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:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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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.
1970, English
Softcover (staple bound), 84 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kineticism Press / New York
$180.00 - Out of stock
Issue number one of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche. Featuring Joseph Beuys on cover. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring James Turrell, Keith Arnatt, Douglas Davis, Luis Fernanda Benedit, Paolo Soleri, Isaac Witkin and William Wegman; "Interview: Carl Andre"; "Interview: Jan Dibbets"; "Retrospective: Richard Long"; "Pace and Process," by Robert Morris; "Portrait: Joseph Beuys," by Skunk-Kender; "Body Works," by Willoughby Sharp; "Museums: MOCA, San Francisco"; "Galleries: Reese Palley, San Francisco"; "Discussions with Heizer, Oppenheim, Smithson," by Michael Heizer, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson. Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1972, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 66 pages, 24 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
$160.00 - Out of stock
Issue number five of the legendary New York quarterly periodical Avalanche, published Summer 1972. Cover features Yvonne Rainer. Contents: "Rumbles," featuring Hiro Kosaka, Trisha Brown and Marcel Broodthaers; "Braco Dimitrijevic: Casual Passers-by I Met"; "Direct Demokratie: Joseph Beuys Talking at Documenta 5"; "Structure and Sensibility: An Interview with Jannis Kounellis," by Willoughby Sharp; "Phil Glass: An Interview in Two Parts" by Liza Béar and Willoughby Sharp; "Illustrated Time - Proscenium II," by Keith Sonnier, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris, Richard Landry and Kurt Munkacs; "The Performer as Persona: An Interview with Yvonne Rainer". Edited by Liza Bear, published by Willoughby Sharp, designed by Boris Wall Gruphy.
The short-lived New York based art magazine Avalanche, which existed between 1970 and 1976, captured a sense of its time, but also engaged critically with the relationship between printed matter (books, samizdat, etc.) and artwork. Founded by Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp Avalanche pushed artistic ideas, focusing on new forms of art-making (of it’s day), providing a timely format for art’s movement away from galleries and museums and towards the printed page and emerging discourses surrounding Performance and Land art. The interviews, all conducted by Bear and Sharp, employ a loose but thoughtful approach. Often the articles ran as large as 16 pages. The featured artists were at the time relatively unknown, today they read like a Who’s Who of the avant-garde (in particular as defined by Dia:). The square covers of the early issues feature now iconic portraits of artists; Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci (who had the entire Issue of #6 dedicated to him) and Bruce Nauman.
Featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Bill Beckley, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, Gilbert & George, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Grand Union, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Joel Shapiro, Jack Smith, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, the Western Front and Jackie Winsor.
Very Good copy with tanning and light wear.
1976, English
Hardcover (ring-bound), 86 pages + programme, 2.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Art Gallery of New South Wales / Sydney
$200.00 - In stock -
Beautiful and rare historical catalogue published on the occasion of the 1976 Biennale of Sydney, Recent International Forms in Art, held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Nov 13—Dec 18, 1976. With exceptional uncredited povera design, the catalogue is printed entirely on thick kraft paper and metal ring-bound between thick corrugated cardboard covers. An incredible second year of the Sydney biennale, heavy with international representation of conceptual, Art Povera, environmental, minimal, Mono-ha artists, includes the work of Ant Farm, Giovanni Anselmo, John Armstrong, Robert Arneson, Lynda Benglis, Joseph Beuys, Tony Coleing, Gianni Colombo, John Davis, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Koji Enokura, Robert Grosvenor, Marr Grounds, Noriyuki Haraguchi, Noel Hutchison, Robert Kinmont, Gloria Kisch, Kyubei Kyomizu, Lee U-Fan, John Lethbridge, Les Levine, Loren Madsen, Yutaka Matsuzawa, Michael McMillen, James Melchert, Kevin Mortensen, Clive Murray-White, Tsuneo Nakai, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Fujiko Nakaya, Ti Parks, Giuseppi Penone, Insik Quac, Terry Reid, Ron Robertson-Swann, Fred Sandback, Joel Shapiro, Moon-Seup Shim, Morio Shinoda, Robert Smithson, Stelarc, Kishio Suga, Noboru Takayama, Kakuzo Tatehata, William Tucker, Greer Twiss, Ken Unsworth, William T. Wiley, Gilberto Zorio, and many more... Organised with the guidance of people like John Stringer (New York, previously Australia, managed The Field at the NGV in 1968), Gerald Forty and Ian Barker (UK), Tommaso Trini (Italy), Joseph Love. S.J. (Korea, Japan), Philip Linhares (California), and many more under the direction of Thomas G. Cullough.
