World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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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.
2020, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$120.00 - Out of stock
A radical look at a radical designer, this book locates Sottsass’s work within the larger landscape of postwar political thinking and economic change.
Including newly commissioned essays by curators and scholars, this book explores how Sottsass's art and philosophy presaged the dawn of PCs, the service industry, and the gig economy. Ettore Sottsass was an architect, industrial designer, painter, writer, photographer, and founder of the Memphis group, whose designs are undergoing an impressive renaissance. But Sottsass was more than just an important designer. His approach to object design – marked by bold colours, tactility, and vitality – was a direct response to the world of mass production and the assembly-line economy.
This revelatory collection of essays by leading thinkers in the fields of political theory, economics, the media, design history, and cultural theory contextualises Sottsass's work in unprecedented arguments that draw a line from his work at Olivetti to the iconoclastic designs he produced at the dawn of the 21st century. Divided into five chronological sections – from the late 1950s to Sottsass's death in 2007 – these essays are illustrated with vibrant images of his work and archival photographs. Deeply researched, the book makes crucial connections between postwar Europe and America, and the way we work and live today.
Foreword by Alex Gartenfeld. Edited by Gean Moreno. Contributions by Bruce Sterling, Balena Arista, Evan Calder Williams, Wava Carpenter, Maria Cristina Didero, Silvia Franceschini, Jacopo Galimberti, Sven Lutticken
Designed by Mark Owens
1989, English
Softcover, 214 pages, 13.4 x 21.2 cm
Published by
Marion Boyars / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
Together these two novels comprise the most fascinating, obsessive, and erotic works of contemporary French fiction. Like the works of Georges Bataille, and those of the Marquis de Sade before him, Klossowski's fiction explores the connections between the mind and the body through a lens of sexuality. Both of these novels feature Octave, an elderly cleric; his striking young wife Roberte; and their nephew, Antoine in a series of sexual situations. But Klossowski's books are about theology as well, and this merging of the sexual with the religious makes this book one of the most painstakingly baroque and intellectual novels of our time.
Pierre Klossowski (August 9, 1905, Paris – August 12, 2001, Paris) was a French writer, translator and artist. He was the eldest son of the artists Erich Klossowski and Baladine Klossowska, and his younger brother was the painter Balthus.
As a writer, Pierre Klossowski wrote full length volumes on the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche, a number of essays on literary and philosophical figures, and five novels. Roberte Ce Soir (Roberte in the Evening) provoked controversy due to its graphic depiction of sexuality.[1] He translated several important texts (by Virgil, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin, Franz Kafka, Nietzsche, and Walter Benjamin) into French, worked on films and was also an artist, illustrating many of the scenes from his novels. Klossowski participated in most issues of George Bataille's review, Acéphale, in the late 1930s.
His 1969 book, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, greatly influenced French philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-François Lyotard.
2012, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 14 x 21.1 cm
Published by
W W Norton & Co / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art, Nelson’s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimately offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.
1978, English
Softcover, 194 pages (plus insert), 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
LIP / Melbourne
$50.00 - Out of stock
The incredible book-sized 1978-79 edition of Melbourne's great LIP journal. Published out of Carlton between 1976-1984, LIP encapsulated Australian feminist artistic practice of the period, publishing articles and interviews by women on women in film, sound, theatre, painting, photography, poetry, criticism, activism, journalism, publishing, sculpture, design, education, and much more.
