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:
BOOKSHOP CLOSED FOR BREAK UNTIL NOV 10.
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
ORDERS CAN STILL BE PLACED AND WILL BE PROCESSED AFTER NOV 10.
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.
1990, English
Softcover, 102 pages, 23 x 14.7 cm
Published by
Post Apollo Press / US
$44.00 - Out of stock
“The Spring Flowers Own” and “The Manifestations of the Voyage” continue and complete the Cycle of the Linden Tree, which started with two poems previously published in The Indian Never Had a Horse & Other Poems: “One Linden Tree, Then Another Linden Tree,” and “An Alley of Linden Trees, and Lightning.” With drawings by Etel Adnan.
"With this book of poems Etel Adnan establishes herself as a major poet who belongs beside internationally acclaimed poets like Tranströmer, Bly, Neruda, Vallejo, and Pessoa." — Eric Sellin
Etel Adnan (1925—2021) was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a celebrated writer, essayist, and playwright, and is the author of more than twenty books in all these disciplines. Her work as a whole is a faithful record of the times and places she has lived in Beirut, Paris, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. At least eighteen works by Adnan have been published in English. They include Sitt Marie Rose (Post-Apollo Press, 1982); The Arab Apocalypse (Post-Apollo Press, 1989); Sea and Fog (Nightboat Books, 2012), winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the California Book Award for Poetry; Premonition (Kelsey Street Press, 2014); Surge (Nightboat Books, 2018); Time (Nightboat Books, 2019), winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Best Translated Book Award; and most recently Shifting the Silence (Nightboat Books, 2020). Her paintings, described by New York Times art critic Roberta Smith as “stubbornly radiant abstractions,” have been widely exhibited. Spanning media and genres, Adnan’s writings have led to numerous collaborations with artists and musicians, including the French part of CIVIL warS, a multi-language opera by American stage director Robert Wilson, performed in Lyon and Bobigny in 1985. In 2014 she was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, France’s highest cultural honor, by the French Government.
2020, English
Softcover, 680 pages, 19 x 13.2 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$65.00 - Out of stock
Bringing together more than 350 texts written between 1953 and 2016, this comprehensive volume establishes artist and activist Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) as a towering figure of the 20th century, a long-overdue recognition of the artist’s influential vision.
Renowned for his use of unstable materials and chemical reactions to create artworks that embody processes of change, destruction, and renewal, Metzger was also a prolific writer, theoretician, and satirist.
His interest in technology and science lead him to create such concepts as auto-destructive and auto-creative art—terms he coined with his manifestos on ‘Auto-destructive Art’ in 1959 and ‘Auto-creative Art’ in 1961. He put these ideas into action with artworks made to decay, disintegrate, or change following natural processes.
Edited by Gustav’s long-time friend and curator Mathieu Copeland, this anthology of writings makes Metzger’s key thinking from the 1950s onward available to a wide audience.
It includes seminal writings such as his manifestos of auto-destructive and auto-creative art (both 1961), ‘On Random Activity in Material/Transforming Works of Art’ (1964), ‘The Possibility of Auto-Destructive Architecture’ (1966), his inspiring interview with R. Buckminster Fuller from 1970, ‘The Artist in the Face of Social Collapse’ (1998), and his legacy manifesto entitled ‘Remember Nature’ from 2013, as well as art criticism, political satires, and lecture transcriptions.
His writing allows a challenging reading of the contemporary (art) period as analysed by one of its most discerning figures—a pioneering artist and thinker involved in environmental and societal issues very early on.
2016, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
$88.00 - In stock -
The catalogue of Metzger's first extensive overview: divided into sections—each of which is accompanied by a critical text—corresponding to those presented in the exhibition, the publication provides systematic insight into an artistic oeuvre considered as one of the most important in the 20th century (with texts by Mathieu Copeland, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono, Hermann Nitsch…).
If the retrospective, which started at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Torun before travelling to Oslo, was presented in distinctively different formats—the former providing audiences with a wide overview of Metzger's career and works, including attention to his early years of political activism and engagement and concomitant radicalization, and the latter focusing upon deeper researched aspects of the artist's production,—the exhibition catalogue provides readers with a rich array of theoretical contributions, including a conversation between Dobrila Denegri and Yoko Ono, Ivor Davies, Hermann Nitsch and Jon Hendricks, as well as Metzger's own writings.
