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:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
SAT 12—4 PM
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
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 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. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or 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.
2022, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$70.00 - In stock -
Now available in paperback, this book on the celebrated Dada artist Hannah Höch explores her use of collage as the artistic medium of choice for both satire and poetic beauty.
World-renowned for her work during the Weimar period, Hannah Höch was a pioneer in many aspects, both artistic and cultural. She was the lone woman of the Berlin Dada movement - the riotous form of art that deconstructed sound, language, and images to re-assemble them into new objects, texts and meanings. Höch was a pivotal force in the development of collage, paving the way for today's ubiquitous image editing techniques. A determined believer in women's rights, Höch questioned conventional concepts of partnership, beauty and the making of art, her work presenting acute critiques of racial and social stereotypes, particularly that of her native Germany.
Focusing on Höch's collages, this book examines the artist's career from the 1920s to the 1970s, charting her oeuvre from early works influenced by fashion and mass media, through to her later compositions of lyrical abstraction. It reveals her rapid development of a personal style, which was both humorous and often moving, but also offered critical commentary on society at a time of tremendous social change.
Included are essays that examine themes such as the concept of the "New Woman" and the legacy of German colonialism. Featuring international scholarship on a groundbreaking artist, this volume brings together important source texts and reference material, which were first translated into English for the original edition of this book.
Dawn Ades is Professor Emerita of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex, and Professor of Art History at the Royal Academy. She is a former Trustee of Tate and Fellow of the British Academy.
Daniel F. Herrmann is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery.
Emily Butler is a curator, writer and translator, currently Mahera and Mohammad Abu Ghazaleh Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery.
2013, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 23.2 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$500.00 - In stock -
Very collectible first hardcover edition of the first book of photography by Henrik Purienne, published in 2013 and immediately out-of-print.
"Voyeuristic, sun-drenched, and natural, the photographs of fashion photographer Henrik Purienne convey a sexuality that's as nostalgic as it is au courant, at once tender and sultry." Fronted by friend and model Sonja van den Heever, his first book presents a hand-selection of over 200 pages of photographs. Shot mostly in his trademark grainy 35mm film, Purienne's soft-hued and ingeniously lit images often include scratches and other imperfections that belie the sophistication of his technique, evoking the joys of life and the natural beauty of his subject "[...] with unmade faces, hair unruly and clothing, if any, unfussy [...]" in her truest form. Featured across the pages of Lui, Purple, Playboy, and Vogue, and in campaigns for Maison Margiela and Louis Vuitton, "Purienne's images afford us immeasurable scope for desire. [...] We can see and feel the heat through his images."—Tess Martin, Krass Journal No.1
Very Good copy, interior As New, cover with bumping to top of spine and light bump to top corner, none affecting interior pages as heavy boards are overhung.
1983, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 27.9 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
The Saint Louis Art Museum / Saint Louis
$45.00 - Out of stock
1983 exhibition catalogue surveying the Neue Wilde neo-expressionism and the re-emergence of expressive painting in late 1970s and 1980s Germany, published in conjunction with show organized by Jack Cowart and held at The Saint Louis Art Museum, June—August, 1983. Profusely illustrated in colour and b/w throughout with the work of the artists included in the exhibition : George Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, A.R. Penck, and Markus Lüpertz. Essays by Jack Cowart, Siegfried Gohr, and Donald B. Kuspit. Critical bibliography by Renate Winkler.
This copy stuffed with loose archival clippings on above artists from German magazine Stern, from around the same period (documenta 7, 1982).
Good copy but with spots of heavy wear to the cover and general wear.