In this issue: Art Sense and Sensibility: Women's Art and Feminist Criticism - Janine Burke; Aboriginal Women: Ritual and Culture - Diane Bell interviewed by Lesley Dumbrell; Map of Transition: Performance - Jillian Orr; Jane Sutherland - Frances Lindsay; Sybil Craig - Mary Eagle; Make Your Own Teaset - Mary Newsome; Women's Images of Women - Barbara Hall; In Search of Old Mistresses - Patricia Symons; Women Ceramacists; Olive Bishop interviewed by Julie Ewington; Margaret Dodd Talking with Julie Ewington; Lorrain Jenyns; Wendy Stavrianos interviewed by Pauline Petrus; The Development of a Political View: A Conversation Between Two Women Artists - Jennifer Barwell and Vivienne Binns; Micky Allan interviewed by Suzanne Davies; Photographs - Jacqueline Mitelman; From the Ground Up - Photographs - Virginia Coventry; Survey of Women's Art Theory Courses and Feminine Sensibility - Janine Burke; The Women's Art Register Extension Project - Bonita Ely; Sisterhood ― For Whom? Jude Adams and Jenny Barber; Posters by Women in the Earthworks Poster Collective; Film - Margaret Fink and Her Brilliant Career - Frida Freiberg; Following My Star - Elsa Chauvel; Monique Schwarz interviewed by Christine Johnston; A Dialogue between Toni Robertson, a Feminist Poster Maker, and Jeni Thornley, a Feminist Film-maker; Nina Claditz interviewed by Annette Blonski; Introducing Helmer Sanders - Frida Freiberg; Reviews: Shopping in Hearbreak Arcade - Meredith Nolte; Me and Daphne - Linda Rubinstein; Feminine Focus at the Festival - Frida Freiberg; Supplement: Australian Women in Music - Australian Women in Music - Terry Radic; Margaret Sutherland - Helen Coles; May Brahe: Composer - Mimi Colligan; Dr. Ruby Davy - Silvia O’Toole; Four Women Composers: Helen Gifford, Ann Boyd, Ann Carr-Boyd and Peggy Glanville-Hicks - Marcia Ruff; Esther Rofe interviewed by Pauline Petrus; Talking with Linda Phillips by Kerry Murphy; Mary Nemet interviewed by Jeanette Fenelon; The Women's Electric Band interviewed by Jeannette Fenelon; Robyn Archer interviewed by Jeannette Fenelon; The Shameless Hussie A.C.R.; Jane Clifton and Celeste Howden interviewed by Jeannette Fenelon; Janie Conway and Marnie Sheehan - Virginia Fraser; Theatre - The Women's Theatre Group: A Selection of Scripts, Interviews and Comments Kerry Dwyer, Jenny Walsh and Suzanne Spunner; Roma: A One Woman Play - Jan Macdonald and the Roma cast; Tongue to Lip - Valerie Kirwan; And Women Must Wait: Savage Sepia - Suzanne Spunner; Dance and Movement - Marilyn Jones interviewed by Roseanne Hull-Brown; Betty Pounder interviewed by Roseanne Hull-Brown; Yum Wing Chun: Never Underestimate the Power of a Woman - Karen Armstrong; Media - An Open Letter - Shere Hite; Feminism and Publishing: Interviews with Women Publishers - Cathy Peake; Two Early Melbourne Journalists - Lurline Stewart; Sydney Women Writers’ Workshop - Anna Couani and Pamela Brown; The Australian Women's Weekly ― The Case of the Bald Cockatoo - Cathy Peake, Maree Conway and Sue Parvaris.
LIP Collective members: Annette Blonski, Janine Burke, Isabel Davies, Suzanne Davies, Lesley Dumbrell, Jeannette Fenelon, Freda Freiberg, Christine Johnston, Elizabeth Owen, Cathy Peake, Meredith Rogers, Suzanne Spunner, Lynne Wilkinson.
This copy includes the original 1978 etching "Make Your Own Teaset" insert by Mary Newsome.
Good-Very Good copy. Bump to one corner, light wear/tanning.
2019, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 27 x 36 cm
Ed. of 4000,
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$62.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1973, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog is a seminal survey of Second Wave feminist efforts, which, as the editors noted in their introduction, represented an “active attempt to reshape culture through changing values and consciousness.”
Assembled by Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie in only five months, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog makes a nod to Stewart Brand’s influential Whole Earth Catalog to map a vast network of feminist alternative cultural activity in the 1970s. Grimstad and Rennie set out on a two month road trip in the summer of 1973, meeting and interviewing all the featured organizations and individuals, and gathering information and further references along the way to complete the publication.