The contributors Pontus Kyander, Andrew Wilson, Mathieu Copeland, Dobrila Denegri, Leanne Dmyterko, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Manuel Olveira take up different aspects of Metzger's work, from the artist's early political activism, to his experimentation with painting to his drafting of the manifestoes for Auto-Destructive Art, providing us with an invaluable and much awaited document for consultation in contemporary art.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Poland, from November 8, 2015, to January 17, 2016, and the joint exhibition “Gustav Metzger in Oslo – Extremes Touch and Liquid Crystal Environment” at Kunsthall Oslo and Stiftelsen Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, from November 14, 2015 to January 31st, 2016.
The artistic oeuvre of Gustav Metzger (1926-2017), in which the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike hold a central role, is considered as one of the most important in the 20th century.
2019, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 23.5 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$74.00 - Out of stock
“Doing is living. That is all that matters.”—Ruth Asawa
Throughout her long and prolific career American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) developed innovative sculptures in wire, a medium she explored through increasingly complex forms using craft-based techniques she learned while traveling in Mexico in 1947. In 1949, after studying at Black Mountain College, Asawa moved to San Francisco and created dozens of wire works, among them an iconic bronze fountain—the first of many public commissions—for the city’s Ghirardelli Square.
Bringing together examples from across Asawa’s full and extraordinary career, this expansive volume serves as an unprecedented reorientation of her sculptures within the historical context of 20th-century art. In particular, it includes careful consideration of Asawa’s advocacy for arts education in public schools, while simultaneously focusing on her vital—and long under-recognized—contributions to the field of sculpture. Insightful essays explore the intersection of formal experimentation and identity to offer a fresh assessment of this celebrated artist. Richly illustrated with exquisite new installation views, Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work introduces original scholarship that traces the dynamic evolution of form in the artist’s work.
Edited by Tamara H. Schenkenberg; With essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg
Tamara H. Schenkenberg is curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis.
1992, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 140 pages, 23 x 31 cm
Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Editions du May / Paris
$350.00 - In stock -
First hardcover edition of best book on French furniture and interior designer Pierre Paulin (1927-2009), Un Univers De Formes, published by Du May in 1992 and long long out-of-print. Famous for his innovative designs during the 1960s when he worked for Artifort, with his most iconic Mushroom chair, Ribbon chair, and Tongue chair. This profusely illustrated monograph surveys his entire career, reproducing the many designs from the personal archives of the designer himself. Along with his distinctive chair designs, the books presents many seldom seen interior design works, environments, fit-out for Elysee Palace, ADSA + Partners, exhibitions, Salon des arts menagers, Mobilier National, along with texts by Anne Chapoutot, preface by Yvonne Brunhammer and afterword by Jean Coural. A must for any fan of Paulin or mid-century French design.
Fine copy in VG-Fine dustjacket.
2003, Japanese
Softcover, unpaginated, 13 x 8.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Keibunsha / Kyoto
$20.00 - Out of stock
"Flip so gently!"
Lovely limited edition flip-book by Japanese illustrator Aquirax Uno, published in 2003 on the occasion of his exhibition "Chic Pop — Aquirax Uno's World Exhibition" at Keibunsha Store Gallery in Kyoto. Long out-of-print, this pocket-sized treasure features monochrome b/w fantastical illustrations of Uno's throughout from the 1950s—1980s and small whimsical texts (in Japanese), each page overlay printed with pink flip-book sequential pencil drawings that metamorphose a cat → girl → fish when flipped.
Aquirax Uno, also known as Akira Uno (b. 1934) is a Japanese graphic artist, illustrator and painter who was very influential in the 1960s and 1970s. His incredibly unique work is characterized by fantastic visuals, capricious and sensuous line flow, flamboyant (and occasionally grotesque) eroticism, and frequent use of collage and psychedelic bright colours. Uno was prominently involved with the Japanese underground art of the 1960s–1970s, and is particularly notable for his frequent collaborations with Shuji Terayama and his experimental theater Tenjo Sajiki.
Good copy with some cover wear. Very Good internally.
