World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2021, English
Softcover, 240 pages. 10.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Fireflies Press / Berlin—Melbourne
$21.00 - In stock -
Part of the Decadent Editions series.
Is cinema really dying? As movie houses close and corporations dominate, the art form is at risk of changing beyond recognition. In this wide-ranging and elegiac essay, Nick Pinkerton reflects upon Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a modern classic haunted by the ghosts and portents of a culture in flux.
About the film
In an old Taipei movie theatre, on the eve of a ‘temporary closing’, King Hu’s 1967 wuxia classic Dragon Inn plays to a dwindling audience. Lonely souls cruise the aisles for companionship while two actors from Hu’s film watch themselves writ large, perhaps for the last time.
About the author
Nick Pinkerton is a Cincinnati-born, Brooklyn-based writer focused on moving image-based art. His writing has appeared in Film Comment, Sight & Sound, Artforum, Frieze, Reverse Shot, The Guardian, 4Columns, The Baffler, Rhizome, Harper’s and the Village Voice, among other venues, and he operates the Substack newsletter Employee Picks.
Praise for the book
‘A brilliant concept brilliantly executed, Tsai Ming-liang’s deceptively modest Goodbye, Dragon Inn is among the most resonant films of the still young twenty-first century. Its exegetist Nick Pinkerton ranks among the top film critics who have emerged this side of the millennium. The book is a fortuitous match – engagingly personal, securely erudite, stylish, and very, very smart.’—J. Hoberman
1985, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 250 pages, 15 x 10.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Kindai Eigasha / Japan
$65.00 $40.00 - Out of stock
Titillating little 1985 Japanese photo pocket-book packed cover-to-cover with "284 Star Actresses Who Took Off" — an endless stream of collected film stills of 284 European actresses naked on the silver-screen. From the great Giallo scream queens of the 1960s-70s to the stars of the European New Wave, including Carole Bouquet, Maria Schneider, Romy Schneider, Nastassja Kinski, Sophia Loren, Christina Lindberg, Sylvia Kristel, Isabelle Huppert, Corinne Cléry, Marianne Faithfull, Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve, Jane Birkin, Nathalie Delon, Olga Georges-Picot, Muriel Catala, Ornella Muti, Delia Boccardo, Julie Christie, Susan George, Edwige Fenech, Sybil Danning, Joan Collins, Isabelle Adjani, Clio Goldsmith, Muriel Catalá, Sophie Marceau, Charlotte Rampling, Valérie Kaprisky, Catherine Jourdan, Brigitte Bardot, Tina Aumont, Françoise Arnoul, Catherine Spaak, Valérie Lagrange, Miou-Miou, Isabel Sarli, Laura Antonelli, Anicée Alvina, Kristina van Eyck, and many more, all meticulously indexed! A "Continental Film" enthusiasts delight from the pre-internet publishing margins of Japan.
Very Good copy with VG DJ and Obi (not pictured). Preserved under mylar wrap.
1988, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 182 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Daguerreo Publishing / Japan
$30.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this special issue of Japanese film journal Image Forum, dedicated entirely to the work of Stanley Kubrick (1928—1999). Illustrated throughout Japanese texts, with a dedicated "Visual Odyssey" chapter of colour reproductions of stills from Kubrick's filmography (2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Clockwork Orange (1971), the book includes and full history of film works, biography, film reviews and many essays on the director. Texts are Japanese.
Stanley Kubrick (1928—1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres and are noted for their realism, dark humor, extensive set designs, and innovative cinematography.
Very Good — Fine copy.
2022, English
Softcover, 204 pages, 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Hyperidean Press / US
$29.00 - Out of stock
By turns cinematic, cosmic, alchemical, and geometric, Confetti uses language to alter the boundaries between film and daily life. Against a backdrop of screens, personal relationships extend into a play of light to create a meditation on disposability and permanence. Confetti soaks up dirt, shimmers, and gets thrown up into the air, landing on the ground in strange piles.
Emmalea Russo is an artist, writer, and astrologer. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on intersections of poetry, media, and cosmology. Russo’s poetry and writings on film and visual art have appeared in many venues, including Artforum, BOMB, and Granta. She is the author of G, Wave Archive, Confetti, and Magenta (forthcoming 2023), as well as several multimedia chapbooks and artists’ books. She lives in New Jersey and edits the multidisciplinary journal Asphalte Magazine.