From arts organizations to bookstores and independent presses, health, parenting, and rape crisis centers, and educational, legal and financial resources, this book provides crucial insight into feminist initiatives and activism nationwide during the Women’s Movement. Styled as a sales catalog, The New Woman’s Survival Catalog comprises listings and organizational descriptions, articles, and extensive illustrations, as well as a “Making the Book” section, detailing the publication’s production.
Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are the co-editors of The New Woman’s Survival Catalog (Berkeley Publishing Company, 1973) and The New Woman’s Survival Sourcebook (Knopf, 1975). They went on to co-found Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture, published out of the Woman’s Building in downtown Los Angeles from 1977-1981.
Kirsten Grimstad was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute & University (Cincinnati) after receiving a BA at Barnard College and an MA at Columbia University. She is currently Co-Chair of Undergraduate Studies at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and past Chair of the Getty Villa Council. Her research centers on German literature and public memory about the Holocaust, and she is the author of The Modern Revival of Gnosticism and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (Camden House, 2002).
Susan Rennie earned a BA from Barnard College and received a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Columbia University. She taught Social Sciences at Union Institute & University, worked as a women’s health activist, and lives in Venice, California.
Edition of 4000
2019, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 11.1 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$48.00 - Out of stock
A new wave of artistic activism has emerged in recent years in response to the ever-increasing dominance of authoritarian neoliberalism. Activist practices in the art field, however, have been around much longer. As Oliver Marchart claims, there has always been an activist undercurrent in art. In this book he traces trajectories of artistic activism in theater, dance, performance, and public art, and investigates the political potential of urbanism, curating, and “biennials of resistance.” What emerges is a conflictual aesthetics that does not conform with traditional approaches to the field and that activates the political potential of artistic practice.
Oliver Marchart is a political theorist and philosopher. He is currently professor of political theory at the University of Vienna. His books include Post-foundational Political Thought: Political Difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau (2007), Thinking Antagonism: Political Ontology after Laclau (2018), and the forthcoming Post-foundational Theories of Democracy: Reclaiming Freedom, Equality, Solidarity.
1981, English
Softcover, 44 pages, 21 x 15.5 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bratach Dubh Editions / London
$35.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this 1981 English edition of Errico Malatesta's most popular and wide-spread pamphlet, "Fra Contadini", first published by Malatesta in 1884 in La Questione Sociale (The Social Question), the weekly anarchist paper he founded in in Florence, 1872. Translated here to English by Jean Weir.
"The numerous editions and translations of "Fra Contadini" all over the world demonstrate its importance and relevance have been universally recognized. Fra Contadini shares the modest tone of Malatesta’s other writings, more obvious here through the use of dialogue. It is in fact a chat which two peasants, one more politicised than the other, could very well have had in the north of Italy at the end of the last century. It manages to avoid the affectation which often harms literary works which–like this one–do not conceal their intent to educate, because in reality this is a didactic piece of work. Malatesta’s intention is to supply the anarchist movement (then the international socialist anarchist revolutionary party) with an agile instrument of propaganda for the peasants and small artisans, groups that were in the phase of proletarianisation. In other words for the starving masses who swelled the major Italian cities at the end of the last century drawn by the mirage of work in developing industry".
Errico Malatesta (1853 – 1932) was an Italian anarchist. He spent much of his life exiled from Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. Malatesta founded, wrote and edited a number of radical publications including La Questione Sociale (1872), L'Associazione (1889), L'Agitazione (1897), Cause ed Effetti (1900), L'Internazionale (1900), and published a number of important and influential pamphlets including Fra Contadini (1884), L'Anarchia (1891), and Anarchism Or Democracy? (with Francesco Merlino) (1974).
A very good copy of this first edition from this Bratach Dubh Editions series from London.