2006, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Art After Conceptual Art tracks the various legacies of conceptualist practice over the past three decades. This collection of essays by art historians and artists from Europe and the Americas (including Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Helen Molesworth, Isabelle Graw, Thomas Crow, Helmut Draxler, Alexander Alberro, Sabeth Buchmann, Henrik Oelsen, Edit András) introduces and develops the idea that conceptual art generated several different, and even contradictory, forms of art practice. Some of these contested commonplace assumptions of what art is; others served to buttress those assumptions. The bulk of the volume features newly written and highly innovative essays challenging standard interpretations of the legacy of conceptualism and discussing the influence of conceptualism's varied practices on art since the 1970s. The essays explore topics as diverse as the interrelationships between conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting and conceptualist paradigms, conceptual art's often-ignored complicity with design and commodity culture, the specific forms of identity politics taken up by the reception of conceptual art, and conceptualism's North/South and East/West dynamics. A few texts that continue to be crucial for critical debates within the fields of conceptual and postconceptual art practice, history, and theory have been reprinted in order to convey the vibrant and ongoing discussion on the status of art after conceptual art. Taken together, the essays will inspire an exploration of the relationship between postconceptualist practices and the beginnings of contemporary art.
2010, Japanese / English
Softcover (w. dust jacket and dust jacket), 938 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
Tokyo Kirara / Tokyo
Kawade Shobo Shinsha / Tokyo
$150.00 - Out of stock
This absolutely remarkable ECM handbook of over 900 pages, edited by Kenny Inaoka, ECM’s label manager in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, originally conceived to accompany ECM’s 40th year celebrations, begins with a comprehensive illustrated catalogue of all of the officially released albums issued on ECM - and its subsidiary JAPO - from 1969 until 2010. Album covers are shown in colour (sometimes with alternate designs), and there is a section of Japan-only releases alongside the full international range of titles. This is followed by an individual album guide, complete with artwork, discographical information and capsule reviews for each release. All discographical information is in English, including titles, musicians, recording locations etc., making the book an extremely useful reference work for the non-Japanese reader/listener, and for collectors in general. A monumental, exhaustive document dedicated to one of the world's most innovative record labels!
The independent record label ECM – Edition of Contemporary Music – was founded by producer Manfred Eicher in Munich in 1969, and to date has issued more than 1500 albums spanning many idioms. Emphasising improvisation from the outset, ECM established its reputation with standard-setting recordings by Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, Jan Garbarek, Chick Corea, Gary Burton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and many more and began to include contemporary composition – including Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Meredith Monk Dolmen Music – in its programme in the late 1970s and early 80s. To introduce Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa a sister label, ECM New Series, was launched in 1984. The New Series has since become a broad platform for a spectrum of composed music from the pre-baroque era to the present day. New music, improvised or notated, builds upon the strengths of earlier models, and the concept of modern music informed by older music resonates through the improvised and composed projects heard on ECM.
2008, English
Softcover, 136 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$44.00 - Out of stock
As celebrated as it is reviled, internationally acclaimed filmmaker Catherine Breillat's novel Pornocracy viscerally enacts the dramatic confluence of mystery, desire, and shame that lies at the heart of sexuality. In Pornocracy, a beautiful woman wanders through a gay disco and engages a man, confident that he will follow her. Perversely and dispassionately, she offers her body as the ground of a ritualistic game in which, over the course of three evenings, the two will explore the numbing mechanics of sexual brutality. What follows is an exchange between a man and a woman that is both frankly sexual and deeply philosophical. Adapted and directed for film in France by Breillat as Anatomy of Hell (2004), Pornocracy leads the reader through an undulating and atmospheric exploration of the criminal and the erotic, finally climaxing in a place well beyond more familiar moral terrain. Although Breillat's films — most recently Fat Girl (2001) and Romance (1999) — are well known to international audiences, this publication marks her literary debut in America. It will demonstrate that Breillat's famous films are but one aspect of her strikingly original poetic and philosophical vision.
Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker and writer based in Paris. She is known not only for her films focusing on themes of sexuality, but also for her best-selling novels. Pornocracy is the first of her novels to be published in English.
Translated by Paul Buck and Catherine Petit
Afterword by Peter Sotos
Introduction by Chris Kraus
2021, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 112 pages, 22.23 x 14.61 cm
Published by
Hayward Gallery Publishing / London
$48.00 - Out of stock
The abiding presence of spiritualism in art, from af Klint to Susan Hiller.
Bringing together more than 30 international artists from the late 19th century to the present day, Not without My Ghosts surveys work inspired by spiritualism and its rich cultural history.
