World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
2018, English / French
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 200 pages, 24 x 32 cm
Published by
B. Frank Books
$95.00 - In stock -
For this beautiful and unique photobook, Danish artist and photographer Kasper Akhøj documented the ongoing restoration of E-1027, Eileen Gray’s modernist villa in France. Based on photographs taken by Gray which were first published in 1929, Akhøj’s photographs are a kind of remake, recreating the perspective and composition of the originals. During several visits to the villa between 2009 and 2017, he produced up to six versions of each of Gray’s images, but only included one of them here. The overlap of chronologies emphasises the restoration process and references the fascinating influence of a succession of occupants. With essays by Beatriz Colomina and Amy Zion, plus an interview with Akhøj.
1988, English / Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 26 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
PARCO / Tokyo
$80.00 - Out of stock
Rare Japanese light catalogue published in 1988 to accompany the exhibition In-Spiration, organised by legendary Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata for PARCO Vision Contmeporary. With an emphasis on the newest experimental designers in the field of lighting, Kuramata presents a group of young international designers including Rob Eckhardt (Amsterdam), Davis Palterer (Florence), Simo Heikkila (Helsinki), Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid, Daniel + Gerard Taylor (London), Morphosis (Los Angeles), Denis Santachiara, Fumio Shimizu + Shuji Hisada, Matteo Thun, Marco Zanini (Milan), François Bodin, Sylvain Dubuisson, Amik Hemery (Paris), Vincent Becheau + Marie-Laure Bourgeois (Perigueux), The AIR, Yutaka Hikosaka, Yasuo Kondo, Kenjiro Okazaki (Tokyo), COOP HIMMELBLAU (Vienna), plus work by co-ordinating artist Shiro Kuramata. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour with amazing examples of all designers sculptural lighting objects, followed by profiles of each that include many further archival works (expanding from lighting into furniture, architecture, ceramics) by each, profile on Kuramata and fold-out timeline of radical development in lighting. Texts in English and Japanese by Shiro Kuramata, Riichi Miyake, and Yvonne Brunhammer. An amazing and scarce postmodern lighting design reference.
Good copy, with ageing to glue binding and light corner bumping to covers,
1995, English
Softcover (w. 7" single), 60 pages, 30 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
London Musician's Collective / London
$65.00 - Out of stock
Rare "Special Japanese Issue" (Volume 4 No.2) of Resonance magazine, published by the London Musician's Collective in 1996 with exclusive 7" single of seven untitled pieces by Otomo Yoshihide and Yamatsuka Eye, recorded live in London, Spring 1995. Magazine includes articles by Otomo Yoshihide on the 1970s Japanese improvised scene (Kaoru Abe, Masayuki Takayanagi, Keiji Hano, et al.), Thurston Moore on Japan, Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Recommended Records, et al.) on Haniwa Chan, Richard Scott on Hôgaku (Traditional Japanese Music), Steve Beresford (Derek Bailey's Company, et al.) on The Honeymoons, David Toop, Boredoms interview by Stefan Jaworzyn (including a Boredoms discography and family tree), Eckhart Derschmidt on Japanese jazz, Stefan Jaworzyn interviews Derek Bailey about working in Japan, live and record reviews and much more.
Very Good copy with Near mint, As New 7" single.
2021, English
Hardcover, 76 Pages, 20 x 25 cm
First ed. of 500,
Out of print title / as new
Published by
Baron / UK
$70.00 - Out of stock
Published in a limited first edition of 500 copies and now out-of-print, this is the first posthumous book by Japanese fetish artist Namio Harukawa (May 1947 – April 24, 2020), dedicated to Harukawa’s archive of rarely published work.
Creating a visionary language through the medium of pencil drawings, Harukawa worked for 60 years under a pseudonym, Namio Harukawa: formed from an anagram of “Naomi”, a reference to Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel, and actress Masumi Harukawa, using it until his death in 2020.