2013, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 11 x 18 cm
Published by
Errant Bodies / Berlin
$22.00 - In stock -
Chilean journalist and independent curator Valentina Montero (born 1973) left her native country five years ago, relocating to Europe just in time for the continent’s financial crisis. In this book, Montero outlines some of the milestone events and moments that led to Chile’s advanced neoliberalism, and its effects upon education and culture, detecting signs of hope in the lively student movement that emerged in 2011.
2007, English
Softcover, 360 pages, 14.9 x 22.9 cm
Published by
University of Minnesota Press / Minnesota
$44.00 - Out of stock
In 2006, about 69 million U.S. households had pets, giving homes to around 73.9 million dogs, 90.5 million cats, and 16.6 million birds, and spending more than 38 billion dollars on companion animals. As never before in history, our pets are truly members of the family. But the notion of “companion species”—knotted from human beings, animals and other organisms, landscapes, and technologies—includes much more than “companion animals.”
In When Species Meet, Donna J. Haraway digs into this larger phenomenon to contemplate the interactions of humans with many kinds of critters, especially with those called domestic. At the heart of the book are her experiences in agility training with her dogs Cayenne and Roland, but Haraway’s vision here also encompasses wolves, chickens, cats, baboons, sheep, microorganisms, and whales wearing video cameras. From designer pets to lab animals to trained therapy dogs, she deftly explores philosophical, cultural, and biological aspects of animal–human encounters.
In this deeply personal yet intellectually groundbreaking work, Haraway develops the idea of companion species, those who meet and break bread together but not without some indigestion. “A great deal is at stake in such meetings,” she writes, “and outcomes are not guaranteed. There is no assured happy or unhappy ending-socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only the chance for getting on together with some grace.”
Ultimately, she finds that respect, curiosity, and knowledge spring from animal–human associations and work powerfully against ideas about human exceptionalism.
2019, English
Softcover, 241 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Zero Books / UK
$33.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
"Hearing the Cloud guides us through the soundscapes of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, from chillstep to nightcore, and recaptures the possibilities of collective listening embedded within these musical forms. Emile Frankel traces a pattern recognition of our moment, poised between dystopian nihilism and the receding possibilities of utopia. Against irony, fragmentation, and chaos, Hearing the Cloud helps us hear the material presence of sound in our lives and the whispers of a better future." -- Benjamin Noys, author of Malign Velocities: Accelerationism and Capitalism
Can music be a curse? This book offers an alternate history of online politics and new technology from the perspective of listening, typing, composing, and shared hearing. In spite of narrowing images of tech-dystopias and flooded, desertified worlds, experimental sound and club culture attempts to open up spaces for alternate and vital imaginings. Charting the work of artists such as Holly Herndon, Chino Amobi, Amnesia Scanner, OPN and PC Music, as well as a broader discussion of streaming economics, virtual soundtracks and internet birthed genre, Hearing the Cloud reflects upon an epoch of music which is critical of the neoliberal future we speed towards. The causal nature of making music about such a future becomes a platform to consider the act of composing, one note over another, as an act of resistance and an act of prophecy.
Emile Frankel presents a rigorous account of a world felt to be in crisis. The aesthetic and tonal ramifications for such feelings are twisted within the oppressive online structures mediating new music. The legacies of Silicon Valley digitalism, 4chan, Less Wrong, and Chaos Magic are compared to the magical thinking which underlies stochastic composition, and the aesthetics of deconstructed club music. Despite a pessimistic account of Accelerationism and reactionary philosophy, Frankel's spirited writing is still full of hope. Hearing the Cloud considers the communal online conversations we engage in daily as profound acts of defiance. Sweet, lithe, oily, and honest music is shown to be an important source of togetherness.
Emile Frankel is a writer and composer researching the changing conditions of online listening.
2004, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 14.3 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Dover / New York
$24.00 - In stock -
“Essential reading.” — New Society.
A classic of eighteenth-century thought, Friedrich Schiller’s treatise on the role of art in society ranks among German philosophy’s most profound works. In addition to its importance to the history of ideas, this 1795 essay remains relevant to our own time.