With original essays by art historian Susan L. Aberth and curators Simon Grant and Lars Bang Larsen, this publication explores the anti-authoritarian political agendas of 19th-century spiritualism and the movement’s close association to the history of feminism, as well as its continued influence on contemporary practitioners. Spanning diverse artistic approaches, Not without My Ghosts offers a unique insight into the ties that bind spirit and mediumistic art across the centuries.
Artists: William Blake, Cameron, Ann Churchill, Ithell Colquhoun, Louise Despont, Casimiro Domingo, Madame Fondrillon, Chiara Fumai, Madge Gill, Susan Hiller, Barbara Honywood, Georgiana Houghton, Anna Mary Howitt, Victor Hugo, Augustin Lesage, Pia Lindman, Ann Lislegaard, André Masson, Grace Pailthorpe, František Jaroslav Pecka, Olivia Plender, Sigmar Polke, Lea Porsager, Austin Osman Spare, Yves Tanguy, Suzanne Treister with The Museum of Blackhole Spacetime Collective
2021, English
Softcover, 204 pages, 23 x 32 cm
Published by
Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU) / Melbourne
$100.00 - In stock -
A Gift from Spirit is the long-awaited first-ever monograph committed to the incredible work of British artist and spiritualist medium Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884). Published by the Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU), this handsomely designed, lavishly illustrated book catalogues all thirty-five Georgiana Houghton watercolour and gouache paintings held at the Victorian Spiritualist’s Union (VSU), the largest collection of Houghton's works in the world. Beautiful reproductions of each work are accompanied by the spirit-assisted work annotations, hand-written by Houghton in copperplate script and affixed to the verso of each painting, and here for the first time deciphered, transcribed and commented on. Accompanying texts on the history of the VSU and Houghton’s paintings in Australia by past VSU president Alan Bennett and current VSU president Lorraine Lee Tet, plus extensive texts by editor Jeff Stewart, reproductions of Georgiana Houghton's texts from her first exhibition in 1871, an illustrated essay on understanding and conserving the artistic work of Georgiana Houghton's now famous abstract spiritualist paintings, list of works and biography.
Highly recommended!
British artist, Georgiana Houghton (1814-1884), developed skills as a medium after attending her first séance in 1859 and achieved her first mediumistic drawings in 1861. For the next decade, under the guidance of a spirit called Lenny followed by master painters and 70 Archangels, she produced over 155 extraordinary watercolour spirit drawings. Most of these have been lost, hopefully awaiting rediscovery. Of the 46 that have survived the majority are in the collections of spiritualist societies. The College of Psychic Studies, formerly known as the London Spiritualist Alliance, have 7 and around 35 have been preserved by the Victorian Spiritualist Union in Melbourne.
Houghton's paintings were produced by an automatic process, occurring under the direction of spirits. This technique would be later revisited by such artists as Austin Osman Spare in 1913, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and, from about 1919, by the surrealists. Houghton's earliest known works depicted extremely stylized flowers and fruits. Following a period of formal experimentation, Houghton developed a completely abstract or non-objective style, at least 40 years before Kandinsky, Malevich, Kupka and Mondrian – all of whom were in some measure inspired by spiritual themes. She exhibited a collection of abstract watercolour drawings to the public at an exhibition at the New British Gallery in Bond Street, London in 1871.
1984, English / German / French
Softcover, 512 pages, 19.6 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Greno / Nördlingen
$180.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the extensive and beautifully compiled companion book to Wender's road trip masterpiece from 1984, 'Paris, Texas', starring Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, and others. This heavy, comprehensive book (over 500 pages) includes 150 double page colour photographic stills illustrating every scene from the film, accompanied by the movie's script, information about the cast and crew and on-set photographs. A truly special film book, for a special film. Text in German, English and French.
“It is a story of the United States, a grim portrait of a land where people like Travis and Jane cannot put down roots, a story of a sprawling, powerful, richly endowed land where people can get desperately lost.“
Very Good copy with light edge / corner wear, top spine bump. clean copy throughout.
2021, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Information Office / Vancouver
$75.00 - In stock -
Edith Heath: Philosophies serves as the definitive resource on Edith Kiertzner Heath (1911–2005) and the history of Heath Ceramics, emphasizing the philosophical foundations and influences of one of the most significant creative forces in post-World War II America. Heath considered her dinnerware more than a collection of simple objects; rather, it was a commentary on good design and what she believed was indicative of a new and more informal lifestyle in postwar America. This book offers in-depth commentary on the many themes that shaped Heath’s ceramics practice—the environment, feminism, education, experimentation, architecture, politics, societal trends, collaborations—while also solidifying the relevance of Edith Heath’s story in contemporary life and society.
