tri-lingual Polish/English/German texts by the composer, accompanied by graphics and biography.
A member of the Polish Authors’ Society, ZAiKS, from 1962, many of Ciuciura’s compositions combined elements of improvisation, linking music and pantomime, dance, theatre and other forms of art. A firm believer in the “self-improvement” of his compositions, Ciuciura argued that:
"Since 1964 until the present, each performance [of my work] is a world premiere and therefore the date of that performance should be changed and updated accordingly. Beginning with my Spirale per uno e piu’ I have launched my own concept of musical form, a spiral form, where the starting point could be visual graphics, sonorist elements, prepared sounds, as well as minimal music, Momentformen, collage, happening, conceptualism, etc. Thanks to the elements of expectation, virtual reality and eschatology, this new, spiral form of a musical composition opens the door to self-realization, self-discovery and self-improvement."
Leoncjusz Ciuciura (1930—2017) was a Polish composer, an ardent advocate for contemporary music and co-organizer of the Polish Chapter of Jeunesses Musicales International. He studied composition with Tadeusz Szeligowski at the State Higher School of Music in Warsaw (1954–60). He founded the music publishing firm Carmina Académica, with which he was active as an editor. In 1960 he received the Minister of Culture and Arts Award, in 1962 first prize in the International Competition for Composers in Prague, and in 1963 third prize in the Grzegorz Fitelberg Competition in Katowice. Virtually all of his works are essays in combinatorial permutation with optional instrumental or vocal additions, subtractions, multiplications, or divisions.
Good—VG copy with light wear, staple rusted.
1981, Spanish
Softcover, 104 pages, 17 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editorial Garsi / Madrid
$70.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of UNA MUSICA PARA LOS 80 by Spanish experimental composer, poet and art critic Javier Maderuelo (b. 1950), published in 1981 in Madrid by Editorial Garsi. This essential compact chronicle was written by Maderuelo to introduce the phenomenon of so-called contemporary music in Spain (electroacoustic, musique concrète, experimental, ambient, sound art, et al.) and analyse the varied positions of its leading protagonists, such as the Zaj group, Suso Sáiz, Eduardo Polonio, Llorenç Balsach, Amadeu Marin, Llorenç Barber, Carles Santos, José Iges, Antoni Caimari, Pedro Estevan, Josep Lluís Berenguer Moreno, Javier Maderuelo (himself a member of studio Alea between 1973-1977 and the musical movement Elenfante), amongst others. With critical overviews, profiles, discographies, bibliographies, chronologies of exhibitions and concerts, this is indeed a vital document on Spanish avant-garde sound c. 1970—1981.
Javier Maderuelo (Madrid, 1950) became interested in experimental poetry and art in 1972 under the influence of Fernando Millán, José Luis Castillejo and Felipe Boso, as well as artists like Elena Asins, Juan Hidalgo and Javier Aguirre, with whom he collaborated. He began producing typewritten poems and collages with texts extracted from newspapers, which converge in the unpublished book Arte Cisoria (1981). Felipe Boso introduced him to the world of phonetic poetry and with Pedro Estevan and María Villa he cofounded the Glotis Group (1979), dedicated to disseminating both the work of avant-garde poets, as well as neo-avant-garde works, some of them expressly written for Glotis. As a composer, he worked at the electronic music studio Alea (1973-1977) and was part of the musical movement Elenfante. He was a member of the Seminar of Analysis and Automatic Generation of Musical Forms, run by Florentino Briones, collaborating on the SIMO concerts. At the end of the eighties he abandoned poetic and musical creation to devote himself to an academic career.
Very Good copy with cover wrap cleanly disconnected from book block (old glue), tanned spine, otherwise VG throughout.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 218 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
Erotica September 1969, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica September 1969 is themed "The Situation of Eros".
Good copy, wear/age.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$30.00 - Out of stock
Erotica December 1970, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica December 1970 is themed "The Eros of Theatre: The Aesthetics of Voluptuousness".
Good copy, light wear/age.
2024, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 13.4 x 9.1 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$40.00 - Out of stock
An impassioned philosophical celebration of the multiple dimensions of contemporary cuteness.
Involuntarily sucked into the forcefield of Cute, Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic decided to let go, give in, let the demon ride them, and make an accelerationism out of it—only to realize that Cute opens a microcosmic gate onto the transcendental process of acceleration itself.