Beginning with a political analysis of contemporary society — in particular, the French Revolution and its failure to implement universal freedom — Schiller observes that people cannot transcend their circumstances without education. He conceives of art as the vehicle of education, one that can liberate individuals from the constraints and excesses of either pure nature or pure mind. Through aesthetic experience, he asserts, people can reconcile the inner antagonism between sense and intellect, nature and reason.
Schiller’s proposal of art as fundamental to the development of society and the individual is an enduringly influential concept, and this volume offers his philosophy’s clearest, most vital expression.
Reprint of the Yale University Press, New Haven, 1954 edition.
2014, English
Softcover, 192 page, 15.5 x 23.5 cm
Published by
Collaborative Enquiry / Melbourne
$28.00 - In stock -
'This book demonstrates that long-term win-win collaboration approaches work. Principals and contractors don't have to end up in conflict or litigation. I would recommend these ideas be adopted by companies eager to improve productivity.' - John Mulcahy, Chairman, Mirvac
'In an industry dominated by conflict and unproductive activity, this book offers a refreshing and practical way for all parties in the building industry to achieve more from their capital and labour inputs. Stephen Hanman and Ian George have shown through application that by introducing trust, respect and meaningful communication into relationships, results improve for all stakeholders. Moreover, the investment required to do the first job carries over to future work, resulting in improved performance with each project. I applaud the efforts of the authors in both creating the environment for their clients to 'do better' in their construction businesses and for sharing their work with the wider business and labour communities. One wonders what benefits could flow to other industries should the broader principles so successfully adopted in this book be applied more widely.' - Terry Henderson, company director and businessman
'This book provides wonderful insights into the way in which economic and social relationships associated with building and construction can be transformed. The participants involved in CGA Bryson projects have experienced considerable benefits in their working and personal lives. There is also evidence of significant economic benefits for all within the project supply chains. In the context of the broader building and construction industry, this account contains lessons which offer solutions for some of the seemingly intractable problems of conflict, waste, poor
quality work and alienation that bedevil this industry. We have a lot to learn from these two professionals who are writing about their direct experience in transforming a construction enterprise.' - Professor Tony Dalton, RMIT Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
Research Centre, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University
'In our own research, we have documented in financial terms the benefits of cross-functional, cross-firm collaboration. However, for many executives, building a culture that supports collaboration is not easy. Ian and Stephen not only report on the benefits of collaboration in an industry where such behaviour has not been the norm, but they provide guidelines for building organisations with a culture of collaboration.' - Dr Douglas M Lambert, Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, founder of the Supply Chain Management Institute
2005, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 15.9 x 24.8cm
Published by
Anthroposophic Press / UK
$56.00 - Out of stock
This book introduces a new way for thinking about, creating, and viewing art. Rudolf Steiner saw his task as the renewal of the lost unity of science, the arts, and religion; thus, he created a new, cognitive scientific and religious art in anthroposophy. The implications of his act--recognized by such diverse artists as Wassily Kandinsky and Joseph Beuys--are only now coming fully to light.
In his thorough introduction of more than a hundred pages, Michael Howard takes readers through these thought-provoking chapters:
Is Art Dead?; To Muse or Amuse; Artistic Activity as Spiritual Activity; The Representative of Humanity; Beauty, Creativity, and Metamorphosis; New Directions in Art
Rudolf Steiner's Lectures :The Aesthetics of Goethe's Worldview; The Spiritual Being of Art; Buildings Will Speak; The Sense Organs and Aesthetic Experience; The Two Sources of Art; The Building at Dornach; The Supersensible Origin of the Arts; Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; Christ, Ahriman, and Lucifer
2012, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 120 x 170 cm
Published by
Rudolf Steiner Press / East Sussex
$20.00 - Out of stock
Rudolf Steiner's foundational handbook for spiritual and personal development has grown more modern with time, though his methods remain clearly distinguishable from many current paths of inner work. First, Steiner's method is based on the clarity of thought normally associated with scientific research. Instead of denying clear thinking, his aim is to extend it beyond its present limitations. Second, Steiner recognises--as do all genuine paths--that the way to spiritual experience is arduous and dangerous and calls for self-control in thought, word, and action. The human being comprises a unity, and we cannot develop knowledge without a corresponding development of feeling and will.