Contents include a foreword, preface, visual historical timeline, selected product and dinnerware glaze history, and a collection of essays contributed by historians and designers, all of whom have conducted specialized research in the Brian and Edith Heath/Heath Ceramics Collection at the Environmental Design Archives (EDA), UC Berkeley. Highlighting the richness of the EDA’s collection, the book utilizes rarely seen images, many of which show the character of their original archival state. The interdisciplinary nature of the content and visually engaging illustrative materials will appeal to a wide audience interested in postwar design, material culture, and California history.
Contributors include Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic, Allan Collier, Drew Heath Johnson, Waverly B. Lowell, Chris Marino, JC Miller, Julie M. Muñiz, Rosa Novak, Ezra Shales, Mara Holt Skov, Jay Stewart, Brian Trimble, Emily Vigor, and Jennifer M. Volland.
2021, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 23 x 27 cm
Published by
Royal Academy of The Arts / London
$70.00 - In stock -
Born in 1885 to a working-class family in Connecticut, Milton Avery left school at 16 to work in a factory. Intending to study lettering but soon transferring to painting, he attended evening school for fifteen years before moving to New York in the 1920s to pursue a career as a painter.
Although he never identified with a particular movement, Avery was a sociable member of the New York art scene. He became a figure of considerable influence for a younger generation of American artists, including Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. His talent was praised by Rothko, who said of his work 'the poetry penetrated every pore of the canvas to the last touch of the brush'.
Edith Devaney introduces Avery and his work, while Erin Monroe looks at Avery's early years in Hartford, and Marla Price examines Matisse's influence upon his art. A conversation with the artist's daughter March Avery Cavanaugh and an illustrated chronology by Isabella Boorman complete the book.
1984, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 96 pages, 28 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / average
Published by
HM Communications / New York
$15.00 - Out of stock
Heavy Metal June 1984 issue, featuring Liquid Sky director Slava Tsukerman, and comic stories/art by Juan Giménez, Philippe Druillet, Herikberto, Moebius, Enki Bilal, Jeff Jones, Charles Burns, John Findley, François Schuiten, Claude Renard, Frank Thorne, and many more, plus the usual fare of sci-fi, movies, music... Cover art by Esteban Maroto. Back cover by James Cherry.
Heavy Metal is an American science fiction and fantasy comics magazine that exploded onto the publishing scene in 1977 and shaped a generation with its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica. Unlike the traditional American comic books of that time bound by the restrictive Comics Code Authority, Heavy Metal featured explicit content. The magazine started out as a licensed translation of the French science-fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant, including work by Enki Bilal, Philippe Caza, Guido Crepax, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Claude Forest, Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), Chantal Montellier, and Milo Manara. The magazine later ran Stefano Tamburini and Tanino Liberatore's ultra-violent RanXerox. Heavy Metal gradually evolved into a publication featuring North American contributors like Richard Corben, Matt Howarth, Stephen R. Bissette, Alex Ebel, John Holmstrom, Paul Kirchner, Terrance Lindall, Gray Morrow, Walt Simonson, Dan Steffan, Jim Steranko, John Shirley, Arthur Suydam, Bernie Wrightson, and Olivia De Berardinis.
Average copy, retaped detacjed cover, wear to covers.
1981, French
Softcover, 70 pages, 27 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Chêne-Hachette / France
$390.00 - In stock -
Beautiful and very scarce French photo book published in 1981 by two young photographers, Gilles Mimouni and Jean-Paul Dumas-Grillet (who both continued into film), presents a collection of young adolescent women shot in France during the 70s, when they were still in school. The deliberately strange title, Adorae Curieux Zamok, refers to the young heroine of the writer Nabokov "Adorae", Curieux is "curious", and the Russian term Zamok is from the word "lock", evoking the private and secret character of a universe that never reveals itself at first sight : that of adolescence.
Accompanied by a text by novelist Muriel Cerf, these "portraits de petites filles sérieuses" are a discreet and sensitive approach to an age when girls' faces are no longer entirely that of a child's and are not yet those of an adults. "Curious faces, whose black and white photographs perfectly reflect the moving gravity and allow us to read in turn the sweet melancholy, hope, boredom, candor or mischief of their age." (taken from the text on the back cover.)
