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.
2022, English / German
Softcover, 112 pages, 21 x 29 cm
Published by
Roma / Amsterdam
$69.00 - Out of stock
Jochen Lempert’s photographs begin with an encounter: his meeting with plants and animals, real or artificial representations in urban or rural settings, museum displays, scientific books, and more. The resulting images display a certain ease, a proximity that speaks to his comfort around his subjects. Rather than applying his scientific knowledge to what he photographs, he visually invites meaning through the act of seeing. ‘Pairs’ appears with an exhibition of Lempert’s work in Frankfurt am Main, curated by Yasmil Raymond and Deborah Müller. The juxtapositions in this series might be two pictures of the same subject, a pair of animals, or visually evocative matches.
2022, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 15 x 24 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$55.00 - Out of stock
We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new normal of a 24/7 online life. What happens when your home office starts to feel like a call center and you’re too fried to log out of Facebook? We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. How do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition? Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression comprise core elements of a general theory of platform culture. Authored by media theorist Geert Lovink and designed by Irene Stracuzzi, ‘Stuck on the Platform’ is a relapse-resistant story about the rise of platform alternatives, built on an understanding of the digital slump.
2006, English
Softcover, 290 pages, 15.7 x 23.3 cm
Published by
Black Widow Press / Boston
$44.00 - Out of stock
Capital of Pain, first published in 1926, has had a lasting impression on more readers than one might expect. Young Frenchmen between the wars carried it in their backpacks; other poets were dazzled, young and old, all discussed and often argued about this remarkable book. Indeed, it has never gone out of print in France. Today this collection is thought by many to be the key to grasping what Surrealist texts are like. It clearly shows the freshness of early Surrealism, as well as the despair of postwar trauma.
Paul Eluard (1895-1952) was a founder, along with Andre Breton and Louis Aragon, of the Surrealist group and was, through the years, the most celebrated poet among that extraordinary grouping of poets. Widely regarded as one of France's most important 20th century poets, this volume, the first new translation of this work in over thirty years, presents the text of Eluard's Capital of Pain in its entirety in a bilingual format. Translator Mary Ann Caws also provides an insightful and in depth survey of Eluard's poems and writings.
Translator Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is the author, translator, and editor of numerous books and publications on the major figures of both Dada and Surrealism. Recent publications include: "Poems of Andre Breton: A Bilingual Anthology" (with Jean-Pierre cauvin), and "Approximate Man & Other Writings of Tristan Tzara".
Translator Patricia Terry was Professor of French literature at Barnard College and the University of California San Diego. Among her many verse translations/books are "Poems of Jules Laforgue," Poems of the Elder Edda," "Renard the Fox," and "Roof Slates and Other Poems of Pierre Reverdy"(with Mary Ann Caws). A poet as well as a translator, her book of poems, "Words of Silence" was recently published. A new edition of Laforgue's poems and an anthology of the poems of Guillevic are forthcoming.
Translator Nancy Kline directs the writing Program at Barnard College and teaches in the English and the French Departments. She has published five books to date including: "Lightning: The Poetry of Rene Char," a translation of Hermann's "Les Voleuses de Langue," and a novel: "The Faithful." She is currently working on another novel and a collection of essays. Her numerous translations, essays, short stories, and reviews have appeared widely.
2008, English / French
Softcover, 320 pages, 23.1 x 15.3 cm
Published by
Black Widow Press / Boston
$59.00 - Out of stock
Joyce Mansour (1928-1986) is widely considered to be one of the most important of the female Surrealists. Born Joyce Patricia Adès in Bowden, England to Jewish-Egyptian parents, her parents soon returned with her to Cairo where she lived until she was twenty. Moving to Paris in 1953 she became one of the best known Surrealist poets, authoring sixteen books of poetry, as well as a number of important prose and theater pieces. Following the release in France of a 700 page critically acclaimed anthology (in French), this is the first major anthology of her writings to be available in English.
2021, English
Softcover, 190 pages, 17cm x 28 cm
2nd Edition, 700 copies,
Published by
Centre Centre / London
$59.00 - Out of stock
New (brown cover) edition of the quickly out-of-print, fantastic Brick Index, first published in 2019. 'Brick Index' is a collection of named bricks and the unseen makers' marks stamped by brickworks from across the UK. It celebrates the humble brick, relishing the textures, colours and graphics debossed into their 'frogs'. This collection serves to rethink a ubiquitous material and honour the graphic stamps hidden all around us. The book features 155 beautifully photographed bricks, printed at actual size, accompanied by an index that states the time, place, and maker of each brick.