Steiner predicted that humanity would begin to experience a longing for forms of experience that transcended intellectual, materialistic thinking. More than a hundred years after the first publication of this book, countless means are offered for achieving transcendental experience, including Eastern meditation practices, channeling, remote viewing, and astral projection. Moreover, there has been a huge increase in the number of people who report various suprasensory perceptions, such as near-death experiences and meetings with angels. In this context, Steiner's key spiritual guidebook is needed more than ever, given its unique, precise instructions for inner training, its protective exercises, and its indications for staying grounded and centered. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds begins with the preconditions for personal development and guides the reader through the stages of initiation, its practical aspects, and its effects.
Translated by D. S. Osmond and C. Davy
1995, English
Softcover, 282 pages, 13.3 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Anthroposophic Press / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
Of all of his works, Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path is the one that Steiner himself believed would have the longest life and the greatest spiritual and cultural consequences. It was written as a phenomenological account of the "results of observing the human soul according to the methods of natural science.
This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity--understood as the human ability to think and act independently of physical nature--is the suitable path for human beings today to gain true knowledge of themselves and of the universe. This is not merely a philosophical volume, but rather a warm, heart-oriented guide to the practice and experience of living thinking.
Readers will not find abstract philosophy here, but a step-by-step account of how a person may come to experience living, intuitive thinking--"the conscious experience of a purely spiritual content."
During the past hundred years since it was written, many have tried to discover this "new thinking" that could help us understand the various spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues facing us. But only Rudolf Steiner laid out a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activity--intuitive thinking--in which we become co-creators and co-redeemers of the world.
"When, with the help of Steiner's book, we recognize that thinking is an essentially spiritual activity, we discover that it can school us. In that sense--Steiner's sense--thinking is a spiritual path" (Gertrude Reif Hughes).
2013, English
Paperback, 92 pages, 15.2 x 22.9
Published by
Temple Lodge / Forest Row
$59.00 - In stock -
Freedom for the spiritual-cultural life, equality and democracy for human rights, initiative and solidarity for the economic sphere! Revolutions happen when society does not change and evolve. Stagnation and resistance create a situation in which a leap in development is required. In nature, living organisms suffering from inner blockages must heal or die. The same applies to the social organism--society--which occasionally requires drastic change to avoid complete collapse or violent revolution. With his often repeated phrase 'We are the Revolution!', the artist and social activist Joseph Beuys was intimating that true transformation develops from within, in an artistic or creative way. People are the source of metamorphosis in the social realm. But in modern times a "we" is also required--an agreement with others. The individual connects with fellow human beings, in active cooperation, as a solid foundation for healthy forms of coexistence.
In a series of clear and insightful essays, Ulrich Rösch builds on the "threefold" social thinking of Rudolf Steiner, Joseph Beuys and others, presenting ideas for change in the context of twenty-first-century life. Our world has become unified through the global division of labor and interdependence, which calls for fresh thinking and rejuvenated social forms. Rösch compares the spirituality and social action of Mahatma Gandhi and Rudolf Steiner; takes the living example of a biodynamic farm as a social organism; and studies the tangible situation of the production and worldwide sale of bananas as a symptom of inequitable commerce.
2013, English
Hardcover, 184 pages, 19 x 24 cm
Published by
Spurbuchverlag / Germany
$40.00 - In stock -
Few people are indifferent to Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner - although it is decades since their death. One is a political clown and artistic agitator, the other an eccentric and esoteric philosopher. This is a judgement that many people still hold fast. Death Keeps Me Awake does not only show the intimate connection between Joseph Beuys' and Rudolf Steiner's thought. It also reveals the internal consistency and depth of their thinking, their determination and seriousness, and this, despite all the humour apparent in many of their works and statements. This book shows clearly that they attempt nothing less than to change the world.