2012, English
Hardcover (faux leather w. illustrated obi-strip), 304 pages, 23 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$220.00 - Out of stock
Rare English edition of the lavish hardcover catalogue to the critically-acclaimed ECM exhibition at Munich’s Haus der Kunst in 2012, and fast out-of-print. As stunning and complex as the music it celebrates, this book presents essays, rare photographs, archival material, film stills, original album artwork, and artworks that pay tribute to one of the world's most daring and innovative record labels. Founded by the legendary producer Manfred Eicher in 1969, a moment when contemporary music was being redefined across all genres, ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) aimed to bring jazz, improvised, and written music out of the studio and into living rooms around the world. ECM's productions set new standards in sonic complexity, recording some of the world's most extraordinary music and it's enormous stable of artists includes some of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, such as Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Steve Reich, Carla Bley, Meredith Monk, Marion Brown, Codona, and Art Ensemble of Chicago - along with music from the New Series that includes Arvo Part's choral work as well as works by Komitas Vardapet and George Gurdjieff. This comprehensive volume showcases ECM's cultural breadth, not just in the music world but also within the broader artistic universe. It highlights aspects of African-American music of the 1960s in Europe at the height of the American Civil Rights Era, as well as the changing relationships between musicians, music, and listeners. Lavishly illustrated with essays by Diedrich Diederichsen, Okwui Enwezor, Kodwo Eshun, Renée Green, Markus Müller, Wolfgang Sandner, and Jürg Stenzl, the book also contains a comprehensive chronology and discography of the ECM label, and biographies of artists and authors, as well as an extensive round-table talk with Manfred Eicher, Okwui Enwezor, Steve Lake, Karl Lippegaus, and Markus Müller. The most illuminating book ever published on the legendary label, and highly recommended.
Amongst the many artists included in the book are Jan Garbarek, Don Cherry, Nana Vasconcelos, Eberhard Weber, Gary Burton, Meredith Monk, Chick Corea, Wolfgang Dauner, Carla Bley, Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Evan Parker, Annette Peacock, Gary Peacock, Terje Rypdal, Ralph Towner, and so many more.
Very Good-Fine copy with only light edge wear to heavy covers and light wear to obi-strip, depicting Don Cherry on the front and the Art Ensemble of Chicago on the verso.
1996, English
Hardcover (w. CD), 304 pages, 31 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$100.00 - Out of stock
First 1996 hardcover edition (with CD) of Klangkunst, published by Prestel and edited by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Helga de la Motte-Haber. Catalogue for the landmark sound art festival, Sonambiente – Festival für Hören und Sehen, held in August—September 1996 in Berlin, curated by Matthias Osterwold, Georg Weckwerth, and Christian Kneisel and named after the American designer Harry Bertoia’s sound-sculpture studio. Part of the Akademie der Künste's tricentennial celebration, Sonambiente 1996 presented the most comprehensive survey to date of contemporary international sound art, with works by more than 100 participating artists at more than 20 venues in Berlin's Mitte district. For nearly one month the city of Berlin was overflowing with the sounds of sound art. This book accompanied this inaugural edition, heavily illustrated throughout and featuring chronology and texts by Helga de la Motte-Haber, Sabine Breitsameter, Volker Straebel, Michael Glasmeier, R. Murray Schafer, Douglas Kahn, Golo Föllmer, Gisela Baurmann, Georg Weckwerth, André Ruschkowski, Jean-Yves Bosseur, Paul DeMarinis, Dieter Daniels, Heiner Büld, Peter Roloff, Manfred Mixner, Gottfried Hattinger, Diedrich Diederichsen, and many more, plus illustrated chapter dedicated to the artists featured, including Henning Christiansen, Alvin Lucier, Christian Marclay, Achim Freyer Ensemble, Alvin Curran, Paul Fuchs, Brian Eno, Terry Fox, Zoro Babel, Matt Heckert, Fatima Miranda, David Moss, Wolfgang Rihm, Klaus Vom Bruch, Ensemble 13, Dieter Schnebel, Laetitia Sonami, Mark Trayle, Wada Junko, Hans Peter Khun, Laurie Anderson, Sam Auinger, Bruce Odland, Andres Boshard, Nicolas Collins, Paul De Marinis, Louis-Philippe Demers, Bill Vorn, Ulrich Eller, Paul Fuchs, Hans Gierschik, Gün, Josefine Günschel, Felix Hess, Gary Hill, Stephan Von Huene, Robert Jacobsen, Arsenije Jovanovic, Rolf Julius, Christina Kubisch, Hans Peter Kuhn, Ron Kuivila, Bernhard Leitner, Robin Minard, Gordon Monahan, Max Neuhaus, Ed Osborn, Roberto Paci Dalò, Isabella Bordoni, Nam June Paik, Paul Panhuysen, Yufen Qin, Martin Riches, Don Ritter, David Rokeby, Nicola Sani, Mario Sasso, Sarkis, Leo Schatzl, Kyra Stratmann, Suzuki Akio, Ana Torfs, Trimpin, Peter Vogel... and many more.