Joining the swarming e-girls, t-girls, NEETS, anons, and otaku who rescued accelerationism from the double pincers of media panic and academic buzzkill by introducing it to big eyes, fluffy ears, programming socks, and silly memes, they discover that the objects of cute culture are just spinoffs of an accelerative process booping us from the future, rendering us all submissive, breedable, helpless, and cute in our turn. Cute comes tomorrow, and only anastrophe can make sense of what it will have been doing to us.
Evading all discipline, sliding across all possible surfaces, Cute Accelerationism embraces every detail of the symptomatology, aetiology, epidemiology, history, biology, etymology, topology, and even embryology of Cute, joyfully burrowing down into its natural, cultural, sensory, sexual, subjective, erotic, and semiotic dimensions in order to sound out the latent spaces of this Thing that has soft-soaped its way into human culture.
Traversing tangents on natural and unnatural selection, runaway supernormalisation, the collective self-transformation of genderswarming cuties, the hyperstitional cultures of shojo and otaku, denpa and 2D love, and the cute subworlds of aegyo and meng, moé and flatmaxxing, catboys and dogon eggs, bobbles and gummies, vore machines and partial objects, BwOs and UwUs…glomping, snuggling, smooshing and squeeeeing their way toward the event horizon of Cute, donning cat ears and popping bubbles as they go, in this untimely philosophical intensification of an omnipresent phenomenon, having surrendered to the squishiest demonic possession, like, ever, two bffs set out in search of the transcendental shape of cuteness only to realize that, even though it is all around us, we do not yet know what Cute can do.
Seriously superficial and bafflingly coherent, half erudite philosophical treatise, half dariacore mashup, 100 percent cutagion, this compact lil' textual machine is a meltdown and a glow up, as well as a twizzled homage to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. Welcome to the kawaiizome: nothing uncute makes it out of the near future, and the cute will very soon no longer be even remotely human.
2024, English
Hardcover, 180 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 cm
Published by
No Place Press / US
$48.00 - In stock -
Two of the most important voices in art history discuss their intellectual foundations, the changing role of criticism, and the possibilities for artistic practice today.
In Exit Interview, the prominent art critics and historians Hal Foster and Benjamin Buchloh discuss their intellectual foundations and the projects they've worked on together, from October magazine to Art Since 1900. Through three engaging conversations, Foster engages Buchloh on his early influences and aspirations, his formative years in Berlin, London, and Dusseldorf, and his career in North America, while exploring the impact of other art historians and critics. Buchloh candidly addresses his successes, critical significance, and unexplored avenues in art history, providing a unique window into his motivations and experiences. With a powerful postface by Buchloh, Exit Interview builds from biography and anecdote to important reflection on one's critical life as a whole.
2024, English
Softcover, 248 pages, 21.0 x 14.3 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$52.00 - In stock -
Tracing the relation between fascism and settler colonialism.
Ever since neofascist movements began to surge across the globe, liberal commentators have tried to put a name to what they are defending from these illiberal ideologies. The consensus is reason or rationality—after the Second World War, mainstream scholarship has supported the view that adherence to fascism is a thing of unreason. This distinction between reason and unreason, a tenet of Enlightenment thought, sustains the universal appeal of liberal democracy but leaves unexamined the paradoxes that haunt modernity, particularly its colonial foundation, thus obscuring the continuities between fascism and imperial policies.
The White West contends that, without confronting the structuring force of race in the production and reproduction of global wealth disparities, fighting for reason only leads to flawed utopias in which a critique or disruption of capitalism is easily inflected in the direction of neofascism. This collection of writing by leading historians, theorists, and scholars is an attempt to engage the overlaps between philosophical predicates and colonial legacies, as well as the undertheorized continuities between fascism and settler colonialism.
Contributors:
Larne Abse Gogarty, Norman Ajari, Ramon Amaro, Sladja Blazan, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Donna V. Jones, Nitzan Lebovic, Olivier Marboeuf, A. Dirk Moses, Rijin Sahakian, Nikhil Pal Singh, Kerstin Stakemeier, Felix Stalder
2024, Englidh
Softcover, 532 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
Published by
Contra Mundum Press / New York
$62.00 - In stock -
On 10 January 1936, the poet, actor, and dramatic theorist, Antonin Artaud departed Europe on a journey to Mexico that would take him from the streets, cafés, and lecture halls of Mexico City to the remote mountains of the Sierra Tarahumara. The journey would last only ten months, culminating in some six to eight weeks spent among the Tarahumara (Rarámuri), but it was a profound turning point in his life.