2010, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.8 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Clairview Books / Forest Row
$28.00 - Out of stock
'If we want to achieve a different society where the principle of money operates equitably, if we want to abolish the power money has developed over people historically, and position money in relationship to freedom, equality and fraternity ...then we must elaborate a concept of culture and a concept of art where every person must be an artist...' - Joseph Beuys. The world of finance exerts a huge influence over our lives, being responsible for economic turmoil and seemingly interminable peaks and crashes. Whereas money was once a simple means of exchange, today it is a commodity in itself and as 'capital' exerts power over individuals, degrading work to tradable labour. Can we find a new way of understanding money today, so that we can begin to overcome its destructive aspects? In November 1984, a remarkable discussion took place at the Meeting House in Ulm, Germany. It featured the radical artist Joseph Beuys, two professors (of Financial Sciences and Political Economics) and a banker. Beuys would appear to be out of place among these heavyweight academics, professionals and authors.
But rather than being intimidated by his fellow panellists, Beuys - also a social and political activist - demonstrates his groundbreaking thinking on the subject, and his ability to bring fresh perspectives. Here for the first time is a transcript of this debate, together with analysis by Ulrich Rosch, which will be of equal interest to artists, economists and spiritual seekers.
2007, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 19 x 25 cm
Published by
Clairview Books / Forest Row
$43.00 - In stock -
Joseph Beuys' work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organisational learning, direct democracy and new money forms to new art pedagogies and ecological art practices. Here, in dialogue with Volker Harlan - a close colleague, whose own work also revolves around understandings of substance and sacrament that are central to Beuys - the deeper motivations and insights underlying 'social sculpture', Beuys' expanded conception of art, are illuminated. His profound reflections, complemented with insightful essays by Volker Harlan, give a sense of the interconnectedness between all life forms, and the foundations of a path towards an ecologically sustainable future.
2017, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 312 pages, 18 x 23 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$87.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
Art historian Darby English is celebrated for working against the grain and plumbing gaps in historical narratives. In this book, he explores the year 1971, when two exhibitions opened that brought modernist painting and sculpture into the burning heart of black cultural politics: Contemporary Black Artists in America, shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The DeLuxe Show, an integrated abstract art exhibition presented in a renovated movie theater in a Houston ghetto.
1971 takes an insightful look at many black artists' desire to gain freedom from overt racial representation, as well as their and their advocates' efforts to further that aim through public exhibitions. Amid calls to define a "black aesthetic" or otherwise settle the race question, these experiments with modernist art favored cultural interaction and instability. Contemporary Black Artists in America highlighted abstraction as a stance against normative approaches, while The DeLuxe Show positioned abstraction in a center of urban blight.
The power and social importance of these experiments, English argues, came partly from color's special status as a racial metaphor and partly from investigations of color that were underway in formalist American art and criticism. From Frank Bowling to Virginia Jaramillo, Sam Gilliam to Peter Bradley, black modernists and their supporters rose above the demand to represent or be represented, compromising nothing in their appeals for racial reconciliation. At a time when many debates about identity sought closure, these exhibitions offered openings; when icons and slogans touted simple solutions, they chose difficulty. But above all, as English demonstrates in this provocative book, these exhibitions and artists responded with optimism rather than cynicism to the surrounding culture's preoccupation with color.