Featuring an introduction from David Kitching, a brick historian and an essay from Professor Rick Poynor. Photography by Inge Clemente.
Limited to 700 copies
1981, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 24 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Quick Fox / New York
Omnibus Press / London
$340.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, first, only edition of one of the greatest interior design books ever published by one of the greatest interior design photographers ever. Tim Street-Porter (Domus, Underground Interiors, et al), compiled this, his first and most iconic book, in 1981. A wild book of his personal interior photographs with a fantastic design to match the fantastic interiors within. Capturing a multitude of architectural and interior styles, Interiors really is one of the rarest looks inside the homes you'd not usually see in glossy magazines nor coffee table books. From London, Los Angeles, New York, even Australia, from pop artists, stage designers, architects, animators, art dealers, stylists, textile designers, actresses... including the homes of Frank Gehry, Allen Jones, Zsa Zsa Gábor, Ward Bannett, Thea Porter, Duggie Fields, Harry Nilsson, James Coburn, Rudi Stern, Moira Lister, Luciana Martínez, Sally Sirkin Lewis, Lloyd Ziff, Philip Castle, Max Clendinning, Ralph Adron, and many more, including the photographer himself. A very rare, interior classic.
Very Good copy with light wear.
1978, English
Softcover, 127 pages, 13.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
The eighty-four poems included in this small volume will serve as a sound and inviting introduction to Rilke's strategies in the pursuit of "being." And just as the unicorn in "This Is the Creature" has an eternal "possibility of being" but only becomes visible in the mirror held by a virgin, so can our own possibilities become manifest in the mirror held by the sensitive artist. The poems are chosen from The Book of Hours (1899-1903), The Book of Images (1902 and 1906), New Poems (1907 and 1908), Requiem (1909), Duino Elegies (1923), Sonnets to Orpheus (1923), and the posthumous Poems 1906-26.
This selection was made by Professor Theodore Ziolkowski of Princeton University, who drew from the various New Directions volumes of Rilke's work translated by J. B. Leishman.
1982, English
Softcover, 164 pages, 13.5 x 20.3 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
Where Silence Reigns, a sampling from his essays, notebooks, and letters, shows Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), the pre-eminent modern poet of solitude and inwardness, seeking to reconcile his personal conflict between the claims of "life" and the claims of art. His subjects are commonplace, seemingly innocuous at times: the encounter between a man and a dog, a collection of dolls, a walk among trees. But always the deceptively simple external phenomenon is seen as the symbol, the catalyst of an intensely felt inner experience. As he confided to his friend Frau Wunderly-Volkart: "Oh, how often one longs to speak a few degrees more deeply! My prose... lies deeper... but one gets only a minimal layer further down; one's left with a mere intimation of the kind of speech that may be possible THERE where silence reigns."
In addition to occasional pieces and notebook entries, this volume contains selections from the strange and haunting "Dream-Book," the lyrical "Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke," and the entire "Rodin-Book"—Rilke's appreciation of the great sculptor whom he had served as secretary.
2020, English
Softcover, 329 pages, 12.6 x 19.8 cm
Published by
Dedalus / Cambs
$32.00 - Out of stock
Là-Bas, translated as Down There or The Damned, and first published in 1891, is French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans's most famous work after À rebours. Controversial when it first appeared in print, Là-Bas deals with the subject of Satanism in contemporary France, and is the first of Huysmans's books to feature the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author himself — a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais — child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.
A precursor to the horror fiction of HP Lovecraft and the nihilism of Michel Houellebecq, Huysman's fascination with evil and gore, history and the gothic is clear, although one can be left with the impression of gutter press themes cloaked in a literary veil. As the first, and the darkest, in a tetralogy about conversion to Catholicism there is at least the hope of redemption to follow.'—Sophia Martelli in The Observer
Translated by Brendan King
2016, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 12.7 x 20.2 cm
Published by
The New York Review of Books / New York
$30.00 - Out of stock
The French film director Robert Bresson was one of the great artists of the twentieth century and among the most radical, original, and radiant stylists of any time. He worked with nonprofessional actors--models, as he called them--and deployed a starkly limited but hypnotic array of sounds and images to produce such classic works as A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest, and Lancelot of the Lake. From the beginning to the end of his career, Bresson dedicated himself to making movies in which nothing is superfluous and everything is always at stake.