2018, English
Softcover, 452 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Paper Monument / New York
$44.00 - Out of stock
The Earth Dies Streaming collects the best of A. S. Hamrah’s film writing for n+1, The Baffler, Bookforum, Harper’s, and other publications. Acerbic, insightful, hilarious, and damning, Hamrah’s aphoristic capsule reviews and lucid career retrospectives of filmmakers and critics have taken up the mantle of serious American film criticism—pioneered by James Agee, Robert Warshow, and Pauline Kael—and carried it into the 21st century. Taken together, these reviews and essays represent some of the best film criticism in the English language. The Earth Dies Streaming showcases a remarkable critical intelligence while offering a cultural history of the cinema of our times.
“Hamrah is committed to his ambivalence, conveying it with a mixture of precision and conviction that will remind you how much more there is to be gleaned from a review than whether a movie is ‘good ’ or ‘bad ’ (even if it’s a movie you happen to deem very good or very bad indeed) . . . A political awareness imbues Hamrah’s criticism without weighing it down. He doesn’t succumb to a leaden moralizing because he pays close attention to the medium he’s writing about, alert to what he sees and hears.”
—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
2022, English
Softcover, 416 pages, 15.3 x 23.4 cm
Published by
Verso / London
$65.00 - Out of stock
During the 1960s and 1970s, Workerism and Autonomia were prominent Marxist currents. However, it is rarely acknowledged that these movements inspired many visual artists such as the members of Archizoom, Gordon Matta-Clark and Gianfranco Baruchello.
This book focuses on the aesthetic and cultural discourse developed by three generations of militants (including Mario Tronti, Antonio Negri, Bifo and Silvia Federici), and how it was appropriated by artists, architects, graphic designers and architectural historians such as Manfredo Tafuri. Images of Classsignposts key moments of this dialogue, ranging from the drawings published on classe operaia to Potere Operaio's exhibition in Paris, the Metropolitan Indians' zines, a feminist art collective who adhered to the Wages for Housework Campaign, and the N group's experiments with Gestalt theory.
Featuring more than 140 images of artworks, many published here for the first time, this volume provides an original perspective on post-war Italian culture and new insights into some of the most influential Marxist movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries worldwide.
“The 1970s in Italy were a decade of social conflicts and intense cultural and aesthetic innovation, but only now, thanks to the Galimberti’s book we can have a glimpse of the visual dimension of the movement of Autonomia and of the cultural field that is generally known as “operaismo”.”—Franco "Bifo" Berardi
2022, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Verso / London
$32.00 - Out of stock
Since Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society. The transformative power of language, the medium of equality, is the key to any new communist revolution.
Boris Groys is Professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Center for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe, and since 2005, the Global Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU. He has published numerous books including The Total Art of Stalinism, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, Art Power, and The Communist Postscript.
2022, English
Hardcover, 112 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Verso / London
$34.00 - In stock -
Our current culture is dominated by the ideology of creativity. One is supposed to create the new and not to care about the things as they are. This ideology legitimises the domination of the "creative class" over the rest of the population that is predominantly occupied by forms of care - medical care, child care, agriculture, industrial maintenance and so on. We have a responsibility to care for our own bodies, but here again our culture tends to thematize the bodies of desire and to ignore the bodies of care - ill bodies in need of self-care and social care.
But the discussion of care has a long philosophical tradition. The book retraces some episodes of this tradition - beginning with Plato and ending with Alexander Bogdanov through Hegel, Heidegger, Bataille and many others. The central question discussed is: who should be the subject of care? Should I care for myself or trust the others, the system, the institutions? Here, the concept of the self-care becomes a revolutionary principle that confronts the individual with the dominating mechanisms of control.
1993, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 15 x 22.6 cm
Published by
Da Capo Press / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
Derek Bailey's Improvisation, originally published in 1980, and here updated and extended with new interviews and photographs, is the first book to deal with the nature of improvisation in all its forms: Indian music, flamenco, baroque, organ music, rock, jazz, contemporary, and "free" music. By drawing on conversations with some of today's seminal improvisers, including John Zorn, Jerry Garcia, Steve Howe, Steve Lacy, Lionel Salter, Earle Brown, Paco Pena, Max Roach, Evan Parker, and Ronnie Scott, Bailey offers a clear-eyed view of the breathtaking spectrum of possibilities inherent in improvisational practice, while underpinning its importance as the basis for all music-making.