Fine—As New copy with CD present and unplayed (many of the first edition were not issued with the CD, available only as an additional purchase).
2010, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 176 pages, 23.5 x 27.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$190.00 - Out of stock
As New copy of this major hardcover catalogue on the work of Charles Burchfield, now out-of-print.
Although he lived next door to Niagara Falls, artist Charles Burchfield (1893–1967) chose to focus his nature-based art on the ground beneath his feet. Curated by artist Robert Gober, this exhibition features over one hundred major watercolors, drawings, oils on canvas, sketches, notebooks, journals, and doodles by this visionary American artist. Acclaimed by critics and known to a broad public audience during his lifetime, Burchfield is curiously under-appreciated today. Working almost exclusively in watercolor, Burchfield’s primary subject was landscape, often focusing on his immediate surroundings: his garden, the views from his windows, snow turning to slush, the sounds of insects and bells and vibrating telephone lines, deep ravines, sudden atmospheric changes, the experience of entering a forest at dusk, to name but a few. He often imbued these subjects with highly expressionistic light, creating at times a clear-eyed depiction of the world and, at other times, a unique mystical and visionary experience of nature.
The book includes drawings from his 1917 sketchbook, Conventions for Abstract Thoughts; watercolours from 1916–18 that were the focus of the first one-person exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Germany, in 1930; camouflage designs from his tour in the army and wallpaper designs from the 1920s; watercolors from the 1940s showing the artist’s unique technique of expanding and reworking earlier works by pasting large strips of paper around them to dramatically increase their size; and finally Burchfield’s large, transcendental watercolours from the 1950s and 1960s.
Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield was organized by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, New York.
Edited by Cynthia Burlingham and Robert Gober, with contributions by Dave Hickey, Tullis Johnson, and Nancy Weekly.
As New copy, now out-of-print.
2011, German
Hardcover (w. dustjacket), 252 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$50.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print hardcover comprehensive monograph on the Viennese painter Hans Makart, this book presents the work of the artist known as “the magician of colour” in glorious illustrations, set alongside the art of fellow masters.
His name and his style are symbols of an era: Hans Makart. In 1869 the Emperor brought him to Vienna as a history painter, where he quickly became a sought-after painter for the up-and-coming bourgeoisie. His works, which were often perceived as lustful, find their equivalent in the decadence and brought Hans Makart the reputation as a scandal painter, but led to his international fame. His free use of color, which follows Delacroix, as well as the choice of his subjects give his painting a sensuality that is intoxicating in its effect and made him a symbol of a time, the Makart period, through its overwhelming splendor. His interest in the total work of art is expressed in the design of Nicolaus Dumba's study, as well as in his examination of the music of Richard Wagner and the architecture of Gottfried Semper. His influence on the art of the Vienna Secession, e.g. B. on Gustav Klimt, radiated far beyond his early death.
This catalog to an exhibit of Makart’s works includes his legendary room in the Palais Dumba, his monumental paintings, and his controversial and subversive erotic works. The large-scale theatric quality of Makart’s work is evident in the stunning reproductions featured in the book, which allow viewers to appreciate the brilliant palette of his oeuvre.
Agnes Husslein-Arco is Director of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. She has published books on Schiele, Mucha, Klimt, Makart and others.
German language. Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1982, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 198 pages, 28.5 x 23 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$60.00 - In stock -
Hardcover volume of drawings by German master draftsman Horst Janssen (1929—1995), edited by Walter Koschatzky and published on the occasion of the exhibition in the Albertina, Vienna, April 1—May 2, 1982. Due to its great popularity, this heavy catalogue was repeatedly published in expanded form. This edition is the 3rd, from 1984. Profusely illustrated throughout with beautiful reproductions of Janssen's drawings in colour and b/w, accompanied by text by German author Wolfgang Hildesheimer. Includes a biography, list of exhibitions and bibliography.