Notes on the Cinematograph distills the essence of Bresson's theory and practice as a filmmaker and artist. He discusses the fundamental differences between theater and film; parses the deep grammar of silence, music, and noise; and affirms the mysterious power of the image to unlock the human soul. This book, indispensable for admirers of this great director and for students of the cinema, will also prove an inspiration, much like Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, for anyone who responds to the claims of the imagination at its most searching and rigorous.
1994, Japanese
Softcover in die-cut, foiled slipcase w. obi-strip, 162 pages,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the rare, long out-of-print first major monograph on Japanese artist Yoshifumi Hayashi, published only in Japan in this slipcased edition in 1994. Profusley illustrated throughout, chronologically surveying self-taught Hayashi's work from his mid-1970s De Chirico-inspired sci-fi-scapes quickly evolving into his life's-work of grotesque, disembodied eroticism rendered masterfully in graphite. All the artist’s deepest and darkest paranoias, fetishes, and obsessions are laid bare here, tracing the development of various themes and subjects throughout in a delirium of convulsing legs, breasts, vulvas, intestines, brains and modernist architectural interiors. This book is a must for anyone interested in Hayashi's work. Accompanying texts by Roger Borderie, Gilbert Bellquet, Issei Sagana, Hiroshi Fujita. Also includes a rare portrait of the reclusive Hayashi.
Contemporary Japanese erotic artist Yoshifumi Hayashi (b. 1948, Fukuoka, Japan) dropped out of Chuo University Department of Philosophy in 1972, moving to Paris in 1974, where he began to produce pencil drawings through self study. At first his main influence was the metaphysical world of De Chirico, but soon his focus shifted to the lower half of the female anatomy. Exhibiting and publishing his drawings in France in the late 1970's, Hayashi gained a cult following for his dark explorations of fetishized female physiology and mutating genitalia, rendered masterfully in pencil. Often mentioned in relation to the likes of Hans Bellmer, H.R. Giger, and even David Cronenberg, Hayashi's drawings were featured in specialist fetish magazines, and director Walerian Borowczyk even made a film in 1980 of the artist at work, yet still little is known about Hayashi, who continues to work and exhibit internationally.
Very Good copy. Some edge wear to slipcase and damage to obi-strip.
2002, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 16.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Dis Voir / France
$35.00 - Out of stock
An artistic and literary journey through the soul of a dead and disembodied student, lost in the memories and infrastructure of a Californian High school.
In this first installment, French artist Pierre Huyghe chooses to encounter Canadian writer Douglas Coupland. High school yearbooks become the framework for constructing a narrative and characters and also for creating a meditation on memory.
“Huyghe and Coupland team up to explore the awkwardness and ironic sentimentality of high school. Culled from actual photos and real inscriptions from old '80s yearbooks, School Spirit exhumes the jocks, geeks and valley girls of a forgotten adolescence. The book is strung toghether by the story of one dead student, recalling the goofiness and despondency of the 'times of our lives'.”—BlackBook Magazine
The photographs, videos and installations produced by Pierre Huyghe (born 1962 in Paris, where he lives and works) question the conditions of representing reality and the shifts of meaning they give rise to. By using the aesthetics of an underrated daily round, the artists suggests the limits of our knowledge, based restrictively on the interpretation of the world. Situated somewhere between reality and make-believe, and steeped in the cinematographic world (repeats, remakes, and so on), his videos lead the viewer to question his own vision of the things surrounding him, and his relation to collective memory.
Douglas Coupland (born 1961 in Baden Söllingen, Gemrany) is a Canadian writer, visual artist, and designer. His first novel, Generation X, was an international bestseller. He has published fourteen novels, two collections of short stories, and seven nonfiction books; written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company; and has penned a number of works for film and television. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wired magazine, and the Financial Times.
Good copy, some light general wear.
2010, English
Softcover, 250 pages, 20.5 x 14 cm
Published by
City Lights Books / San Francisco
$40.00 - In stock -
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was a major cultural figure in post-WWII Italy, well-known as a poet, novelist, communist intellectual, and filmmaker. "In Danger" is the first anthology in English devoted to his political and literary essays, with a generous selection of his poetry. Against the backdrop of post-war Italy, and through the mid-'70s, Pasolini's writings provide a fascinating portrait of a Europe in which fascists and communists violently clashed for power and where journalists ran great risks. The controversial and openly gay Pasolini was murdered at the age of fifty-three; "In Danger" includes his final interview, conducted hours before his death.