Very Good copy of this collectible book. Some common light yellowing to cover and edges.
2021, English
Hardcover, 184 pages, 27 x 23 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$70.00 - Out of stock
How the celebrated Surrealist traversed the many movements of 20th-century art with a thrilling disregard for categories and constraints.
Over the course of her protean career, Meret Oppenheim produced witty, unconventional bodies of work that defy neat categorizations of medium, style and subject matter. “Nobody will give you freedom,” she stated in 1975, “you have to take it.” Her freewheeling, subversively humorous approach modeled a dynamic artistic practice in constant flux, yet held together by the singularity and force of her creative vision.
Published in conjunction with the first ever major transatlantic Meret Oppenheim retrospective, and the first in the United States in over 25 years, this publication surveys work from the radically open Swiss artist’s precocious debut in 1930s Paris, the period during which her notorious fur-lined Object in MoMA’s collection was made, through her post–World War II artistic development, which included engagements with international Pop, Nouveau Réalisme and Conceptual art, and up to her death in 1985. Essays by curators from the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Menil Collection and the Museum of Modern Art critically examine the artist’s wide-ranging, wildly imaginative body of work, and her active role in shaping the narrative of her life and art, providing the context for her creative production pre– and post–World War II.
About the Authors:
Nina Zimmer is the Director of the Kunstmuseum Bern. Natalie Dupêcher is Assistant Curator of Modern Art at The Menil Collection, TX. Anne Umland is The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lee Colón is a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.
Meret Oppenheim was born in 1913 and lived in Germany and Switzerland during her childhood. At the age of 18, she moved to Paris to study art, and there exhibited alongside members of the Surrealist group. Oppenheim returned to Switzerland in 1937, where she trained as a conservator at the Basel School of Design. Already a storied member of the pre–World War II avant-garde, in the last two prolific decades of her life she was embraced by a younger generation of artists for her conceptual approach to art and progressive views on gender. Oppenheim died in 1985.
2021, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 20 x 15.5 cm
Published by
Siglio Press / Los Angeles
$65.00 - Out of stock
A forensic conceptualist's inventory of the ordinary and extraordinary lives in a Venetian hotel.
In 1981 Sophie Calle took a job as a chambermaid for the Hotel C in Venice, Italy. Stashing her camera and tape recorder in her mop bucket, she not only cleans and tidies, but sorts through the evidence of the hotel guests' lives. Assigned 12 rooms on the fourth floor, she surveys the state of the guests' bedding, their books, newspapers and postcards, perfumes and cologne, traveling clothes and costumes for Carnival. She methodically photographs the contents of closets and suitcases, examining the detritus in the rubbish bin and the toiletries arranged on the washbasin. She discovers their birth dates and blood types, diary entries, letters from and photographs of lovers and family. She eavesdrops on arguments and love-making. She retrieves a pair of shoes from the wastebasket and takes two chocolates from a neglected box of sweets, while leaving behind stashes of money, pills and jewelry. Her thievery is the eye of the camera, observing the details that were not meant for her, or us, to see.
The Hotel now manifests as a book for the first time in English (it was previously included in the book Double Game). Collaborating with the artist on a new design that features enhanced and larger photographs, and pays specific attention to the beauty of the book as an object, Siglio is releasing its third book authored by Calle, after The Address Book (2012) and Suite Vénitienne (2015).
Sophie Calle (born 1953) is an internationally renowned artist whose controversial works often fuse conceptual art and Oulipo-like constraints, investigatory methods and the plundering of autobiography. The Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a retrospective in 2009, and her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Hayward Gallery and Serpentine, London; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among others. She lives and works in Paris.
1970, English
Softcover, 450 pages, 20 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
E P Dutton / New York
$55.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this seminal 1970 work by Gene Youngblood, with an Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller, was the first to consider video as an art form. One of the most prescient books written about our modern age, Expanded Cinema was considered the Declaration of Independence for media arts. As the author writes, "The definition of cinema must be expanded to include videotronics, computer science, and atomic light." The introductory essay by R. Buckminster Fuller established an encompassing 1960s countercultural context for this new explosion of technologies. Heavily illustrated throughout, this classic original edition has been long out of print and is of such importance to this day that it has seen a re-publication in 2020.
Gene Youngblood is a well-known theorist of electronic media arts and a respected scholar in the history and theory of experimental film and video art. He has split his career between teaching and journalism and is also widely known as a pioneering voice in the Media Democracy movement.