Horst Janssen (1929—1995) was a German draftsman, printmaker, poster artist and illustrator. He had a prolific output of drawings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and wood engravings. His life was marked by numerous marriages, outspoken opinions, alcoholism, and selfless dedication to the art of printmaking. In 1966, shortly after his first retrospective of drawings and graphic works in 1965, he was awarded Hamburg's Edwin Scharff Prize,. In 1968 he received the Grand Prize in graphic art at the Venice Biennale; in 1977, his works were shown at the documenta VI in Kassel. His work is held in major museums internationally.
Walter Koschatzky (1921—2003) was an Austrian art historian, curator and art history author.
Very Good copy in Good dust jacket with edge wear and some small tears, now preserved under mylar wrap.
1998, German
Hardover (w. dust jacket), 140 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$70.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this excellent first German monograph on Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, published by Prestel in 1998. Profusely illustrated with Spoerri's incredible artistic history of installations, performances, studio photos, editions, and other activities across important associations with Fluxus, Nouveau réalisme and Eat Art; works across sculpture, assemblage, action, and relief, including a great number of his iconic "snare works". Includes an exhibition history, bibliography and extensive text in German by Heidi E. Violand-Hobi.
Daniel Spoerri (b. 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures". In 1960, Spoerri made his first "snare-picture": "objects found in chance positions, in order or disorder (on tables, in boxes, drawers, etc.) are fixed (‘snared’) as they are. Only the plane is changed: since the result is called a picture, what was horizontal becomes vertical. Example: remains of a meal are fixed to the table at which the meal was consumed and the table hung on the wall." His first "snare-picture", Kichka's Breakfast was created from his girlfriend's leftover breakfast. The piece is now in the collection in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One snare-picture, made in 1964, consists of the remains of a meal eaten by Marcel Duchamp. He also is widely acclaimed for his book, Topographie Anécdotée* du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance), a literary analog to his snare-pictures, in which he mapped all the objects located on his table at a particular moment, describing each with his personal recollections evoked by the object, with illustrations by the great Roland Topor. In the 1950s he was active in dance, studying classical dance with Olga Preobrajenska and in 1954 becoming the lead dancer at the State Opera of Bern, Switzerland. He later staged several avant-garde plays including Ionesco's The Bald Soprano and Picasso's surrealist Desire Trapped by the Tail. During that period he met a number of Surrealist artists, including Meret Oppenheim, Jean Tinguely, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, and also a number of artists subsequently associated with the Fluxus movement, including Robert Filliou, Dieter Roth and Emmett Williams. Closely associated with the Fluxus art movement, a movement "characterized by a strongly Dadaist attitude, [whose] participants were a divergent group of individualists whose most common theme was their delight in spontaneity and humor." It has been said that his Anecdoted Topography of Chance "seems perfectly to embody aspects of its spirit." Spoerri was also one of the original signers of the manifesto creating the Nouveau réalisme (New Realism) art movement, which involved artists such as Yves Klein, Arman, Martial Raysse, Pierre Restany, Niki de Saint Phalle, César, Jean Tinguely, Mimmo Rotella, Gérard Deschamps, and the Ultra-Lettrists, Francois Dufrêne, Raymond Hains, Jacques de la Villeglé, an avant garde endeavor begun in 1960. His use of everyday life as the main subject-matter of his art reflects his involvement in the New Realism movement. A major theme of Spoerri's artwork is food, and he has called this aspect of his work "Eat Art." This is seen not only in his snare-pictures of eaten meals, but in restaurant performance pieces, for which he cooks for guests and art-critics take on the role of waiters, playing on the idea of the critic bringing the art to the consumers and giving them an understanding of the work.
Good—Very Good copy with light wear and light fading to dust jacket edges.
2020, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$65.00 - Out of stock
An elegant new hardcover edition of Bernd and Hilla Becher's classic black-and-white photographic study of industrial buildings.
During their 40-year career, Bernd and Hilla Becher created their own architectural typology as they photographed buildings in a unique style. Basic Forms represents the culmination of their career. Although the subject matter is unglamorous - mine shafts, blast furnaces, cooling towers, water towers, silos, and gas tanks - the Bechers' passion for their work imbues these photographs with beauty and solemnity. The Bechers restricted the conditions of each photograph - taking them early in the morning, on overcast days, so as to eliminate shadow and distribute light evenly. Each image is centered and frontally framed, its parallel lines set on an even plane. There are no human figures, nor are there birds in the sky. The result is a treasury of precisely functional architectural forms, a sublime example of conceptual artistic practices, and a series of "perfect sculptures of a bygone industrial age."
Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (1934-2015) were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their extensive series of photographic images, or typologies, of industrial buildings and structures. As founders of what has come to be known as the "Becher" or "Dusseldorf" School of Photography, they influenced generations of documentary photographers and artists.
Thierry de Duve is a Belgian art historian, curator, and professor of modern and contemporary art theory. He is the author of numerous books. He has taught at many institutions including the Sorbonne in Paris, MIT, and John Hopkins University.
2017, English
Hardcover, 319 pages, 23 x 27.5 cm
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$95.00 - Out of stock
Bringing together five decades of painting, sculpture, and installations from the celebrated Italian artist Marisa Merz, this major hardcover monograph accompanies a major US retrospective of her work. This generously illustrated book offers readers the chance to appreciate the full range of works by Marisa Merz, winner of the 2013 Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Biennale. This volume traces Merz's artistic evolution from early experiments with non-traditional materials and processes, to intricately constructed installations of the 1970s and the enigmatic ceramic heads of the 1980s and '90s. Authoritative essays explore the rise of international women's art in the 1960s and '70s and Merz's own place in Italy's postwar art history. As the sole female protagonist of Arte Povera she is one of the few Italian women to exhibit in major venues internationally. Merz's challenging and evocative body of work is deeply personal and resistant to the categories of art history, including Arte Povera and international feminist art, with which she was associated. Previously unpublished texts and poetry by the artist, and an illustrated chronology, complement this comprehensive look at an enormously influential artist.
Texts by Connie Butler, Ian Alteveer, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Leslie Cozzi, Teresa Kittler, Lucia Re, Cloe Perrone, Tommaso Trini.
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
2019, English
Hardcover, 208 pages, 23.5 x 28 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$90.00 - In stock -
Born in Iran and based in Berlin, German artist Nairy Baghramian explores and reflects on formal languages of both modernism and post-minimalism. Over the past two decades, Baghramian has become known for her reflections on minimalism and her contextual approaches to exhibition via sculpture and site-responsive installations. Her work marks boundaries, transitions, and gaps in the museum space and the urban space, referencing interior and exterior, fashion and design, theatre and dance, form and meaning, and context and discourse. This lavishly illustrated overview of the work of Nairy Baghramian includes illuminating texts that explore the sculptor's creative process.
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, 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
Hardcover, 240 pages, 195 x 240 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$50.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Foreword by Farkas Rozsa
Contributions by Hito Steyerl, Hannah Black and Natasha Stagg
Amalia Ulman's performance "Excellences & Perfections", which unfolded on Instagram in 2014, follows an aspiring it-girl who undergoes a series of cosmetic surgeries and lifestyle changes to help jumpstart her career. For six months Ulman mesmerized her followers with nearly daily posts that documented a young woman trying on different personas in order to make her way in the world. Finally, the real Amalia Ulman revealed the fiction that she had created-a performance piece about identity, gender, class, sexuality, and lifestyle porn. The illustrations are presented in chronological order to give readers the experience of viewing the work as an uninterrupted stream, in the way her followers first saw them on social media. A forerunner of a new brand of performance art, Ulman has made a significant statement about the intersection of life and art-one that couldn't be more timely or compelling.
1985, German
Softcover, 213 pages, 22.5 x 30 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$58.00 - Out of stock
Major monograph on the work of Konrad Klapheck published in 1985 by Prestel in Munich. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Klapheck's paintings, drawings and graphic work, accompanied by essays by Werner Hofmann and Peter-Klaus Schuster (in German), and full biography and bibliography.
From the contents: Werner Hofmann: eloquent stupidity or the melancholy of the clichés / Peter-Klaus Schuster: about big and small with Klapheck / Konrad Klapheck: Why I paint; About my drawings / catalog: 1955-1959 The creation of a vocabulary - the main themes in their first versions / 1959-1963 Simplification and stylization / 1963-1973 Return to the banal subject - enhancement and monumentalization / 1973-1985 Development of a composting principle - discovery of the drawing.