Forniphilia and domination has fascinated and preoccupied Harukawa, in his artistic practice, and was central to his life work. His artwork typically featured voluptuous women dominating and humiliating smaller men. His work has been exhibited internationally and received critical praise, from Oniroku Dan to Madonna, and found new contemporary relevance on social networks, from feminists, to liberators.
The book also contains an essay by academic Pernilla Ellens, editor of Post Butt and The true meaning of S.M.H. and is designed by Sam Boxer, Art Director of Gut Magazine.
As New.
2006, English / Chinese
Hardcover (w. dust-jacket, poster, threaded art pocket w. prints), 194 pages, 18 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Cream / Hong Kong
$290.00 - In stock -
First edition of the best Undercover book, published in 2006 by Hong Kong-based high-end publisher Cream, who also published the incredible Margiela Special issue two years later. This super special volume (Cream #4) is dedicated entirely to Japanese avant-garde designer Jun Takahashi and his label Undercover. Wrapped in gold debossed, black velvet-bound hardcovers with reversible illustrated dust-jacket and gilded page edging, this stunning book contains Takahashi's drawings and graphics for Spring/Summer Undercover collection, interviews, photographs, Undercover Summer 2006 Paris Runway documentation, fittings, studio photographs, and various source material by Takahashi at the height of his game. Includes a chapter documenting the wonderful headpieces created by Katsuya Kamo for Undercover, an inserted Undercover poster, plus a thread-sealed paper case enclosed that features artworks by Japanese artist and Undercover collaborator Madsaki. Texts in English with a Chinese translation laid in (verso of poster). Designed by Silly Thing and edited closely with Jun Takahashi.
Very Good most complete copy.
2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 260 pages, 29 x 30 cm
Published by
Five Continents Editions / Milan
$130.00 - In stock -
The major monograph on Cuban artist Agustin Fernandez.
'As a painter I use a realist technique, but the emblems I invent are not real. They are purely imaginative... Painting is a thing of the mind. My realism is not nature, or landscape, or still life, but the psychological world.' — Agustin Fernandez
At the time of his death in 2006, Agustin Fernandez (b. 1928) ranked among Cuba's most outstanding artists. Defying simple categorisation, today his work is most recognisable for its ambiguous and precariously balanced forms, erotic overtones, surreal juxtapositions, and metallic palette. This superbly illustrated book is the first comprehensive study of Fernandez's work, and includes contributions by renowned critic Donald Kuspit and a team of experts. Fernandez's work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North and South America, and is represented in major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work found a wider audience when one of his larger paintings was featured in the 1980 Brian de Palma film, Dressed to Kill.
Introduction by Donald Kuspit. Texts by Susan Aberth, Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Abby McEwen.
1977 / 1984, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 88 pages, 29 x 21 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bracken Books / London
$45.00 - Out of stock
Hardcover edition of Fantastic Painters by Simon Watney, first published in 1977, this 1984 edition published by Bracken Books, London. Includes the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Max Ernst, Lyonel Feininger, Luigi Russolo, Paul Delvaux, Arnold Böcklin, Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Caspar David Friedrich, Henri Rousseau, Paul Klee, Georde Frederic Watts, Giovanni Segantini, Edward Burne-Jones, John Anster Fitzgerald, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Richard Dadd, Francisco de Goya, Henry Fuseli, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Hubert Robert, William Blake, François de Nomé (Monsù Desiderio), Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Jacopo Pontormo, Matthias Grünewald, Luca Signorelli, David Hockney, and more.
Very Good in VG dust jacket.
2019, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 336 pages, 25 x 29 cm
Published by
Ludion / Brussels
$100.00 - Out of stock
The first English edition of the ultimate monograph on painter Léon Spilliaert.
Leon Spilliaert (1881-1946) was one of the most important Flemish Symbolist painters. Although he was embedded in the Symbolist tradition, he was also drawn to the avant-garde. He was, in fact, an einzelganger, or loner, balancing on the fault line between two centuries, a transitional figure between Symbolism and Surrealism.