Derek Bailey (1930—2005) was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. With other musicians, Bailey was a co-founder in 1975 of Musics magazine, described as "an impromental experivisation arts magazine". In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company, which at various times included Han Bennink, Steve Beresford, Anthony Braxton, Buckethead, Eugene Chadbourne, Lol Coxhill, Johnny Dyani, Fred Frith, Tristan Honsinger, Henry Kaiser, Steve Lacy, Keshavan Maslak, Misha Mengelberg, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn.
2005, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
iUniverse / US
$34.00 - Out of stock
Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice offers an exciting guide to ways of listening and sounding. This book provides unique insights and perspectives for artists, students, teachers, mediators and anyone interested in how consciousness may be effected by profound attention to the sonic environment.
Deep Listening is a practice created by composer Pauline Oliveros in order to enhance her own as well as other's listening skills. She teaches this practice worldwide in workshops, retreats and in her ground breaking Deep Listening classes at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mills College. Deep Listening practice is accessible to anyone with an interest in listening. Undergraduates with no musical training benefit from the practices and successfully engage in creative sound projects. Many report life changing effects from participating in the Deep Listening classes and retreats.
Oliveros is recognized as a pioneer in electronic music and a leader in contemporary music as composer, performer, educator and author. Her works are performed internationally and her improvisational performances are documented extensively on recordings, in the literature and on the worldwide web.
2022, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 14 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Blank Forms / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
A vivid account of life on the margins and Tokyo's 1970s underground culture from a Japanese folk legend.
Tokyo in the 1970s was a magnet for young musicians, poets and painters. Among them was Kazuki Tomokawa, a prolific singer-songwriter from Japan's northern provinces, whose guttural vocals and incisive lyrics earned him the unofficial title of "screaming philosopher."
The stories in this memoir—originally published in 2015 in Japan and now appearing as the first English translation of Tomokawa's writing—are told with a rambler's wit and wisdom, bringing together his memorable reflections on six decades of day labor, drinking, gambling, acting, singing and writing. Figures such as Kan Mikami, Nobuyoshi Araki and Shūji Terayama drift through this down-and-out vagabond's memoir, which observes the turbulence of postwar countercultures and the explosion of Tokyo's underground film and music scenes.
Translated by Daniel Joseph, Introduction by Damon Krukowski
Kazuki Tomokawa (born 1950) is a prolific singer-songwriter from Hachiryū Village (now the town of Mitane) in the Akita Prefecture area of northern Japan. Since his debut in 1974, he has released more than 30 albums. He is additionally known as a poet, painter, keirin enthusiast and inimitable drinker. The 2010 documentary about his life, La Faute des Fleurs, won the Sound & Vision award at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, and that same year saw the Japanese release of the book Dreams Die Vigorously Day by Day, a collection of his lyrics spanning 40 years. His most recent albums are Vengeance Bourbon (2014) and Gleaming Crayon (2016), both on the Modest Launch label.
Damon Krukowski is a musician and writer based in Cambridge, MA. His most recent book is Ways of Hearing (MIT Press, 2019) and his latest album is Damon & Naomi's A Sky Record (202020, 2021).
Daniel Joseph is a translator, editor and musician. He holds a master's degree from Harvard University in medieval Japanese literature, and recently contributed translations to Terminal Boredom (Verso, 2021), a collection of stories by science fiction pioneer Izumi Suzuki.
2020, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 17 x 21 cm
Published by
Blank Forms / New York
$40.00 - Out of stock
The republication in print form of the poems of Art Ensemble of Chicago's founding member breathes new life into a forgotten document of the Black Arts Movement. With a new preface by Thulani Davis and an introduction by Brent Hayes Edwards. Edition of 2000.
Joseph Jarman (1937 – 2019) was a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist best known as a founding member of trailblazing avant-garde jazz group Art Ensemble of Chicago. Jarman was responsible for the Art Ensemble’s signature face paint and elaborate costumes as well as the pioneering theatrical and multimedia elements of their shamanistic performances, which could include dance, comedy, performance art, surreal pranks, and—notably—the recitation of Jarman’s poetry.