Jack Hirschman (1933 – 2021) was an American poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry. Dismissed from teaching at UCLA for anti-war activities in 1966, he moved to San Francisco in 1973, and was the city's present poet laureate. Hirschman translated nine languages and edited The Artaud Anthology.
2008, English
Softcover, 15.2 x 21.3 cm
Published by
The Post-Apollo Press
$46.00 - Out of stock
Seasons is a series of prose poems concerning the seasons, but that’s just a starting point. Keeping her attention at the constant intersection of the self with climate and environment, Adnan writes: “To see is to think.” The result is a kind of inner dialogue between the senses and the mind, one’s skin and the world that blurs their boundaries. As the poet takes us into the nooks, crannies and abysses of her meditations, we encounter surrender and revelation throughout.
Cover art by Etel Adnan
Design by Simone Fattal
Founded in 1982 by Simone Fattal and inspired by the adventurous spirit ushered in by the Apollo space program, The Post-Apollo Press published experimental works of poetry, prose and translation for over thirty years. With a distinctly international approach to publishing, the Press features works by major American, European and Middle-Eastern writers, including Etel Adnan, Marguerite Duras, Jalal Toufic, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian and Leslie Scalapino.
2002, English
Softcover, 38 pages, 11.6 x 16 cm
Published by
Post Apollo Press / US
$28.00 - Out of stock
In/somnia explores fissures within words as places where thought enters. Sleepless sleepers, we dream among ever more complex and hallucinatory realitites: `in/tense/in/season'—Rosmarie Waldrop.
2020, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by
Nightboat Books / New York
$34.00 - Out of stock
Shifting the Silence breaks the taboo around writing and speaking about our own deaths. In short, unrelenting paragraphs, Adnan grapples with the breadth of her life at ninety-five, the process of aging, and the knowledge of her own approaching death. The personal is continuously projected outwards and mirrored back through ruminations on climate catastrophe, the ongoing war in Syria, Mars missions, and Adnan’s view of the sea out of her window in Brittany in a poignant, often painful interplay between the interior and the cosmic.
“When you have no way to go anywhere, what do you do? Of course, nothing.” Adnan’s prose-poetic rumination on death would strike a chord at any time, but it feels especially apt in this moment of protracted grief. Peppered with questions—“There are so many islands I dreamed of visiting, where have they gone?”—Adnan’s lamentations are recursive and soothing. To live is to die, and the poets can ease the passage. - Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions
2022, English / Spanish
Softcover, 124 pages, 15 x 22.4 cm
Published by
Cardboard House Press / US
$40.00 - In stock -
The work of Rodolfo Hinostroza carries us into a world of physical & spiritual poetry at its limits & beyond: a further gift from the Southern continent in line with the likes of Vallejo, Huidobro & Neruda, & no less powerful for all its late emergence. For those of us who want & need the fullness of a poetry unfettered, CONTRA NATURA takes its place as one of our new essentials—a ripeness & overabundance for which I'm truly grateful.—Jerome Rothenberg
Kinetic, defiant, exuberant, furious, libidinous, and thunderously alive, CONTRA NATURA is an interdisciplinary tour de force: a restorative, transformative riot in which world history, current events, languages, literature, astrology, and mathematics are radiantly fused in Rodolfo Hinostrosa's kaleidoscopic lens. Anthony Seidman's translation is a marvel: attentive, inventive, agleam.—Robin Myers
The publication of CONTRA NATURA, by the Peruvian poet Rodolfo Hinostroza in 1971—after having obtained the prestigious Maldoror Prize (1970), awarded by Barral editions, and judged by Octavio Paz—signified a major transformation in Latin American poetry, and in Spanish-language poetry at large. The book arrived with major expectations, garlanded with the same enthusiasm for other works within the great Western tradition ad portas of the XXI century. And indeed, CONTRA NATURA—now in its first-ever presentation for the Anglophonic world, as translated by Anthony Seidman—proves to be the most influential book of poetry written in Spanish, on both sides of the Atlantic.—Roger Santiváñez
Translated by Anthony Seidman
Rodolfo Hinostroza (Peru, 1941-2016) is one of Latin America’s most celebrated poets from the 20th century. His poetry is noted for its vast sweep which includes astronomy, history, counterculture, alchemy, politics, all rendered in erudite, yet lyrical open sequences. He is recognized as a bridge between Vallejo and contemporary poets from Peru. His most acclaimed collection of poetry, Contra natura (1971), made an impression as indelible as Vallejo’s Trilce, and it won the Maldoror prize in 1970 with none other than Octavio Paz as presiding judge. Other publications by Hinostroza include Consejero del lobo (1964), the novel Fata morgana (1994), and the play Apocalipsis de una noche de verano (1988). He was awarded a Guggenheim in 2009 and Peru’s Premio Nacional de Cultura in 2013 for his life’s work. At the time of his death in 2016, he was revered by younger poets and was a central figure in the literary life of Lima.