2019, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 18 x 12 cm
Published by
Self-Published / Sydney
$22.00 - Out of stock
THE Ls consider writing itself
how words can move
subjectivities and their
relationships to each other
astonishment is
wonder is moving to the
unthinkable is
Judy Annear is an independent researcher and writer based in Victoria on Dja Dja Wurrung land, never ceded, and Honorary (Principal Fellow) School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Her fields of research include literary feminisms, and modern and contemporary art practice underpinned by a focus on periods of major technological change. Amongst other projects, she is currently researching Allan Sekula’s first visit to Australia in 1980, as a guest of Working Papers On Photography, Melbourne. Her recent publications include a small book of experimental texts The Ls 2019, as well as contributions to Photomedia Now/Everything is Interesting’ in Art Monthly Australasia October 2018, and an encyclopaedic history, The Photograph and Australia 2015. She has published extensively in journals such as Art Network, Art+Text (member of the editorial committee 1987–94), Photofile, Art Monthly, Art & Australia, Art Asia Pacific, LIKE, ART-iT Asia, Broadsheet, 4A Papers, eyeline. In 1980, she was a member of the collective that wrote and (largely) funded the feminist arts magazine LIP (1976–84).
2016, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 21.6 x 26.7 cm
Published by
University of California Press / Berkley
$110.00 $80.00 - Out of stock
The Uses of Photography examines a network of California artists whose experiments with photography during the turbulent, transitional decade of the 1970s opened the medium to a profusion of new strategies and subjects. Working within the framework of Conceptual art, these artists introduced urgent social issues and themes of everyday life into the seemingly neutral territory of photography, producing works that took on hybrid forms, from books and postcards to video and text-and-image installations.
Tracing a crucial history of photoconceptual practice, The Uses of Photography focuses on an artistic community that formed in and around the young UC San Diego, founded in 1960, and its visual arts department, founded in 1968. Artists such as Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Allan Kaprow, Martha Rosler, and Allan Sekula employed photography and its expanded forms as a means to dismantle modernist autonomy, to contest notions of photographic truth, and to engage in political critique. The work of these artists shaped emergent accounts of postmodernism in the visual arts and their influence is felt throughout the global contemporary art world today. Published in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Edited by Jill Dawsey
Texts by Judith Rodenbeck, Benjamin Young , David Antin, and Pamela M. Lee
Artists include David Antin, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Helen Mayer Harrison, Newton Harrison, Louis Hock, Allan Kaprow, Fred Lonidier, Babette Mangolte, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Lorna Simpson, Elizabeth Sisco, Phel Steinmetz, Carrie Mae Weems.
2016, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 292 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$54.00 - Out of stock
Painting beyond Itself
The Medium in the Post-medium Condition
Isabelle Graw, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (Eds.)
Contributions by Carol Armstrong, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, René Démoris, Isabelle Graw, David Joselit, Jutta Koether, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Jacqueline Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Matt Saunders, Amy Sillman
In response to recent developments in pictorial practice and critical discourse, Painting beyond Itself: The Medium in the Post-medium Condition seeks new ways to approach and historicize the question of the medium. Reaching back to the earliest theoretical and institutional definitions of painting, this book—based on a conference at Harvard University in 2013—focuses on the changing role of materiality in establishing painting as the privileged practice, discourse, and institution of modernity. Myriad conceptions of the medium and its specificity are explored by an international group of scholars, critics, and artists. Painting beyond Itself is a forum for rich historical, theoretical, and practice-grounded conversation.
Institut für Kunstkritik Series
Design by Surface
2020, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 14 x 21.1 cm
Published by
Campus Verlag / Frankfurt
$96.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
The Value of Critique casts its gaze on the two dominant modes of passing judgment in art--critique and value (or evaluation). The act of critique has long held sway in the world of art theory but has recently been increasingly abandoned in favor of evaluation, which advocates alternate modes of judgment aimed at finding the intrinsic "value" of a given work rather than picking apart its intentions and relative success. This book's contributors explore the relationship between these two practices, finding that one cannot exist with the other. As soon as a critic decides an object is worthy enough of their interest and time to critique it, they have imbued that object with a certain value. Similarly, theories of value are typically marked by a critical impetus: as much as critique takes part in the construction of evaluations, bestowing something with value can then trigger critiques. Assembling essays from an international array of authors, this book is the first to put value, critique, and artistic labor in conversation with one another, making clear just how closely all three are related.