Spilliaert, like James Ensor, was born and raised in Ostend. And like Ensor, he was also driven by ridicule and irony, non-conformism and the urge to look at the world from a different perspective. He created his own spiritual imagery, experimented with pastel and gouache, and played with purified areas of colour and graceful lines. The sea under a cool moon, lonely figures with a vacant gaze, desolate beaches, empty rooms and stylised silhouettes in backlight: Spilliaert was always able to evoke an atmosphere of mystery, magic and alienation in abstract lines and colour.
Anne Adriaens-Pannier, former curator at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, has been working on the catalog raisonné of his oeuvre since 1995 at the Spilliaert family's request. She pays tribute to the artist with this beautifully illustrated book, in which she describes his drawings and paintings, as well as referring to his book illustrations and lithographs. The author presents Spilliaert as a link between the major art movements in the fascinating era in which he lived and worked. A unique book about an exceptional artist.
2018, English / French / Dutch
Hardcover, 192 pages, 24.5 x 29.7 cm
Published by
Pandora / Brussels
$130.00 - In stock -
For a long time, the graphic oeuvre of Leon Spilliaert (1881-1946) was, if not neglected, then at least
discussed little or summarily. It was only in 1982 that the first exhibition fully devoted to his prints was held. The prints of Spilliaert are perhaps less known than his original works on paper but they are equally mysterious, attractive and varied on topic: portraits, figures, land- and cityscapes, forests and parks...
Together with fellow citizen of Ostend James Ensor, Leon Spilliaert is considered one of the pioneers of Belgian modern art.
Over 35 years on from that first exhibition, this new and updated edition of the catalogue raisonne of the prints of Leon Spilliaert by Xavier Tricot showcases the visionary work of this Belgian artist.
Text in English, French, and Dutch.
2022, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 23 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$49.00 - In stock -
This pioneering book stands as the most comprehensive treatment of the lives, ideas and art works of the remarkable group of women who were an essential part of the Surrealist movement. Leonora Carrington, Léonor Fini, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Dora Maar, and Dorothea Tanning, among many others, became an embodiment of their age as they struggled towards artistic maturity and their own 'liberation of the spirit' in the context of the Surrealist revolution. Their stories and their achievements are presented here against the background of the turbulent decades of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and the war that forced Surrealism into exile in New York and Mexico.
Foreword by Dawn Ades.
2015, English
Softcover (french-folds), 608 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Ridinghouse / London
$65.00 - In stock -
Art historian and curator Dawn Ades is a leading voice on Dada, Surrealism, abstraction and art from Latin America. Ades addresses themes fundamental to the history of modern art and the avant-garde, across time periods and art movements, from Europe to the Americas. She offers alternative readings and investigates the particular dynamics that affect the ways images and objects are produced, presented and received.
With topics ranging from close-up photography to the female subject in Mexico, and from automatism to photomontage, as well as monographic essays on artists such as Francis Bacon, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and Hannah Hoch, this collection explores major figures of the twentieth century as well as art beyond the canon. The selected writings are divided into sections that correspond to the overarching concerns of gender, identity, the impact of new mediums and the enduring significance of the materials of art.
2011, English
Softcover, 72 pages, 14.7 x 22.4 cm
Published by
Graywolf Press / Washington
$39.00 - Out of stock
Still later, when I was more in touch with
the world, they told me, "You have a future."
I thought that over. Even if I believed them,
what did my little future, whatever that was,
have to do with the real thing, whatever that is?
—from "Waiting"
In this second daring collection, Coming to That, the centenarian painter and poet Dorothea Tanning illuminates our understanding of creativity, the impulse to make, and the longevity of art. Her unique wit and candor radiate through every poem, every line, and her inquisitive mind is everywhere alive and restless. As she writes in one poem, "If Art would only talk it would, at last, reveal / itself for what it is, what we all burn to know."