Konrad Klapheck (born February 10, 1935) is a German painter and graphic artist whose style of painting combines features of Surrealism and Pop art. Klapheck's works of the mid-1950s are in a magic realist style that became more idiosyncratic when he painted the first of his famous typewriters. His subsequent paintings, often large in scale, are precise and seemingly realistic depictions of technical equipment, machinery and everyday objects, but strangely alienated; they are "monumental, amusingly absurd and sexually suggestive". Klapheck's subjects through the years have included (in order of introduction) typewriters, sewing machines, water taps and showers, telephones, irons, shoes, keys, saws, car tires, bicycle bells and clocks. Influenced by Duchamp, Man Ray, and Max Ernst, Klapheck's "ironic treatment of everyday mechanics" prefigures Pop art in its magnification of the trivial. He became a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1979.
2018, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 164 pages, 135 x 190 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$50.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
This monograph surveys the work of the Los Angeles-based choreographer and dancer Adam Linder, whose nuanced and highly evocative work offers a critical reflection on the nature of live performance and the role of dance within museums.
Every two years, on the occasion of the Made in L.A. biennial, the Hammer Museum honors artistic excellence by administering the Mohn Award to an artist whose presentation of work in the exhibition is exceptional. The 2016 winner was choreographer Adam Linder, whose performance and accompanying installation, "Kein Paradiso," premiered at the Hammer. This elegant monograph focuses on the stage works that Linder has produced to date. Starting with "Ma Ma Ma Materials" (2012) and concluding with "Kein Paradiso," the book presents five of Linder's stage works and includes photographs, printed ephemera, costumes, and excerpts of original scripts authored by Linder. In addition, the book features contextual essays written by an array of artists, curators, and choreographers
Contributions by Aram Moshayedi, Kirsty Bell, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Henrik Olesen
2017, English
Hardcover, 408 pages, 23.3 x 27.3 cm
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$96.00 - Out of stock
This stunning reappraisal offers long overdue recognition to the enormous contribution to the field of contemporary art of women artists in Latin America and those of Latino and Chicano heritage working during a pivotal time in history. Amidst the tumult and revolution that characterized the latter half of the 20th century in Latin America and the US, women artists were staking their claim in nearly every field. This wide ranging volume examines the work of more than 100 female artists with nearly 300 works in the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, video, performance art, and other experimental media. A series of thematic essays, arranged by country, address the cultural and political contexts in which these radical artists worked, while other essays address key issues such as feminism, art history, and the political body. Drawing its design and feel from the radical underground pamphlets, catalogs, and posters of the era, this is the first examination of a highly influential period in 20th-century art history.
About the editor:
CECILIA FAJARDO-HILL is an independent British-Venezuelan art historian and curator of modern and contemporary art, currently based in Southern California. ANDREA GIUNTA is a Buenos Aires-based writer, curator, Professor of Art History at the University of Buenos Aires, and Principal Researcher at CONICET, Argentina. She is also a visiting scholar at the University of Texas in Austin.
2013, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 24.2 x 29 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$130.00 - Out of stock
The incredible, comprehensive Koloman Moser reference book!
During his short career, Koloman Moser became a towering figure in Viennese culture. His varied work in interior and graphic design, furniture, textiles, jewellery, metalwork, glass and earthenware helped usher in the modern era.
This book surveys the entirety of Moser's oeuvre. It examines his work as a graphic designer and his involvement with the Vienna Secession, with special focus given to his role as an illustrator for the journal Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). Moser's forays into textile design and ceramic work are also introduced. The book features his designs for the Vienna Secession, Thonet Brothers and the Mautner family, among others that characterise his early modern style. The book also explores Moser's seminal role as a founding member of the Vienna Workshops, along with architect Josef Hoffman and patron Fritz Waerndorfer. Included are many reproductions of Moser's masterpieces, including the window of the Steinhof Chapel, his exhibition posters, postage stamps and currency and elegant samples from his design portfolio, "The Source."
2017, English
Hardcover, 294 pages, 22.6 x 29 cm
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
Prestel / Munich
$90.00 - Out of stock
Published in conjunction with the first North American survey of the work of Jimmie Durham, this beautifully illustrated catalogue explores Durham's vital contributions to contemporary art since the 1970s, both in the US and internationally.