Anthony Seidman is a poet and translator from Los Angeles. His translations include the novel For Love of the Dollar by J.M. Servin, and A Stab in the Dark by Facundo Bernal. Seidman’s most recent collections of poetry are Cosmic Weather and A Sleepless Man Sits Up In Bed. His poetry, translations, reviews, and short fiction have appeared in such journals and anthologies as New American Writing, Poetry International, World Literature Today, The Bitter Oleander, Modern Poetry in Translation, Ambit, and The Ecopoetry Anthology. Some of his poetry has been translated into French and Spanish, with versions appearing in literary magazines from Mexico, Chile, France, and Argentina.
1996, English
Softcover, 142 pages, 13.2 x 20.3 cm
Published by
New Directions / New York
$32.00 - Out of stock
Anne Carson’s poetry––characterized by various reviewers as “short talks,” “essays,” or “verse narratives”––combines the confessional and the critical in a voice all her own. Known as a remarkable classicist, Anne Carson in Glass, Irony and God weaves contemporary and ancient poetic strands with stunning style. This collection includes “The Glass Essay,” a powerful poem about the end of a love affair, told in the context of Carson’s reading of the Brontë sisters, “Book of Isaiah,” which evokes the deeply primitive feel of ancient Judaism, and “The Fall of Rome,” about her trip to “find” Rome and her struggle to overcome feelings of terrible alienation there.
ANNE CARSON was born in Canada and has been a professor of Classics for over thirty years. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.
2001, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 25 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Lars Müller / Zürich
$60.00 - In stock -
New Living (Das Neue Wohnen) was the title of an exceptional architectural propaganda film created in 1930 by German avant-garde artist and filmmaker Hans Richter. It showcased exemplary modernist buildings and furniture--some of which were on view shortly after in the prestigious exhibition The International Style--and contrasted them with the impractical, unhygenic living spaces that were the norm. Visually diverse and full of experimental montage techniques, New Living pioneered a radical method of portraying architecture on celluloid.
First English edition of this long out-of-print book by Lars Müller Publishers. Essays by Andres Jensen and Arthur Ruegg, and running commentary and extensive film sequences of each of Richter's films.
Hans Richter was born in Berlin in 1888. Throughout his career, he was involved with the Blue Rider group, the cubists, "Die Aktion", the Zurich Dadaists, the November group, and De Stijl. In 1921 he made the first abstract film, "Rhythme 21" and in 1957 finished "Dadascope". Richter died in 1976.
Good copy. Some shelf wear to hardcovers, light tanning to page edges, otherwise Very Good throughout.
1996, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip), 192 pages, 15 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
First edition of Araki's "Chiro, Araki and 2 Lovers", published as part of the Complete Works collection. A lovely collection of Araki's photographs of he and his wife Yoko's beloved cat, Chiro, in a variety of different moods and situations. On the balcony and on the roof of the neighborhood, on the sofa, in the shower, in Yoko's arms, on the sleeping belly of Araki... The figure of Chiro behaving freely, and Araki taking the shutter to love it. Poignant in retrospect as it includes a number of photos of Chiro with Yoko. Like Masahisa Fukase's "Sasuke", this is an intimate book for cats and photographers.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good in good dust jacket with some wear, obi with some wear.
