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
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
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.
2011, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$32.00 - Out of stock
Ours is a century of fear. Governments and mass media bombard us with words and images: desert radicals, "rogue states," jihadists, WMDs, existential enemies of freedom. We labor beneath myths that neither address nor describe the present situation, monstrous deceptions produced by a sound bite society. There is no reckoning of actuality, no understanding of the individual lives that inaugurated this echo chamber.
In the summer of 1999, Mohamed Atta defended a master’s thesis that critiqued the introduction of Western-style skyscrapers in the Middle East and called for the return of the "Islamic-Oriental city." Using this as a departure point, Jarett Kobek's novel ATTA offers a fictionalized psychedelic biography of Mohamed Atta that circles around a simple question: what if 9/11 was as much a matter of architectural criticism as religious terrorism? Following the development of a socially awkward boy into one of history's great villains, Kobek demonstrates the need for a new understanding of global terrorism. Joined in this volume by a second work, "The Whitman of Tikrit"--a radical reimagining of Saddam Hussein's last day before capture--ATTA is a brutal, relentless, and ultimately fearless corrective to ten years of propaganda and pandering.
About the Author
Jarett Kobek is the son of a Turkish immigrant and a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. His Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction has been anthologized alongside Haruki Murakami and F. X. Toole. His first novel was commissioned and published by Book Works of London as part of the experimental literature Semina series. He lives in California.
2018, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$25.00 - Out of stock
First published in 1839, Honoré de Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on five stimulants – tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol and tobacco – by an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan output of work was driven by an excessive intake (his bouts of writing typically required 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day) that would ultimately shorten his life. Balzac here describes his "terrible and cruel method" for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration; explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany; and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac's obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one's vital forces. This edition includes illustrations to an earlier French edition by Pierre Alechinsky.
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus. Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Jack Kerouac, and Henry James, filmmakers Akira Kurosawa, Eric Rohmer and François Truffaut as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films, and they continue to inspire other writers.
2016, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 288 pages, 15.2 x 24.1 cm
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$89.00 - Out of stock
Douglas Crimp is the rare art critic whose work profoundly influenced a generation of artists. He is best known for his work with the "Pictures Generation" the very name of which Crimp coined to define the work of artists like Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman who appropriated images from mass culture to carry out a subversive critique. But while his influence is widely recognized, we know little about Crimp's own formative experiences before "Pictures."Before Pictures tells the story of Crimp's life as a young gay man and art critic in New York City during the late 1960s through the turbulent 1970s. Crimp participated in all of what made the city so stimulating in that vibrant decade. The details of his professional and personal life are interwoven with this the particularly rich history of New York City at that time, producing a vivid portrait of both the critic and his adopted city. The book begins with his escape from his hometown in Idaho, and we quickly find Crimp writing criticism for ArtNews while working at the Guggenheim where, as a young curatorial assistant, he was one of the few to see Daniel Buren's Peinture-Sculpture before it was removed amid cries of institutional censorship. We also travel to the Chelsea Hotel (where Crimp helped the down-on-his-luck couturier Charles James organize his papers) through to his days as a cinephile and balletomane to the founding of the art journal October, where he remained a central figure for many years. As he was developing his reputation as a critic, he was also partaking of the New York night life, from drugs and late nights alongside the Warhol crowd at the Max's Kansas City to discos, roller-skating, and casual sex with famous (and not-so-famous) men. As AIDS began to ravage the closely linked art and gay communities, Crimp eventually turned his attention to activism dedicated to rethinking AIDS. Part biography and part cultural history, Before Pictures is a courageous account of an exceptional period in both Crimp's life and the life of New York City. At the same time, it offers a deeply personal and engaging point of entry into important issues in contemporary art.
Includes the work of Cindy Sherman, Jack Goldstein, Daniel Buren, Charles James, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Peter Hujar, Eva Hesse, Bernardo Bertolucci, Walker Evans, Joseph Cornell, Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Tworkov, Robert Ryman, Jane Freilicher, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Stanley Kubrick, Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, Brice Marden, Ellsworth Kelly, Guilio Romano, Andrea Mantegna, Merce Cunningham, Joan Jonas, Yvonne Rainer, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Alvin Baltrop, Divine, Gordon Matta-Clark, Edgar Degas, Louise Lawler, and so many others.