In 1977, Art Ensemble of Chicago Publishing Co. published Jarman’s Black Case Volume I and II: Return From Exile, a collection of writing conceived across America and Europe between 1960 and 1975. Comprised largely of Jarman’s flowing, fiery free verse—influenced by Amus Mor, Henry Dumas, Thulani Davis, and Amiri Baraka—the book also features a manifesto for “GREAT BLACK MUSIC,” notated songs, concert program notes, Jarman’s photos, and impressions of a play by Muhal Richard Abrams, the founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians of which Jarman was also an original member. Jarman writes poetry of personal revolutionary intent, aimed at routing his audience’s consciousness towards growth and communication. He speaks with compassionate urgency of the struggles of growing up on Chicago’s South Side, of racist police brutality and profound urban alienation, and of the responsibility he feels as a creative artist to nurture beauty and community through the heliocentric music that he considers the healing force of the universe. A practicing Buddhist and proponent of Aikido since a 1958 awakening saved him from the traumatic mental isolation of his time dropped by the US army into southeast Asia, Jarman sings praise for the self-awareness realization possible through the martial arts. With cosmic breath as its leitmotif, his poetry both encourages and embodies a complete relinquishing of ego. While some of the poems contained within Black Case have already been immortalized via performances on classic records by Jarman and Art Ensemble of Chicago, its republication in print form breathes new life into a forgotten document of the Black Arts Movement.
“Joseph Jarman, a musician of rare poetic gifts, was also a remarkable poet. Black Case, a lost treasure of the Black Arts Movement, combines protest against injustice with heart-breaking introspection and fierce commitment to the Great Black Music tradition to which Jarman contributed with gentle yet mighty force.” —Adam Shatz
“Joseph’s recitation of ‘Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City’ (from Black Case) moved me to set the words of this poem for Baritone Voice and Orchestra and became part of the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s standard repertoire. Joseph had a bold and passionate creative spirit. I feel privileged to have shared the stage with him.” —Roscoe Mitchell
“‘Though in reality all the words are music themselves’ is the reality to which all poetry aspires, whether in verse or prose, theory or story, criticism or craft. Joseph Jarman always knew that for black musicians, which is to say black speakers, exile is our public holiday. We live through that. We live through that. Black Case is all and everything in this regard. ‘Whats to say,’ he says, is that ‘we sing because/we love you/because we/love you/because/we love/you.’ We are loved beyond judgment by the music, he says, and we say thanks.” —Fred Moten
2021, English
Softcover, 168 pages, 22.5 x 16 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$59.00 - Out of stock
How do we draft a life, make of it a project, do our daily work? In what material and language does it arrive to us? And what if but it is done with one’s own body, and that body becomes this material but not the subject? Villiger’s autofictions––whether sculpture or image, human or vegetal body––prompt such queries. As Griselda Pollock writes brilliantly, ‘here are the collected works that form the project that we name Hannah Villiger. She is not the originating and knowing cause of the work, but the site of its daily compulsion.” –– Quinn Latimer
Hannah Villiger (1951–1997) lived and worked as a resident artist at Istituto Svizzero in Rome from 1974 to 1976. There she realized her early artistic ideas and developed the sculptural approach to photography that would shape all of her later work—namely large-format photographs of her own body arranged into blocks of several images, which show close-ups of sometimes fragmented and abstracted body parts. Villiger viewed herself as a sculptor rather than a photographer, and these Roman years were decisive in shaping her artistic practice. In her studio and in the garden of Villa Maraini, she first developed simple objects inspired by the materials of Arte Povera, then gradually shifted to photography, perceiving it as a more sculptural method.
Published on the occasion of Works/Sculptural at Istituto Svizzero in Rome, Villiger’s first major solo exhibition in Italy, Hannah Villiger: Roma and afterwards expands the horizon of the exhibition with unpublished materials from the artist’s estate as well as images from her working diaries that offer insight into her artistic practice in Rome.
Edited by Gioia Dal Molin.
Texts by Elizabeth Bronfen, Gioia Dal Molin, Quinn Latimer, Thomas Schmutz.
2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages, 24 x 30 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$110.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Roxana Marcoci
Contributions by Quentin Bajac, Yve-Alain Bois, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Clement Cheroux, Durga Chew-Bose, Stuart Comer, Keller Easterling, Paul Flynn, Sophie Hackett
Encompassing photography, installation, print media, video and more, this publication is the most comprehensive account of Tillmans' wide-ranging career to date.
A visionary creator and intrepid polymath, Wolfgang Tillmans unites formal inventiveness with an ethical orientation that attends to the most pressing issues of life today. While his work transcends the bounds of any single artistic discipline, he is best known for his wide-ranging photographic output. From trenchant documents of social movements to windowsill still lifes, ecstatic images of nightlife to cameraless abstractions, sensitive portraits to architectural studies, astronomical phenomena to intimate nudes, he has explored seemingly every genre of photography imaginable, continually experimenting with how to make new pictures and deepen the viewer's experience.