1997, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 225 pages, 15 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$190.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Araki's "Bondage", published as part of the Complete Works collection and, naturally, one of the most sought after of the series. This is an incredible collection of Araki's finest bondage works from the 1970s through to the 1990s, lavishly printed in colour and black and white throughout. "Bondage is my main private thing." Originally a photo series that started as contribution Japanese BDSM magazines such as "S&M Sniper", many of which are included in this book, Araki's long-time fascination with Kinbaku-bi: “the beauty of tight binding” is what he's become best known for in the west, and earned him considerable acclaim, opprobrium, and even legal consequences. Araki's unique approach to artistic themes that date back as far as the Edo period, kabuki theater and ukiyo-e, his fetish photography has an emotional, dramatic, often humorous quality that is different from the ritualistic atmosphere of most modern bondage photography. "Because bondage is a story, I meet with girls and ask what they want to play first." The fact that Araki has consciously worked on it for nearly 20 years has created a book that has achieved a deepening that differs from other themes in his work. Filled with hanging nudes, fake blood, and a lot of rope, Araki's "Bondage" is the perfect volume of a contemporary Japanese master of Ero-Guro (the “erotic grotesque.”)
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good in good dust jacket with some wear.
1996, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 225 pages, 15 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Araki's "Bodyscapes", the second in the series of the Complete Works collection. This beautiful collection focuses on the intimate nude portrait work of Araki, from the 1970 to the 1990s, mostly photographs of women, with a few men, and a little bondage. Although, as the title suggests, these are not nude pictures but "naked scenery", a word coined by Araki and legendary Japanese publisher Akira Suei at a time when it was not allowed to record the nude body public in Japan. Always one to challenge sexual taboos with radical techniques, this book captures Araki's trickery and mockery of the censors with his famed pubic hair shaving and soap bubble photos, pushing photographic freedom in the face of regulations that lead to dangerous definition of "obscenities". A gorgeous collection of Araki's nudes, lavishly reproduced in colour and black and white.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good in VG dust jacket.
1997, Japanese
Softcover, 192 pages, 15 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heibonsha / Tokyo
$140.00 - Out of stock
First edition of one of the finest of Araki's photo books, Sensual Flowers, dedicated entirely to his incredible flower photography collected for the first time together, spanning the 1980s—1990s. Published as part of the Complete Works collection, this wonderful book is filled with one of Araki's greatest loves, flowers. He began his photographic studies of flowers in earnest in the early 1970's, photographing dead bouquets from tombs at the Joruri Temple of Minowa, where he was born and raised. For Araki, the eroticism contained in the flower is extracted from its "life" and "death". Exquisitely exemplified here in this beautiful volume, where lush, vibrant bouquets bloom and deteriorate in sumptuous colour and b/w, in sensuous still life compositions and natural settings (w. lizards, food, cats). One of the finest Araki collections, as authoritatively seen as any flower photography by Penn, Mapplethorpe or Blossfeldt.
Nobuyoshi Araki was born in Tokyo in 1940. Given a camera by his father at the ripe age of twelve, Araki has been taking pictures ever since. He studied photography and film at Chiba University and went into commercial photography soon after graduating. In 1970 he created his famous Xeroxed Photo Albums, which he produced in limited editions and sent to friends, art critics, and people selected randomly from the telephone book. Over the years, his bold, unabashed photographs of his private life have been the object of a great deal of controversy and censorship (especially in his native Japan), a fact that has not fazed the artist nor diminished his influence. To date, Araki has published over 400 books of his work.
Very Good in good dust jacket and obi, light wear.
1977, English
Softcover, 296 pages, 19.5 x 12.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Quartet Books / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
Scarce first 1977 edition of this essential masterpiece of jazz history by renowned photographer and music historian, Val Wilmer.
In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture.
Placing the achievements of African-American artists such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Sun Ra in their broader political and social context, Wilmer evokes an era of extraordinary innovation and experimentation that continues to inspire musicians today.
As vital now as when it was first published in 1977, As Serious As Your Life is the essential story of one of the most dynamic musical movements of the twentieth century.
About the author
Val Wilmer is an internationally acclaimed photographer, journalist, author and black music historian who has been documenting African-American music since 1959. In that time she has interviewed and photographed almost every significant figure in post-war jazz, blues and R&B, from Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk to Sun Ra and Albert Ayler via Muddy Waters and Aretha Franklin. As a photographer, her work features in the permanent collections of the British Library, the V&A Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; as a writer and historian, she has contributed to the Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography and the New Grove Dictionary Of Jazz. She lives in London.
Good copy, solid binding.