"[Coming to That] is playful and unrestrained, each poem containing a spontaneous logic of its own. . . . Tanning's poems take the reader on unexpected journeys that stray far from their beginnings, moving with the momentum of sheer joy and restless artistic energy. Pulsing underneath are larger questions, sometimes almost bittersweet, sometimes daunting." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Tanning's poems are beautifully created, filled with rich rhythms and imagery. . . . Often ironic and often filled with wisdom and humor, a Tanning poem asks readers to believe in her artistic vision. These are poems of beginnings and choices, of marriage and aging, and of creation--poems still filled with wondering." —Library Journal
"Dorothea Tanning, who has had a long and marvelous life as a visual artist, is our most surprising new poet." —Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post Book World
"Dorothea Tanning's verbal wizardry is a constant surprise, an abiding delight." —J. D. McClatchy
2022, English
Hardcover, 260 pages, 17.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
David Zwirner Books / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
A sweeping selection of Donald Judd’s iconic and ambitious works alongside a diverse collection of newly commissioned writings.
One of the most significant American artists of the postwar period, Judd rigorously experimented with color, form, material, and space. The works in this catalogue range from the artist’s expansive installations to self-contained single units, yielding valuable new insights into his process and approach. The survey includes one of his largest and most intricate installations of wall-mounted plywood boxes, conceived in 1986. Other works include variations on some of Judd’s most recognizable forms, executed in materials such as Corten steel, plexiglass, copper, plywood, brushed aluminum, and painted aluminum. Brilliant and exacting reproductions capture these works in vivid detail. Following the major Judd retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2020, this book serves as a companion volume.
With contributions from a wide range of voices—art historians, critics, writers, and performers— this publication includes rich new writings on Judd’s oeuvre, art criticism, and enduring influence. Artworks 1970–1994 is published on the occasion of the eponymous 2020 exhibition at David Zwirner New York.
Foreword by Flavin Judd. Texts by Johanna Fateman, Lucy Ives, Branden W. Joseph, Marta Kuzma, Thessaly La Force, Anna Lovatt, Lauren Oyler, Wendy Perron, Michael Stone-Richards, and Mimi Thompson.
2020, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 27 x 22.8 cm
Published by
Lund Humphries / London
$120.00 - Out of stock
The definitive study of the work and life of artist, writer and poet Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), positioning her as one of the most fascinating and significant creative forces to emerge during the 20th century. It provides a framework within which to consider the range and depth of Tanning's work, well beyond the better-known early Surrealist works of the 1940s, and makes connections between her life experiences and thematic preoccupations. Extensively illustrated and featuring unpublished material from interviews which the author Victoria Carruthers conducted with the artist between 2000 and 2009.
Victoria Carruthers is Senior Lecturer in modern and contemporary art history and theory at the Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia. Her research explores the intersections between art, literature, and music across visual cultures in the twentieth century. Victoria completed her doctoral thesis on the work of Dorothea Tanning and has published several articles on her practice. She was fortunate enough to visit the artist on a number of occasions and enjoy many lengthy conversations on her life and work.
2022, English
Hardcover, 268 pages, 19.8 x 25.4 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$80.00 - In stock -
A biography by Nicole Rudick told in Saint Phalle's own words, assembled from rare and unseen materials.
Known best for her exuberant, often large-scale sculptural works that celebrate the abundance and complexity of female desire, imagination and creativity, Niki de Saint Phalle viewed making art as a ritual, a performance--a process connecting life to art. This unconventional, illuminated biography, told in the first person in Saint Phalle's voice and her own hand, dilates large and small moments in Saint Phalle's life which she sometimes reveals with great candor, at other times carefully unwinding her secrets. Nicole Rudick, in a kind of collaboration with the artist, has assembled a gorgeous and detailed mosaic of Saint Phalle's visual and textual works from a trove of paintings, drawings, sketches and writings, many previously unpublished or long unavailable, that trace her mistakes and successes, her passions and her radical sense of joy. Saint Phalle's invocation--her bringing to life--writes Rudick, is an apt summation of the overlap of Saint Phalle's life and art: both a bringing into existence and a bringing to bear. These are visions from the frontiers of consciousness.