2016, English
Hardcover, 280 pages, 31.6 x 3.1 x 26 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$120.00 - Out of stock
The resurgent interest in contemporary painting in recent years has coincided with an explosion of new digital media and technologies. Contrary to canonical accounts premised on medium-specificity, painting’s most advanced positions since the 1960s have developed in productive friction with contemporaneous forms of mass media and culture. From the rise of television and computers to the Internet revolution, painting has assimilated precisely those cultural and technological developments that were held responsible for its presumed “death.” Moving far beyond its technical definition as “oil on canvas,” painting during the information age has consistently offered a site for negotiating the challenges of a mediated life-world.
Featuring over 230 works by 107 artists, Painting 2.0 is one of the largest and most comprehensive exhibitions of contemporary painting in recent years.
Artists include:
Kai Althoff, Ei Arakawa/Shimon Minamikawa, Monika Baer, Nairy Baghramian, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lynda Benglis, Sadie Benning, Judith Bernstein, Joseph Beuys, Ashley Bickerton, Cosima von Bonin, KAYA (Debo Eilers & Kerstin Brätsch), Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Merlin Carpenter, Leidy Churchman, William Copley, René Daniëls, Guy Debord/Asger Jorn, Carroll Dunham, Mary Beth Edelson, Thomas Eggerer, Michaela Eichwald, Nicole Eisenman, Jana Euler, Louise Fishman, Andrea Fraser, Isa Genzken, Mary Grigoriadis, Philip Guston, Wade Guyton, Guyton/Walker, Raymond Hains, Harmony Hammond, David Hammons, Keith Haring, Rachel Harrison, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Charline von Heyl, Ull Hohn, Jacqueline Humphries, Jörg Immendorff, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Yves Klein, Jutta Koether, Michael Krebber, Manfred Kuttner, Maria Lassnig, Sherrie Levine, Glenn Ligon, Lee Lozano, Konrad Lueg, Michel Majerus, Piero Manzoni, Kerry James Marshall, Hans-Jörg Mayer, John Miller, Joan Mitchell, Ree Morton, Ulrike Müller, Matt Mullican, Elisabeth Murray, Cady Noland, Hilka Nordhausen, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Steven Parrino, Ed Paschke, Howardena Pindell, Sigmar Polke, Seth Price, Stephen Prina, R.H. Quaytman, Robert Rauschenberg, David Reed, Gerhard Richter, Mimmo Rotella, Niki de Saint Phalle, Mario Schifano, Amy Sillman, Sylvia Sleigh, Josh Smith, Joan Snyder, Reena Spaulings, Nancy Spero, Gruppe SPUR, Frank Stella, Walter Swennen, Paul Thek, Rosemarie Trockel, Cy Twombly, Jacques de la Villeglé, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol, Sue Williams, Karl Wirsum, Martin Wong, Christopher Wool, Heimo Zobernig, u.a.
2019, German & English
Softcover, 300 pages, 11cm x 18cm
Published by
Christoph Merian / Basel
Migros-Kulturprozent
$44.00 - Out of stock
Computer developers have dreamed of virtual reality since the early days of programming. With digitisation, our ambition to transcend the world of flat images, to immerse ourselves into an artificial environment, is now within reach. This book illuminates the potential of new forms of immersion in the field of culture, with examples from film, television, museums, art, gaming, education, and more. It features projects such as Birdly and Desktop: Jacob Burckhardt Digital, as well as the work of artists such as Mélodie Mousset. Wider applications in medicine, architecture, archaeology, and reconstruction are also examined. The appendix includes a glossary of relevant terms.
2017, English
Softcover, 112 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
ACCA / Melbourne
$65.00 - Out of stock
The quickly sold out catalogue published to accompany the exhibition 'Sovereignty' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), 17 December 2016 – 26 March 2017.
With a foreword by Arweet Carolyn Briggs, the Sovereignty catalogue features essays by exhibition curators Paola Balla and Max Delany, and commissioned texts by celebrated author Dr Tony Birch and Yorta Yorta curator and writer Kimberley Moulton.