Artaud didn’t just leave Europe. He fled it. “I came to Mexico to escape European civilization … I hoped to find a vital form of culture.” The vital form of culture that he sought was one wherein individual and communal behaviors were rooted in the soil of a place, wherein the rituals of religion reinforced a connection in human lives between the earth and the sun.
But Artaud’s search for a vital form of culture would not be a simple one. His appeal to indigenous culture would first require an intense and intricate effort at aesthetic, religious, political, and philosophical decolonization. And this intellectual work would not be without a psychological cost.
Journey to Mexico collects very nearly all of Artaud’s writings related to his voyage to the land of the Tarahumara: the writings he prepared prior to this journey; the pieces he published in Mexico and the lectures he delivered there; the essays, letters, and poems that he wrote in the years after his journey, reflecting on and reframing his experiences. A selection of letters written before, during, and after the trip conveys the very personal — the physical, emotional, and financial — challenges of the journey.
Artaud’s Journey to Mexico takes us far from home to the limits of art and anthropology, myth and religion, to confront the legacies of colonial conquest and the possibility of decolonization in a desperate search for a “vital form of culture.”
2024, English
Softcover, 776 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$65.00 - In stock -
“A sense of art history is part of the critical basis on which artists construct ‘a future’ of art. But the question is, which sense of art history will be shaping that future? Art history has always been far too important to be left up to art historians.”—Ian Burn, 1982
Ian Burn has been described as many things: an activist, a trade-unionist, a journalist, an art critic, a curator and an art historian—and, as he once described himself in a moment of self-deprecating alienation, ‘an exConceptual artist’.
Edited by Burn’s friend, frequent collaborator and eminent art historian, Dr Ann Stephen, this volume brings together 49 pieces of Burn’s own agile and expansive writings that reveals a probing, analytical artist who turned to language to articulate the need for ‘looking at seeing and reading’, who pursued a Marxist politics in the face of neoliberalism and who sought to occupy and transform the margins of landscape painting. Alongside a vast collection of his artworks, the catalogue brings together previously unpublished material and offers a prescient rethinking of art in a decentered world through what Ian Burn called ‘peripheral vision’. The collection concludes with reflections on Burn’s life and work from prominent figures and past collaborators in the form of memorial lectures.
Born in Geelong in 1939, Ian Burn was a conceptual artist. Burn studied painting in Melbourne and went on to live and work in London and New York. Burn moved back to Australia in 1977 and passed away in 1993 at the age of 53.
Ian Burn has been described as many things: an activist, a trade-unionist, a journalist, an art critic, a curator and an art historian—or, as he once described himself in a moment of self-deprecating alienation, ‘an ex-conceptual artist’.
Born in Geelong in 1939, Burn studied painting in Melbourne and went on to live and work in London and New York. Burn moved back to Australia in 1977 and passed away in 1993 at the age of 53.
Burn sought to grapple with how art history intersects and engages with contemporary art and political debate, arguing for a decentred view of the world. His legacy is international and can be seen in retrospective exhibitions as recent as 2022, and his work remains a key touchstone in art history.
Edited by Burn’s friend, frequent collaborator and eminent art historian, Dr Ann Stephen, this volume brings together 49 pieces of Burn’s own agile and expansive writings alongside a vast collection of his artworks. The collection concludes with reflections on Burn’s life and work from prominent figures and past collaborators in the form of memorial lectures.
Design and typesetting by Robert Milne.
Co-published by Walther Koenig and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.
1961, English
Softcover, 234 pages, 20.5 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Capricorn Books / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first paperback edition of this classic survey of conversations, published by Capricorn Books, New York, in 1961. Selden Rodman, a poet, compiled this lively survey of modern American art, architecture and sculpture at the close of the 1950s - by means of amusing and often revealing interviews with several dozen exponents. These revealing and entertaining conversations, convey the vitality, range and excitement of the art world in America in the 1950s through the words of the artist's themselves.
Artists include: Leonard Baskin, Alexander Calder, Joseph Glasco, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Graves, David Hare, Edward Hopper, Philip Johnson, James Kearns, Frank Kline, Willem de Kooning, Rico Lebrun, Jack Levine, Jacques Lipchitz, Kenzo Okada, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Larry Rivers, Mark Rothko, Ben Shahn, David Smith, Saul Steinberg, Mark Tobey, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Andrew Wyeth.
Very Good copy from the collection of American curator and art critic Norman A. Geske, who authored many books on American art, directed the Sheldon Art Gallery in Nebraska (which included his building collaboration with architect Philip Johnson, who is featured herein), and curated the American Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 1968, amongst other things. Norman A. Geske collection personal stamp to title page.