Born in France, Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) was raised in New York and began making art at age 23, pursuing a revelatory vision informed both by the monumental works of Antonin Gaudí and the Facteur Cheval, and by aspects of her own life. In addition to her Tirs ("shooting paintings") and Nanas and her celebrated large-scale projects--including the Stravinsky Fountain at the Centre Pompidou, Golem in Jerusalem and the Tarot Garden in Tuscany--Saint Phalle produced writing and works on paper that delve into her own biography: childhood and her break with her family, marriage to Harry Mathews, motherhood, a long collaborative relationship with Jean Tinguely, numerous health crises and her late, productive years in Southern California. Saint Phalle has most recently been the subject of retrospectives at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in 2015, and at MoMA P.S.1, in 2021.
Nicole Rudick is a critic and an editor. Her writing on art, literature and comics has been published in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artforum and elsewhere. She was managing editor of the Paris Review for nearly a decade. She is the editor, most recently, of a new edition of Gary Panter's legendary comic Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise (New York Review Comics, 2021).
2019, English
Softcover, 328 pages, 14 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$79.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Art and (Bare) Life: A Biopolitical Inquiry analyzes modern and contemporary art’s drive to blur with life, and how this is connected to the democratic state’s biologized control of life. Art’s ambition to transform life intersects in striking ways with modern biopower’s aim to normalize, purify, judge, and transform life—rendering it bare. In these intersecting yet different orientations toward life, this book finds the answer to the question: How did autonomous art become such an effective tool of the capitalist state?
From today’s “creative cities” to the birth of modern democracy and art in the French Revolution, Art and (Bare) Life explores how the Enlightenment’s discovery of life itself is mirrored in politics and art. The galvanizing revelation that we are, in Michel Foucault’s words, “a living species in a living world,” free to alter our environment to produce specific effects, is compared here to the discovery that art is an autonomous system that can be piloted toward its own self-determined ends—art for art’s sake. But when both art and the capitalist state seek to change life rather than reflect it, they find themselves set on a collision course.
“Josephine Berry’s Art and (Bare) Life is an exemplary work. Here, for the first time, key concepts of contemporary political philosophy, such as biopower and biopolitics, are embedded within modern art history and theory. Erudite and sensitive to art’s complex field of intentions and outcomes, this in-depth study of aesthetics and politics is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding a foundational and regularly renewed dichotomy: ‘art’ and ‘life.’”
—Angela Dimitrakaki, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Edinburgh
“The millennial body of the human is a territory marked by sacred codes, disciplines, and abstractions. To the technologies of biopower Josephine Berry waves the Medusa head of the art of rebellion.”
—Matteo Pasquinelli, Professor in Media Theory, Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design
Design by A Practice for Everyday Life
1968, French
Hardcover, 112 pages, 35 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
André Balland / Paris
$800.00 - Out of stock
Legendary, super rare 1968 French photo book by Marc Attali and Jacques Delfau, here in the first and only hardcover edition published by André Balland in Paris. Beautifully produced, highly original voyeuristic photo/text celebration of the female form. Complemented by Delfau’s Dadaist text collages Les Érotiques Du Regard "is a frank meditation on the male gaze, an essay in pictures and a kind of concrete poetry where the typography has equal status with the imagery. Unlike many of the so-called erotic books from the 1960's, the "Free Love" era, Les Erotiques manages to examine the phenomenon of the male gaze, whilst at the same time doing the classically male thing of gazing." — Martin Parr (Parr, M. and Badger, G., The Photobook: A History, Vol.I, p.226)
Very Good copy, with loosened spine from binding, which is always the case with this heavy cover book, but pages all bound intact and clean. Some light chipping, minor splitting around the spine ends, hinges, but overall an excellent copy of this fragile book. Interior and covers in lovely condition.