Encompassing extensive documentation of artists’ works in the exhibition printed in full colour, the publication serves as a companion to the exhibition, presenting the vibrant and diverse visual art and culture of the continuous and distinct nations, language groups and communities of Victoria’s sovereign, Indigenous peoples. Sovereignty focuses on contemporary art of First Nations peoples of South East Australia, alongside keynote historical works, to explore culturally and linguistically diverse narratives of self-determination, identity, sovereignty and resistance. Bringing together new commissions, recent and historical works by over thirty artists, Sovereignty is structured around a set of practices and relationships in which art and society, community and family, history and politics are inextricably connected. A diverse range of discursive and thematic contexts are elaborated: the celebration and assertion of cultural identity and resistance; the significance and inter-connectedness of Country, people and place; the renewal and re-inscription of cultural languages and practices; the importance of matriarchal culture and wisdom; the dynamic relations between activism and aesthetics; and a playfulness with language and signs in contemporary society.
Artists featured: Brook Andrew, William Barak, Lisa Bellear, Jim Berg, Briggs, Trevor Turbo Brown,
Amiel Courtin-Wilson / Uncle Jack Charles, Maree Clarke, Vicky Couzens, Destiny Deacon & Virginia Fraser, Marlene Gilson, Korin Gamadji Institute, Brian Martin, Kent Morris, Clinton Nain, Glenda Nicholls, Bill Onus, Steaphan Paton, Bronwyn Razem, Reko Rennie, Steven Rhall, Yhonnie Scarce, Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), Peter Waples-Crowe, Lucy Williams-Connelly
Out of print edition of 750 copies.
Very Good. Like New, but with light marking to cover.
1974, English
Hardcover (linen bound), 88 pages, 19 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
New York University Press / New York
The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design / Halifax
$100.00 - Out of stock
Rare first hardcopy edition copy of the highly influential Steve Reich book of texts,"Writings About Music", first published in 1974 by The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
In the mid-1960s, American composer Steve Reich radically renewed the musical landscape, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, to pioneer what became minimal music. These early Reich works, characterised by a relentless pulse and static harmony, focused single-mindedly on the process of gradual rhythmic change. Throughout his career, Reich has continued to reinvigorate the music world, drawing from a wide array of classical, popular, sacred, and non-western idioms. His works reflect the steady evolution of an original musical mind.
In 1974 Reich published the book Writings About Music, containing essays on his philosophy, aesthetics, and musical projects written between 1963 and 1974. The book features, amongst many other texts and studies, Reich's 1968 essay "Music as a Gradual Process," widely considered one of the most influential pieces of music theory in the second half of the 20th century.
Good copy lacking dust jacket, with ex-library stamps/markings to cloth cover. Light wear, otherwise Very Good interior well-preserved.
2012, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 136 x 203 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$42.00 - Out of stock
Marcel Duchamp was a famous expatriate, a wanderer, living and working in Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires and escaping from each in turn. But exile, argues T. J. Demos in this innovative reading, is more than a fact in Duchamp's biography. Exile--in the artist's own words, a "spirit of expatriation"--infuses Duchamp's entire artistic practice. Duchamp's readymade constructions, his installations for surrealist exhibitions in Paris and New York, and his "portable museum" (the suggestively named La boite-en-valise), Demos writes, all manifest, define, and exploit the terms of exile in multiple ways. Created while the artist was living variously in New York, Buenos Aires, and occupied France during the global catastrophes of war and fascism, these works express the anguish of displacement and celebrate the freedom of geopolitical homelessness. The "portable museum," a suitcase containing miniature reproductions of Duchamp's works, for example, represented a complex meditation--both critical and joyful--on modern art's tendency toward itinerancy, whereas Duchamp's 1942 installation design entangling a New York gallery in a mile of string announced the dislocated status that many exiled surrealists wished to forget. Duchamp's exile, writes Demos, defines a new ethics of independent life in the modern age of nationalism and advanced capitalism, offering a precursor to our own globalized world of nomadic subjects and dispersed experience.
T. J. Demos is a Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University College London and the author of The Exiles of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2007). His essays have appeared in such journals as Artforum, Grey Room, October, and Texte zur Kunst.