Published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Tillmans' work at the Museum of Modern Art, this copiously illustrated volume surveys four decades of the artist's career. An outstanding group of writers offer diverse essays addressing key threads of his multifaceted practice, and a new text by Tillmans himself elucidates the distinctive methodology behind his system of presenting photographs. Wolfgang Tillmans: To look without fear grants readers new insight into the work of an artist who has not only changed the way photography is exhibited but pointed contemporary art in dynamic new directions.
Wolfgang Tillmans (born 1968) is among the most influential contemporary artists, and the impact of his work registers across the arts, intersecting with fashion, music, architecture, the performing arts and activism. Tillmans is the recipient of the Turner Prize (2000) and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2015). His foundation, Between Bridges, supports the advancement of democracy, international understanding, the arts and LGBTQ rights.
2009, English
Softcover, 9 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Verso / London
$20.00 - In stock -
In The Future of the Image, Jacques Rancière develops a fascinating new concept of the image in contemporary art, showing how art and politics have always been intrinsically intertwined. Covering a range of art movements, filmmakers such as Godard and Bresson, and thinkers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Adorno, Barthes, Lyotard and Greenberg, Rancière shows that contemporary theorists of the image are suffering from religious tendencies.
He argues that there is a stark political choice in art: it can either reinforce a radical democracy, or create a new reactionary mysticism. For Rancière there is never a pure art: the aesthetic revolution must always embrace egalitarian ideals.
"Like all of Jacques Rancière's texts, The Future of the Image is vertiginously precise."―Les Cahiers du Cinema
"Ranciere's writings offer one of the few conceptualizations of how we are to continue to resist."—Slavoj Zizek
VG.
2021, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 12.9 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Verso / London
$29.00 - Out of stock
The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.
In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?
“It’s clear that Jacques Rancière is relighting the flame that was extinguished for many—that is why he serves as such a signal reference today.” — Thomas Hirschhorn
1970, English
Softcover (staple bound), 84 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$180.00 - Out of stock
Issue number one of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche. Featuring Joseph Beuys on cover. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring James Turrell, Keith Arnatt, Douglas Davis, Luis Fernanda Benedit, Paolo Soleri, Isaac Witkin and William Wegman; "Interview: Carl Andre"; "Interview: Jan Dibbets"; "Retrospective: Richard Long"; "Pace and Process," by Robert Morris; "Portrait: Joseph Beuys," by Skunk-Kender; "Body Works," by Willoughby Sharp; "Museums: MOCA, San Francisco"; "Galleries: Reese Palley, San Francisco"; "Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson," by Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson. Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1971, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 114 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue number 2 of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Winter 1971. Cover features Bruce Nauman. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Bas jan Ader, John Perreault, Vito Acconci and Paul Kos; "Interview: Bruce Nauman"; "Interview: Terry Fox"; "Klaus Rinke Retrospective"; "Documents: John Van Saun"; "Documents: Dennis Oppenheim"; "Documents: Richard Serra"; "Yves Klein," by Shunk-Kender; "King for a Day," by Bruce McLean; "112 Greene Street," by Alan Saret and Jeffrey Lew; "Mrs. Burke, I Thought You Were Dead," by William Wegman; "Drifts and Conversions," by Vito Acconci; "A Discussion with Acconci, Fox, and Oppenheim," by Vito Acconci, Terry Fox and Dennis Oppenheim. Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1971, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 94 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue three of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Fall 1971. Cover features Barry Le Va. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Jackie Winsor, William Wegman, Allen Ruppersberg, Gilbert & George and Philip Glass; "The Art of Searching," interview with David Tremlett; "Ululations," by Bill Beckley; "Soap," by Joel Fisher; "Jacks," by Gordon Matta-Clark; "Observatory," by Robert Morris; "Christ & Pythagoras," by Italo Scanga; "A Metal Ring Encircling a Tree," interview with Ulrich Ruckriem; "Outcrops," by George Trakas; "Discussions with Barry Le Va," by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp. Edited by Liza Béar, published by Willoughby Sharp, design by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 84 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue number four of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Spring 1972. Cover featuring Lawrence Weiner. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Bill Beckley, Marcel Duchamp, Daniel Buren and Hanne Darboven; "Jackie Winsor: An Interview," by Liza Béar; "Sol LeWitt: Page Drawings"; "Howard Fried: The Cheshire Cat," by Liza Béar; "Alice Aycock: Four 36-38 Exposures"; "Stanley Brouwn: Steps"; "Franz Erhard Walther: First Workset"; "Hanne Darboven: Words"; "Walter de Maria" ; "Lawrence Weiner at Amsterdam," by Willoughby Sharp. Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 66 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue number five of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Summer 1972. Cover features Yvonne Rainer. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Hiro Kosaka, Trisha Brown and Marcel Broodthaers; "Braco Dimitrijevic: Casual Passers-by I Met"; "Direct Demokratie: Joseph Beuys Talking at Documenta 5"; "Structure and Sensibility: An Interview with Jannis Kounellis," by Willoughby Sharp; "Phil Glass: An Interview in Two Parts" by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp; "Illustrated Time - Proscenium II," by Keith Sonnier, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, Richard Landry and Kurt Munkacs; "The Performer as Persona: An Interview with Yvonne Rainer". Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 66 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Special issue of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche focusing on the work of Vito Acconci. Includes performance descriptions written by artist and documentary photographs, biography, and bibliography. Interview between the artist and Liza Bear. Sections: "Introduction: Notes on Performing a Space"; "Early Work: Movement Over a Page"; "Early Work: Moving My Body into Place"; "Body as Place - Moving in on Myself, Performing Myself"; "Peopled Space - Performing Myself Though Another Agent"; "Occupied Zone - Moving in, Performing on Another Agent"; "Concentration - Container - Assimilation"; "Power Field - Exchange Points - Transformations"; "Excerpts from Tapes with Liza Bear"; "Biography"; "Bibliography"; "Index." Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, design by Boris Wall Gruphy, Henry Post, Richard Falk.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 84 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue number seven of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Winter Spring 1973, featuring a William Wegman cover. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Chris Burden, Jennifer Bartlett and Urs Lüthi; "The Gold-diggers of '84: An Interview with General Idea" by Willoughby Sharp, Ron Gabe, Jorge Saia, A.A. Bronson, Granada Gazelle, P.J., Noah Dakota, Marcel Idea, Ms. Paige, Myth Honey and Ms. Generality; "Different Strokes for Different Folks: An Interview with Van Schley," and includes a bound in portfolio of loose elements; "Shuck and Jive: An Interview with Lowell Darling" by Willoughby Sharp; "... a kind of Huh? A interview with Edward Ruscha" by Willoughby Sharp; "Man Ray, Do You Want To... An Interview with William Wegman". Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
2005, English / German
Softcover, 192 pages, 22.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$200.00 - Out of stock
This wonderful, major book on Rosemarie Trockel published on the occasion of the exhibition Rosemarie Trockel: Menopause at the Museum Ludwig, Köln, Oct 29 2005 - Feb 12 2006, and MAXXI-Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, 19 May - 6 Aug 2006, seemed to disappear from print rather fast, quickly becoming a collector's item. A catalogue raisonné of sorts, collecting Rosemarie Trockel's work from 1980 to 2005 (sculpture, wool works, drawings, publications, garments, photography, video - including very rarely seen objects). Probably the best and most valuable books produced on one of Germany's most incredible artists, 'Post-Menopause' was realised in close cooperation with Trockel herself, and features bilingual (English and German) essays by Brigid Doherty, Silvia Eiblmayr, Barbara Engelbach and Gregory Williams.
Very highly recommended!
Rosemarie Trockel was born in Schwerte, Germany in 1952. She studied in the Werkkunstschule in Cologne until 1978. Trockel’s oeuvre is diverse in themes and mediums, which include works on paper, ‘knitted paintings’ and sculptures. Though it is difficult to associate a particular style with her work, several concurrent themes can be identified within her oeuvre, such as the female role in society, the trademarks and symbols as social signifiers and decorations and finally, her fascination with ethnographic and scientific studies, which are often expressed through her sculptures. Trockel has become best known for her machine-generated ‘knitted paintings’–knitted woolen material placed on a stretcher–in which she challenges traditional notions of painting, feminine roles in society and culture at large, as well as art making itself. Additionally, her incorporation of references to popular culture through logos or symbols and sometimes text is yet another way to comment on the commodification of art and on the subjectivity of language and visual representation. Rosemarie Trockel lives and works in Cologne.