2020, English
Softcover, 320 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Uh Books / Amsterdam
KW Institute for Contemporary Art / Berlin
$24.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Will Holder, the constellation of material in this issue collectively philosophises on topics that deal with difference and the transformative processes between things. It essentially puts forth the notion of the intellectual as a transitional identity. Contributions from various contemporary, historical, and even ancient authors and sources include George Orwell, Simone Weil, Apuleius, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alan Stanbridge, John Cage, Bernadette Mayer, Anne Carson, Barbara Guest, Jenn Ashworth, Lewis Hyde, and many others. The volume begins with an introduction by Charles Bernstein and concludes with an afterword by Robert Duncan.
2022, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
Uh Books / Amsterdam
$24.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
This 21st issue of ‘F.R. David’ is edited by Will Holder with Andrea di Serego Alighieri. Seemingly more fragmented than usual, it includes contributions, quotes, found materials, and excerpts from Maggie Nelson, Charles Mingus, Octavia Butler, John Keats, Alice Notley, Paul Abbott, Bernadette Mayer, Fred Dewey, John Cage, Marion Keiner, Anne Carson, and others. An afterword by Nicolas Schoffer entitled “Microtime” concludes this wandering, inscrutable journey.
2018, English
Hardcover, 368 pages, 12.5 x 19 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$69.00 $20.00 - In stock -
“Fichte did away with the opposition between objective and poetic writing—his heightened objectivity becomes poetic, his poetry journalistic. He wrote to fight against bigotry and provincialism, and developed approaches in the 1970s that are discussed today in queer studies and postcolonialism.”
—Diedrich Diederichsen
The Black City is a portrait of New York City written by Hubert Fichte between 1978 and 1980. One of Germany’s most important postwar authors, Fichte researched the city as the center of the African diaspora, conducting interviews and composing essays about syncretism in culture and the arts, material living conditions in the city, and political and individual struggles based on race, class, and sexuality. His interview partners include Michael Chisolm, arts educator and coordinator of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition; German émigré and artist Lil Picard; photographer Richard Avedon; Léopold Joseph, publisher of the exile newspaper Haiti Observateur; and Teiji Ito, composer and Vodou initiate. The book opens with notes on an exhibition of Haitian art at the Brooklyn Museum, and closes with a self-reflective literary analysis of Herodotus, the first white European to write extensively of his travels and (desirous) encounters in Africa.
Often compared to the work of Jean Genet and Kathy Acker, Fichte’s novels and nonfiction are exuberant and erudite, contesting the stylistic and ethnographic norms of the time to locate a “utopic potential” for poetic and political revolution in the cultural heritage and contemporary life of the African diaspora. Fichte’s writing in The Black City provocatively exposes the complexities of its author’s subjectivity in a manner that underscores the singularity of his writing, while prompting questions about how notions of exploitation, authority, and authenticity manifest themselves in pseudo-ethnographic practices. Translated into English for the first time, The Black City is part of Fichte's multivolume experimental literary cycle, The History of Sensitivity, which was left unfinished due to his untimely death in 1986.
Foreword by Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke
With photographs by Leonore Mau
Design by Ronnie Fueglister
Translated by Adam Siegel with Max Bach
Published in conjunction with the project “Hubert Fichte: Love and Ethnology,” a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, supported by S. Fischer Stiftung and S. Fischer Verlag.
2013, English
Softcover, 130 pages (17 color ills.), 14 x 21.6 cm
Published by
A.P.E (Art Projects Era)
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$22.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Fiona Bryson, Keren Cytter, Roger Van Voorhees
Contributions by Matthew Dickman, Roman Baembaev, Josef Strau; drawings by John Kelsey
The Atlantis Search Engine, the first edition in the Poetic Series, features a selection of poetry and prose by Matthew Dickman, Roman Baembaev, Josef Strau, and drawings produced specifically by John Kelsey based on the film The Canyons.
The Poetic Series brings together works of poetry and literature in combination with visual art, introducing young as well as established writers concerned with challenging the boundaries of traditional forms of narrative.
Initiated by Keren Cytter and co-edited by Fiona Bryson and Roger van Voorhees, the quarterly publication focuses on three experimental writers or poets per issue—image content is supplied by one artist.