2018, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 17 x 22 cm
Published by
Casco / Utrecht
Valiz / Amsterdam
$44.00 - Out of stock
Learning is the accumulation of knowledge, skills, and behaviour and is often progress-oriented and institutionally driven. In contrast, unlearning is directed towards embodied forms of knowledge and the (un)conscious operation of ways of thinking and doing. 'Unlearning Excercises' shares a set of exercises as propositions to be useful for and adapted within other specific (institutional) contexts in and beyond the arts. These exercises range from daily practices like ‘Cleaning Together,’ to unresolvable issues of collective authorship and fair wage. They also offer insights into the lively and long-term collective unlearning process.
2019, English / German
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 16.5 cm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - Out of stock
The sea has inspired artists, writers, and thinkers for centuries; but what has changed in our view of the sea since the canonical seafaring novels and paintings of the 19th century? In the June issue of Texte zur Kunst, dedicated to the mysteries and violence of the deep, we examine the sea from a media-theoretical perspective as well as from the perspective of current political and ecological catastrophes. For this issue, the theoretical texts are punctuated by photo essays by four artists who have dealt with the sea as a biosphere as well as a transit system for container vessels. In short, we realize just how important it is to look at the sea again, and again.
ISSUE NO. 114 / JUNE 2019 "THE SEA"
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
BERNHARD SIEGERT
THE SINKING OF A STEAMBOAT / Robert Carrick’s, William Suhr’s, David Bull’s, and J. M. W. Turner’s “Rockets and Blue Lights” (1840–2003)
NADJA ABT -
SEAWOMEN
ASHNA ALI
- MEDITERRANEAN BORDERLAND
SUSANNE M. WINTERLING -
CODE AND POETRY OF THE SEA
IN THE THICKNESS OF THE CROSSING / Challenging the Liquid Violence of Borders in the Mediterranean – An interview with Charles Heller
MANDLA REUTER
- MOUNTAIN WATER
D. GRAHAM BURNETT
JETSAM
HIRA NABI
- HOW TO DISMANTLE A SHIP IN NINE STEPS
FRANZISKA BRONS
- THE SEA: MEDIUM AND MILIEU
LIEBE ARBEIT KINO
FOR A PANAFRICAN PAST AND FUTURE! / Michaela Ott über das Jubiläum des subsaharischen Filmfestivals FESPACO in Ouagadougou
ROTATION
DIE UNANGENEHME VERWANDTE / Vojin Saša Vukadinović über „Last Days at Hot Slit. The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin“ von Johanna Fateman und Amy Scholder (Hg.)
REVIEWS
A LEGIBLE FUTURE / Jeffrey West Kirkwood on “The New Alphabet” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
LEERSTELLEN IN DER VERGANGENHEIT, RISSE IN DER GEGENWART / Sven Beckstette über Dierk Schmidt im Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
SUBJECTS OF MADNESS: NANOTYRANNUS, RAW CHAMPAGNE, AND BREASTS LIKE CAMELLIAS / Nina Prader on “Flying High: Women Artists of Art Brut” at the Kunstforum Vienna
AFROATLANTISCHE GESCHICHTEN / Frauke Zabel über Rubem Valentim im Museu de Arte de São Paulo
SYSTEMIC AESTHETICIZATION / Sven Lütticken on Pierre Huyghe at the Serpentine Gallery, London
CIVILIZATIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS / Rike Frank on Rossella Biscotti at the daadgalerie, Berlin
PIPELINE DREAMS / Benjamin Thorel on Lucie Stahl at Freedman Fitzpatrick, Paris
REALITÄTSEFFEKTE / Hannes Loichinger über Jay Chung und Q Takeki Maeda im Kölnischen Kunstverein
FAIL BETTER / Colin Lang on Stefanie Heinze at Capitain Petzel, Berlin
ALLE KÜNSTLER*INNEN LÜGEN / Michael Franz über KP Brehmer im Neuen Museum in Nürnberg
THE DISCREET CHARM OF VANISHING / Estelle Nabeyrat on Lourdes Castro at Musée régional d’art contemporain Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée, Sérignan
BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE / David Bussel on Ghislaine Leung at Chisenhale Gallery, London
STABILE UNGLEICHGEWICHTE / Gürsoy Doğtaş über Nil Yalter im Museum Ludwig, Köln
BEST SINGER-SONGPAINTING / Gunter Reski über Norbert Schwontkowski bei Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin
HERE’S AL / Eli Diner on Allen Ruppersberg at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
BATHETIC FALLACY / Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe on “A Fatal Attraction” at Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
OBITUARIES
OKWUI ENWEZOR (1963–2019) / by Ulrich Wilmes, Ute Meta Bauer and Markus Müller, with an introduction by Isabelle Graw
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN (1939–2019) / by Pamela M. Lee
KARL LAGERFELD (1933−2019) / von Barbara Vinken
EDITION
JANA EULER
HELEN MARTEN
2018, English
Hardcover, 376 pages, 18.5 x 24.5 cm
Published by
Park Books / Zürich
$89.00 - Out of stock
The first book to provide a detailed account of Neumann's work, Space Packed celebrates the career of this highly skilled and innovative architect, and it will be welcomed by architects and architectural historians.