Born of Cherokee descent, in 1940s Arkansas, Jimmie Durham takes up such issues as the politics of representation, histories of genocide, and citizenship and exile. This volume collects an array of Durham s sculptures, drawings, photography, video, and performance. It includes essays about Durham s material choices and their metaphoric potential; his participation in the NYC art scene in the 1980s; his use of language; and his ties to Mexico after living in Cuernavaca. An interview with Durham traces his involvement with the American Indian Movement and his self-exile from the US, which along with his essays and poetry, illuminate his life and work. This book provides an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of Durham, arguably one of the most important artists working today.
Jimmie Durham : At the Centre of the World
Contributions by Anne Ellegood, Jennifer A. Gonzalez, Fred Moten, Jessica L. Horton, Paul Chaat Smith, MacKenzie Stevens, Elisabeth Sussman, Jessica Berlanga Taylor.
1991/1992, English / German
Softcover, 144 pages, 30 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$80.00 - Out of stock
Major 1990s monograph on the German artist Rosemarie Trockel published by Prestel in conjunction with the exhibition Rosemarie Trockel, curated by Sidra Stich and Elisabeth Sussman, and co-organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and the University Art Museum, Berkeley.
Profusely illustrated throughout with colour photographs of her incredible, diverse array of sculptural, wool, drawing, collage, textile works. Rosemarie Trockel illuminates the theme "woman" from the different angles of ideology, eroticism and culture and connects it with questions from a broader thematic area - history, memory, nationalism, religion, evolution in a visually penetrating and intellectually provocative way. Edited by Sidra Stich, with texts by Sidra Stich and Elisabeth Sussman.
Long out of print, new copy.
2013, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 25.4 x 30.6 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$140.00 - Out of stock
From the mid-1970s, Mike Kelley assembled an incredibly diverse and often controversial body of work. A multi-disciplinary impresario, he created works on paper, paintings, sculpture, video, installation, and performance art that managed to be at once shocking yet humorous, and complex yet accessible. This companion volume to the much-anticipated 2013 exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) brings a fresh understanding to the artist's work by seeking to address the more poetic aspects of Kelley's work through Eva Meyer-Hermann's unique curatorial approach. Here she presents individual works in new combinations that cross the boundaries of chronology, bodies of work, and former artistic project groups. Identifying themes such as architecture, language, identity, Informe, power, modernisms, nostalgia, and religion, the book represents ideas that have informed Kelley's work throughout his career. As a result, the overarching lines of his oeuvre become visible and accessible. This book features essays (by John C. Welchman, Eva Meyer-Hermann, Branden W. Joseph, and George Baker), a fully annotated plate section of abundant full-colour images of Kelley's history of work, and a newly researched and revised biography and bibliography of Kelley's work.
The publication promises to be the definitive work on the artist.
A huge publication! Extra shipping charges may apply.
2016, English
Hardcover, 400 pages, 20.5 x 24 cm
Published by
Prestel / Munich
$100.00 - Out of stock
Heavy, definitive volume on the history of work by Peter Fischli and David Weiss, with texts and contributions by Ann Goldstein, Isabelle Graw, Anne Wheeler, and John Kelsey.
Throughout the course of their collaboration, Peter Fischli and David Weiss celebrated the sheer triviality of everyday existence, observing the world with bemused detachment. As this book shows, their often humorous work offers a sustained reflection on the intertwined strands of leisure, productivity and playful absurdity that shape our lives. With its deliberately mundane subject matter and quotidian source material, their work explores the poetics of banality in a wide range of mediums, including photography, videos, slide projections, films, books, sculptures and multimedia installations. This retrospective volume features an in-depth, illustrated survey of the artists' long history of collaboration, from the early Sausage Series (1979)-staged vignettes created in miniature using deli meats and various household items-to their last work, the large-scale public installation Rock on Top of Another Rock (2010-13), augmented by archival images, notes on process and interview excerpts culled from the artists' Zurich-based archives.A series of probing essays on their practice and thematic concerns rounds out this definitive account of Fischli and Weiss's vital contribution to contemporary art.