Copublished with A.P.E (Art Projects Era)
Design by Keren Cytter
2014, English
French fold covers, spiral bound, 112 pages, 17.8 × 23 cm
Published by
Rainoff / Sydney / New York
$35.00 $5.00 - In stock -
Following on from their award-winning inaugural collaboration A Bell is a Cup, Sydney and NYC-based imprint Rainoff's second book with Matt Connors, Machines, continues the celebrated US painter's loose and shape-shifting traversals of the histories and aesthetic implications of abstraction. This stunning publication has been produced with four different colours for both the front and back covers. This allows each cover to be interchanged to create a new colour combination. Sixteen different colour combinations can be created in total.
1971, English
Softcover, 196 pages, 27.7 x 21.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Vintage Books / New York
$85.00 - Out of stock
"Celebrations, storm warnings, formulas, recipes, rumors, and country dances harvested by Alicia Bay Laurel."
Originally published in Berkeley, California in 1970, more than fifty years ago, the seminal "Living on the Earth" is for people who would rather chop wood for fire than work behind a desk to pay the electric company. It's for people who want the best recipe for lavender soap or huckleberry jam. It's for people who want to make their own clothing, play guitar, learn woodcarving, gardening, canning and drying food, and natural first aid methods. The book has no chapters; no rigid structures or rules. It grew naturally out of the lessons the author has learned, and which she shares. Living on the Earth is a beautiful book to see and read, as well as a spiritually uplifting work whose simplicity radiates warmth and promotes serenity and goodwill to all those who encounter it. The large format paperback is entirely written in Alicia's cursive script and beautifully illustrated on every page with her line drawings. Alicia's innovative illustration and book design styles have been enthusiastically emulated in dozens of books and greeting cards since it's original publishing, and in 2012 "Living on the Earth" was chosen as one of the 101 most influential American cookbooks of the 20th century. Alicia was just 20 years old when the book was first published, and it would go on to become a New York Times "best-seller" and one of the most influential manuals for natural, conscious living ever created.
Very Good copy, beautifully preserved with only a few nicks to the cover edges, very light tanning. Very rarely is the first popular edition found in such lovely condition.
2021, English
Hardcover, 128 pages, 29 x 33 cm
Published by
Borgerhoff & Lamberigts / Belgium
$135.00 - In stock -
Discover Richard Tuttle as story teller and writer: first publication of 44 short stories by the artist paired with 22 sculptural works from the "Stories" Series.
In his new body of work Stories, I–XX Richard Tuttle elaborates on the displacement of painting into other realms to engage us in a rhythmical and phenomenological reflection on color. Using various aspects of painting in a freehanded way his work exceeds rational determinations and occupies a liminal space in-between mediums. As we move from one Story to the next, the idiosyncratic nature of these cutout plywood pieces comes to confront their seriality—form and logic sporadically emerge and disappear.
In this volume each work is paired with 2 short stories from his writings during the Covid confinement, in the spirit of the Decamerone, that inspired the titling of his new body of art works. The book ends with color images of Tuttle's solo exhibition Stories I-XX at Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels.
Born 1941 in Rahway, New Jersey, Richard Dean Tuttle lives and works in New Mexico and New York. His work spans a range of media, from sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking and artist's books to installation and furniture. During the 1980s, Richard Tuttle began experimenting with materials and framing devices to probe art's relationship to scale, form and systems of display. Diverting from the cold precision of Minimalist his approach to art making embraces a playful and handmade quality that promotes the idea that things are always "just beginning". Often made out of humble materials such as plywood, cardboard, Styrofoam and paper, his work pushes the viewer to find forms of appreciation that aren't related to craftsmanship. In his own words, Tuttle proclaims that he loves materials, and at the same time is not really interested in them. The subtlety of this paradigm exemplifies his attitude towards art as a tool for life and an activity of sublimation engrossed in language and story telling.
Text by Richard Tuttle.