Space Packed renews attention to this pioneering architect who made a vast contribution to modern architecture and had a lasting impact on Israel's broader architectural culture. Drawing on Neumann's writings and close study of both built and unbuilt projects, Rafi Segal discusses the development of Neumann's architectural theory and methodology and documents his built works from the 1950s and '60s against the backdrop of contemporary architectural discourse and the demands of the newly created State of Israel. The book also features a complete, chronological catalog of Neumann's buildings and designs, fully illustrated, including many previously unpublished photographs, drawings, and sketches.
Alfred Neumann (1900–1968) was a Czech architect whose work was wrought in the context of postwar modernism and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Today, his influence and impact have been largely forgotten, but, in their time, Neumann's original designs received praise and elicited controversy in almost equal measure, offering exciting new possibilities to the modernist mainstream.
2019, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 21.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$65.00 - Out of stock
In 1971, Chris Burden disappeared for three days without a trace. This book, also entitled Disappearing, examines the theme of disappearance in the works of Burden and his contemporaries, Bas Jan Ader and Jack Goldstein, in 1970s Southern California. Loosely affiliated, these three artists shared an interest in themes of disappearance and self-effacement. In 1972, Goldstein buried himself alive during a performance, while during Ader's tragic last work, In search of the miraculous (1975), the artist vanished crossing the Atlantic. Responding to cultural pressures like the Vietnam War and the nascent field of feminist art, the artists used "disappearing" as a response to the masculine anxiety of the 1970s. This book reveals a fascinating intersection between major figures at a critical turning point for Californian art.
2018, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 9.6 x 14.8 cm
$20.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
James R. Murphy, a math teacher in La Guardia, New York, regarded mathematics as the most powerful and manipulable abstract language available to humans. To acquaint students who don’t “like” math with abstract and systematical thinking, he put a piece of string in their hands and taught them to make string figures.
How to spell the fight follows a thread that has been running through our fingers from centuries past till the present day, morphing from the tangible string figures that join our hands in childhood to the more elusive computational algorithms that engage our fingers today. Following this line of inquiry through various twists and turns, a conversation about collective agency emerges with the aim of rethinking current paradigms of cognition, education, and power.
Natascha Sadr Haghighian is an artist living in Berlin. Her research-based practice encompasses a variety of forms and formats, among them video, performance, installations, text, and sound. She tries to learn how to make string figures.
This is the fifth book in the Kayfa ta series, a publishing initiative of Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Each book in the series is a monographic essay commissioned in the style of how-to manuals that situation themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional.
Copublished with Kayfa ta
Design by Julie Peeters
2017, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 9.6 x 14.8 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$20.00 $10.00 - Out of stock
SSS: How to imitate the sound of the shore using two hands and a carpet is, at first glance, exactly what it claims to be: an in-depth manual for staging a private (or public) performance, in which one uses both hands and a carpet to imitate the sounds of water making contact with land. Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek’s book includes diagrams and photographs, which illustrate possible methods for producing this effect, while also addressing theoretical and methodological issues related to the representation of nature.
SSS is the second book in the Kayfa ta series, a publishing initiative of Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis. Each book in the series is a monographic essay commissioned in the style of how-to manuals that situation themselves in the space between the technical and the reflective, the everyday and the speculative, the instructional and the intuitive, and the factual and the fictional.