R. Buckminster Fuller was an architect, designer, inventor, social theorist, and the author of more than thirty books, including the legendary Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.
Very Good copy with only light age wear.
2021, English
Softcover, 230 pages, 14 x 19.1 cm
Published by
The Song Cave / New York
$58.00 - In stock -
Introduction by Collier Schorr
Edited by Ben Estes
Unseen photos of rebels, outsiders, construction workers and more: celebrating the distinctive gay male gaze of Karlheinz Weinberger.
This landmark entry in the lifework of Zürich photographer Karlheinz Weinberger gathers more than 200 never-before-published vintage photographic prints that were rediscovered in 2017. This unique collection pairs images of Weinberger's most famous subjects, the "Halbstarke" — a loosely organized group of Swiss "rebels" in the late 1950s and early 1960s, carousing at local carnivals and on a camping trip — with a much more private side of Weinberger's oeuvre: solo portraits of men from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, whom he invited into his makeshift studio in the rooms of the apartment he shared with his mother.
The men in these portraits — construction workers, street vendors, bicycle messengers, outsiders — span a spectrum of fully clothed, arms-crossed poses to campy and flirtatious, fully nude and reclined, while others mimic art historical postures. All of these images, though, reveal a palpable tenderness between photographer and subject, offering an expansive, uncritical take on the male form in an era when being photographed was not the casual, ubiquitous record it is today. Though not a professional photographer (he worked as a warehouse stock manager), Weinberger captured his subjects with a distinctly gay male gaze, both carnal and artistic, and this collection is certain to earn his work a larger following and appreciation.
Born in 1921, Karlheinz Weinberger was a Swiss photographer whose work predominantly explored outsider cultures. Between 1943 and 1967 Weinberger published photos of male workers, sportsmen and bikers in the gay magazine Der Kreis under the pseudonym of "Jim." In the late '50s and early '60s he concentrated on Swiss rock 'n' roll youth, whom he photographed with both tenderness and a hint of irony. Weinberger placed little emphasis on exhibiting his work; his first comprehensive show took place only in 2000, six years before his death.
2021, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 13.7 x 19.1 cm
Published by
The Song Cave / New York
$42.00 - Out of stock
The first book-length translation of works by this important Egyptian-born, Lebanese-French poet, POETRIES presents the core of Georges Schehadè's (1905-1989) úuvre. Though best known as a dramatist, Schehadè was first and foremost a poet. His lifework was the seven volumes of crystalline poems published over a span of nearly a half-century (1938-1985), each successive volume simply and enigmatically titled POETRIES. It is from these seven books that our selection has been drawn.
Translated by Austin Carder. Featuring an introduction by Adonis.
In 1986, the Acadèmie Francaise awarded Georges Schehadè the inaugural Grand Prix de la Francophonie. Despite having received wide admiration from his contemporaries--including Max Jacob, Octavio Paz, Andrè Breton, and Paul Eluard--the poetry of Georges Schehadè is virtually unknown today, with this collection being the very first translated into English. In his translator's note, Austin Carder calls this collection a lullaby or an enigmatic fairytale told before bed. Its tone is one of self-sufficient prayer--a pronouncement rather than a plea--addressed to no one in particular and to anyone. These weathered songs key into the language of music, not by approximating its effects but by innervating sparks of meaning that flash forth...Schehadè's broken-off parables convulse with the dual beauty of both hymn and elegy.
Floating up as if from the weave of the page itself, these perfectly pitched versions of Georges Schehadè's Les Poèsies convey a mysterious sense of the inevitable. One couldn't ask more of a translation, and with the gift of this one Austin Carder gives us (and English) a haunting new poet of magical clarity and uncanny quiet. This is a beautiful book. — Peter Cole
2019, English
Hardcover, 256 pages, 19.2 x 24.6 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$100.00 - In stock -
Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) - stage and film actor, director, writer, and visual artist - was a man of rage and genius. Expelled from the Surrealist movement for his refusal to renounce the theatre, he founded the Theater of Cruelty and wrote The Theater and Its Double, one of the key twentieth-century texts on the topic. Artaud spent nine years at the end of his life in asylums, undergoing electroshock treatments. Released to the care of his friends in 1946, he began to draw again. This book presents drawings and portraits from this late resurgence, in colour reproductions. Accompanying the images are texts by by Artaud's longtime friend and editor Paule Thévenin and the philosopher Jacques Derrida.