Copublished with Kayfa ta
Design by Julie Peeters
1975, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 112 pages, 26 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
International General / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the first English-language edition of "How to Read Donald Duck", published in 1975. Disney managed to have all 4,000 copies impounded upon arrival to the United States, but ultimately, 1,500 copies made it into the country, the rest of the shipment was blocked.
“A literary grandmaster.” ―Time
First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves.
Written and published during the blossoming of Salvador Allende's revolutionary socialism, the book examines how Disney comics not only reflect capitalist ideology, but are active agents working in this ideology's favour. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney, curiously parentless, marginalised and always short of cash, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart expose how these characters established hegemonic ideas about capital, race, gender and the relationship between developed countries and the Third World. Disney recognized the challenge and, when the book was translated and imported into the United States in 1975, managed to have all 4,000 copies impounded. Ultimately, 1,500 copies of the book were allowed into the country, the rest of the shipment was blocked, and until now no American publisher has re-released the book, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. (The original English language edition is now a collector’s item, selling for up to $500 on Amazon.)
A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman.
Translated by art historian David Kunzle.
Very Good copy.
2018, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 14.7 x 20.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
OR / New York
$45.00 - Out of stock
“A literary grandmaster.” ―Time
First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves.
Written and published during the blossoming of Salvador Allende's revolutionary socialism, the book examines how Disney comics not only reflect capitalist ideology, but are active agents working in this ideology's favour. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney, curiously parentless, marginalised and always short of cash, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart expose how these characters established hegemonic ideas about capital, race, gender and the relationship between developed countries and the Third World. Disney recognized the challenge and, when the book was translated and imported into the United States in 1975, managed to have all 4,000 copies impounded. Ultimately, 1,500 copies of the book were allowed into the country, the rest of the shipment was blocked, and until now no American publisher has re-released the book, which has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. (The original English language edition is now a collector’s item, selling for up to $500 on Amazon.)
A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck was re-printed in this expanded 2018 hardcover edition, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman. Sadly also now out-of-print and destined to become another collector's edition.
2003, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 18 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$74.00 $60.00 - Out of stock
Surrealism in its late phase often abandoned neutral exhibition spaces in favor of environments that embodied subjective ideologies. These exhibitions offered startled viewers an early version of installation art before the form existed as such. In Displaying the Marvelous, Lewis Kachur explores this development by analyzing three elaborate Surrealist installations created between 1938 and 1942. The first two, the "Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme" (1938) and the "Dream of Venus" at the New York World's Fair (1939), dealt with the fetishization of the female body. The third, "First Papers of Surrealism" (1942), focused not on the figure but on the entire expanse of the exhibition space, thus contributing to the development of nonfigurative art in New York. Kachur presents a full visual and verbal reconstruction of each of the exhibitions, evoking the sequence that the contemporary viewer would have encountered.
The book considers Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, two artists who are not usually compared, within a common framework. Duchamp specialized in frustrating the spectator, using his ironic wit to call into question the definition of the work of art. Dali was a master at disorienting the senses by establishing and then undermining everyday spatial and object properties. The Surrealist challenge, as voiced by Andre Breton, was to evoke the marvelous. Duchamp and Dali extended that challenge to the physical and commercial realm of the exhibition installation.
About the Author
Lewis Kachur is Associate Professor of Art History at Kean University, New Jersey.
“Lewis Kachur hands us a free time-travel ticket, with himself as marvelous pilot. Transporting us into the thick inventions of late Surrealist exhibitions, he gives us the ravishing gift of being there, present at the birthing and, as well, the seeding of so much installation and site-specific art to come decades later. For artists now who feel tied to Grandfather Marcel without having known him, Kachur's work vividly opens up the real moves of Duchamp's reinvention of what it is to be an artist. Revealing secret interior paths of communication among artists that flow synaptically across generations, this sumptuous work points to a new holistic way to understand art.”
—Mierle Laderman Ukeles, artist
“A splendid analysis of the late Surrealist exhibitions. Anyone interested in Surrealist art would want this book; anyone interested in the consideration of display in twentieth-century art must have this book.”
—Richard Martin (1945-1999), former curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Perceptive, fascinating, and written with pleasure and delight. The reciprocal exchange between art work and its context is presented with a steady, at times inspired, sense of inquiry.”
—Brian O’Doherty, writer
Out-of-print
2018, English
Softcover, 560 pages, 14.6 x 21 cm
Published by
Sequence Press / New York
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$79.00 - Out of stock
A critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism that formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things.
In Intelligence and Spirit Reza Negarestani formulates the ultimate form of intelligence as a theoretical and practical thought unfettered by the temporal order of things, a real movement capable of overcoming any state of affairs that, from the perspective of the present, may appear to be the complete totality of history. Intelligence pierces through what seems to be the totality or the inevitable outcome of its history, be it the manifest portrait of the human or technocapitalism as the alleged pilot of history.
Building on Hegel's account of Geist as a multiagent conception of mind and on Kant's transcendental psychology as a functional analysis of the conditions of possibility of mind, Negarestani provides a critique of both classical humanism and dominant trends in posthumanism. The assumptions of the former are exposed by way of a critique of the transcendental structure of experience as a tissue of subjective or psychological dogmas; the claims of the latter regarding the ubiquity of mind or the inevitable advent of an unconstrained superintelligence are challenged as no more than ideological fixations which do not stand the test of systematic scrutiny.
This remarkable fusion of continental philosophy in the form of a renewal of the speculative ambitions of German Idealism and analytic philosophy in the form of extended thought-experiments and a philosophy of artificial languages opens up new perspectives on the meaning of human intelligence and explores the real potential of posthuman intelligence and what it means for us to live in its prehistory.
1988, English
Softcover (french-folds), 34 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Terrazzo / Milan
$100.00 - Out of stock
TERRAZZO was a very special biannual publication on architecture and design, edited and published between 1988–1995 by Barbara Radice, a prominent Italian author, design critic and member of the Memphis Milano design group. In conjunction with Ettore Sottsass, Christoph Radl, Anna Wagner and Santi Caleca, Radice created a unique and thoughtful periodical that focused on contemporary works of design and architecture, within Italy and abroad, touching on a vast array of disciplines in each issue, including photography, literature, poetry, history, science, philosophy, art and anthropology.
TERRAZZO 1
Fall 1988
MICHELE DE LUCCHI
new drawings
MASSIMO IOSA GHINI
things must pass
JOHNNY PIGOZZI
architecture from the sky
THE SECOND MODERNITY
by Andrea Branzi
TRAVEL NOTES
by Ettore Sottsass
on architecture
photographs by Ettore Sottsass
OUTSIDE THE AVANT-GARDE
by Herbert Muschamp
MARMORA ROMANA
by Romiero Gnoli
PLANS (No. 1)
Sumer, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Indian
2019, English
English, 208 pages, 20.4 x 26.9 cm
Ed. of 600,
Published by
Westphalie Verlag / Vienna
$42.00 - In stock -
Contributions by Kerstin Stakemeier, Stephan Dillemuth, Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, Georgie Nettell, Mark von Schlegell, Tonio Kröner, Jenny Nachtigall, et al. Reprints of Rachel Carson and Nora K. Jemisin.
Published after the occasion of the workshop "Postapokalyptische Seibst-reflexion/Postapocalyptic Self-Reflection," May 20-21, 2016, University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Department of Art History, University of Vienna
Concept: Barbara Reisinger and Tanja Widmann (www.postapokalypse.com)
Editors: Laura Preston and Tanja Widmann
Graphic design: David Jourdan
2 cover versions.
1991, English / Japanese
Hardcover (w. dusjacket), 200 pages, 26 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
G.C. Press / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
The wonderful "Playoffice" Japanese book published in 1991 that expands on famed Japanese designer Isao Hosoe's "Design and the Trickster" concept. Through a postmodern lens, this profusely illustrated hardcover book spans international ancient and contemporary examples of radical, innovative, and humane design for working, discussing office culture, domesticity, and the sensorial qualities of living design through chapters such as "Nomadic Domesticity", "Erotism" and Office Tabu, "The House as the Antagonist of the Office?", "The Concept of "MA" : Space/Time Quality", "Theatricality in the Office", "The Designer as Trickster" and much more. As well as incredible examples of the environmental work of Isao Hosoe, Ann Mannelli, and Renata Sias, included are many diverse examples from Japanese and African traditional dwellings, Ancient Roma and Egypt, the Maenge people, to the furniture of Andrea Branzi, Gaetano Pesce, Yashiru Asano, Angelo Mangiarotti, Mario Bellini, Ettore Sottsass, Toshiyuki Kita, Shigeru Uchida, Shiro Kuramata, Bruno Munari, Paolo Deganello, Memphis Group, and much more.