“We won't be describing any paintings,” Derrida warns the reader. Derrida struggles with Artaud's peculiar language, punctuating his text with agitated footnotes and asides (asking at one point, “How will they translate this?”). Thévenin offers a more straightforward biographical and historical account. (It was on the walls of her apartment that Derrida first saw Artaud's paintings and drawings.) These two texts were previously published by the MIT Press in The Secret Art of Antonin Artaud without the artwork that is their subject. This book brings together art and text for the first time in English.
Paule Thévenin (1918–1993) knew Antonin Artaud well and edited many his complete writings for the French publisher Éditions Gallimard.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), an enormously influential philosopher, theoretician, critic, and deconstructionist, is the author of Of Grammatology, The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, Aporias, and many other books.
1998, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 15.2 x 22.9 cm
Published by
Paragon House Publishers / US
$45.00 - Out of stock
Hailed by Martin Heidegger as "one of France's best minds," Georges Bataille has become increasingly recognized and respected in the realm of academic and popular intellectual thought. Although Bataille died in 1962, interest in his life and writings have never been as strong as they are today — Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Kristeva have all acknowledged their debt to him.
In his book, On Nietzsche, as translated by Bruce Boone, Bataille comes as close as he would ever come to formulating his own unique system of philosophy. One could say that reading Nietzsche was something of a revelation to Bataille, and profoundly affected his life. In 1915, in a crisis of guilt after leaving his blind father in the hands of the Germans, Bataille converted to Catholicism. It was Nietzsche's work that lead him to abandon traditional religion for an idiosyncratic form of godless mysticism.
In this volume, Bataille becomes, and goes beyond, Nietzsche, assuming Nietzsche's thought where he left off--with God's death. At the heart of this work is Bataille's exploration of how one can have a spiritual life outside religion. On Nietzsche is essentially a journal that brilliantly mixes observations with ruminations in fragments, aphorisms, poems, myths, quotations, and images against the background of World War II and the German occupation. Bataille has a unique way of moving breezily from abstraction to confession, and from theology to eroticism. He skillfully weaves together his own internal experience of anguish with the war and destruction raging outside with arguments against fascist interpretations of Nietzsche and praise for the philosopher as a prophet foretelling "the crude German fate."
With an introduction, "Furiously Nietzschean," by Sylvere Lotringer, an Appendix in which Bataille defends himself against Sartre, and an Index, this volume reconfirms Michel Foucault's assertion that Bataille, "broke with traditional narrative to tell us what has never been told before."
2021, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 13.3 x 19.7 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$45.00 - Out of stock
"Like a wire basket containing rats, attached to the reader's face, Chapman's prose gnaws into you, until you give up resisting his minatory vision—and simply love him." — Will Self
With 2+2=5, George Orwell's flawed masterpiece finally receives a much-needed rectification, as Jake Chapman takes us on a bad trip into an atrocious alt-Eurasia--a nightmare utopia of 24/7 self-expression, mandatory wellbeing, yogic breathing, and promiscuous empathy. Yippie wonks in open-toed sandals have ejected the evil capitalist overlords, compassion and charity reign supreme, buckwheat salad and artisan cashew cheese are in plentiful supply, and all strive to live their best life, all the time.
Employed by the Ministry to rectify misfortunes issuing from a curious glitch in the system, Winston Smith finds that his creative urges are unexpectedly awoken, and he is driven to express his deepest place, voice, and hurt through the medium of poetry. But what connects Winston's furtive scribblings in My Big Book of Me to the unpleasantnesses emanating from the deep glitch? Is Julia really the perfect kooky carefree soulmate she seems to be? Can O'Brien be trusted? And when does the new season of Big Brother start?
An all-you-can-eat quinoa buffet of wrongthink, Chapman's twisted vision is a bracing reminder that dystopia is just wishful thinking, and that the worst can always get worster.
Jake Chapman is a British artist known worldwide for his iconoclastic sculpture, prints and installations. Since their graduation from the Royal College of Art in 1990, he has worked together with his brother Dinos; the Chapmans first received critical acclaim in 1991 for the diorama sculpture Disasters of War, and since then they have exhibited extensively in solo and group shows. In 2015, Jake directed The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, a film based on his first novel of the same title. This book was followed by Memoirs of My Writer's Block and INTROSPASTIC: From the Blackened Beyond.