"Perhaps the first question that comes to mind is why the name "PLAYOFFICE"? How can these two words possibly have anything in common? Most people would agree that the office environment is one for "work", and that "work" is the contrary to "play" ...Or they might say that "play" connotes a
waste of time, and office efficiency is calculated on the correct use of time... Some might say too, that only children play, or at least those adults who are not serious!...We have another point of view on the subject."
Texts in English and Japanese by Isao Hosoe, Ann Mannelli, Renata Sias; introduction by Masao Yamaguchi. Cover design by Masayoshi Yamamoto
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and obi strip. Protected in mylar wrap.
Born in Tokyo, Hosoe studied there at Nihon University where he graduated in 1965 with a major in aerospace engineering with a thesis on a human-powered aircraft, followed by a Master in Sciences in 1967. From the same year he moved to Milan where he still lived until his death, mainly collaborating with Alberto Rosselli and Gio Ponti of the Studio Ponti-Fornaroli-Rosselli from 1967 to 1974. In 1985 he founded his own studio Isao Hosoe Design.
1983, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 20.6 x 14.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Methuen Publishing / London
$50.00 - Out of stock
The scarce 1983 paperback "The Improvised Play : The Work of Mike Leigh", written by Paul Clements and dedicated entirely to the work of the great English writer and director of film and theatre, Mike Leigh. Leigh began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid-1960s and in the 1970s and 1980s his career moved between theatre work and making films for BBC Television, many of which were characterised by a gritty "kitchen sink realism" style. Mike Leigh's many works include "Nuts in May"(1975), "Abigail's Party"(1977), "Life Is Sweet"(1990), "Naked"(1993), "Secrets & Lies"(1993), "Vera Drake"(2004),"Mr. Turner"(2014), to name a few. Being the first extensive study of Leigh's early work, this textbook, drawn principally from innumerable conversations and taped interviews with Leigh between 1980-1982, gives the reader an introduction and background to Leigh's beginnings, an in-depth study of his methods and approaches to plays and films, and a valuable appendix (complete checklist of all the plays and films devised and directed by Mike Leigh up until 1983).
First edition. Good copy with cover wear, creasing.
2013, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$58.00 - Out of stock
Since the late 1980s, Jean-Luc Moulène (b. 1955) has developed a body of work informed by a critical investigation of artistic authorship, addressing such issues as autonomy, immanence, and anarchic politics. Although he is best known for his enigmatic and seductive large-format photographs, Moulene has maintained a parallel exploration of materials and objects-manufactured and found, industrial and organic, intimate and imposing-that he has collectively titled Opus. This book, the first critical study of Moulene's work, brings together leading scholars to examine the artist's diverse aesthetic strategies and interests in the relationships between social and political arenas and systems and orders, including geometry, mathematics, social sciences, and human behavior. Featured essays also examine Moulene's theoretical and playful inquiries into the plasticity of materials and the ways we see and understand both still and moving images.
2017, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 12.7 x 19.5 cm
Published by
Fitzcarraldo Editions / London
$30.00 - Out of stock
Imagine a type of writing so hard to define its very name means a trial, effort or attempt. An ancient form with an eye on the future, a genre poised between tradition and experiment. The essay wants above all to wander, but also to arrive at symmetry and wholeness; it nurses competing urges to integrity and disarray, perfection and fragmentation, confession and invention.
How to write about essays and essayists while staying true to these contradictions? Essayism is a personal, critical and polemical book about the genre, its history and contemporary possibilities. It’s an example of what it describes: an essay that is curious and digressive, exacting yet evasive, a form that would instruct, seduce and mystify in equal measure. Among the essayists to whom he pays tribute – from Virginia Woolf to Georges Perec, Joan Didion to Sir Thomas Browne – Brian Dillon discovers a path back into his own life as a reader, and out of melancholia to a new sense of writing as adventure.
Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, frieze and Artforum. He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches at the Royal College of Art, London.