This copy includes a folded handbill programme for the Biennale, also on kraft paper and including information on performances, installations, lectures and other public works.
Very Good copy with some wear.
1969, English / French / German / Italian
Softcover binder (w. spring-loaded plate), 170 pages, 31.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
$600.00 - Out of stock
One of the great art documents of the 20th century, the original printing of the legendary catalogue for "Live in Your Head : When Attitudes Become Form", curated by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, March 22 - April 27, 1969. Very rare original 1969 edition!
Sponsored by the Philip Morris tobacco company, this was an important, extensive and primary exhibition dedicated to the amalgam of Pop, Minimal and Conceptual Art in Europe and the United States. The catalogue itself is designed and produced by Szeemann, and printed in Switzerland by Stämpfli & Cie in Bern. Alongside those of Seth Siegelaub, Szeemann's now historical catalogues changed the way exhibition publishing performed. Presented as a indexical binder (spring-bound with a metal plate) forming an index of alphabetical artist pages and accompanying texts. Includes a biography, bibliography, illustrations and portrait for each artist.
Texts by Harald Szeemann, Scott Burton, Grégoire Müller and Tommaso Trini.
Artists include Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Richard Artschwager, Thomas Bang, Jared Bark, Robert Barry, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Marinus Boezem, Bill Bollinger, Michael Buthe, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Paul Cotton, Alighiero Boetti, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Ger Van Elk, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Paolo Icaro, Alain Jacquet, Neil Jenney, Jo Ann Kaplan, Eva Hesse, Edward Kienholz, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jannis Kounellis, Gary B. Kuehn, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Bruce McLean, Walter De Maria, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Paul Pechter, Panamarenko, Michelangelo Pisteletto, Emilio Prini, Markus Raetz, Allen Ruppersberg, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Robert Ryman, Alan Saret, Sarkis, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, Frank Viner, Erhard Walther, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman, William Wiley and Gilberto Zorio.
Texts in English, French, German and Italian.
Light wear and marking to folder covers, internal rubbing from metal plate, previous owners name and "69" to top of inside cover, otherwise very good copy throughout, complete.
1986, English
Softcover, 94 pages, 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art Gallery of South Australia / Adelaide
$45.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue published to accompany the exhibition Wild Visionary Spectral : New German Art, organised by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 28 Feb — 20 April, 1986, before traveling Australia and Wellington, New Zealand in 1986. Profusely illustrated in colour throughout with the works 13 contemporary German artists, including Jörg Immendorff, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Franz Erhard Walther, Georg Baselitz, Joesph Beuys, A. R. Penck, Anslem Kiefer. Includes bios and texts by Ron Radford (on the relationship between German and Australian art), Karl Ruhrberg, and Wolfgang Max Faust.
Good—Very Good copy with some light general wear.
1997, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 830 pages
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$80.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of this monumental 830 page book for documenta X, the last documenta of the twentieth century and the first directed by a woman, the French curator Catherine David, brings together the work of more than 100 of the world's foremost thinkers, writers, and artists in an extraordinary anthology of seminal texts and images of, on, and about the development of Western cultural and critical theory since 1945.
The book "seeks to indicate a political context for the interpretation of artistic activities at the close of the twentieth century, through a montage of images and documents from the immediate post-war period to the present. The range of material treated here is not encyclopaedic; it represents a polemical attempt to isolate specific strands of artistic production and political endeavour which can be taken as references in the contemporary debate over the evolution of our societies. Drawing from distinct yet interrelated territorial and linguistic domains, the book singles out complex cultural responses to the unifying processes of global modernity."—from the book jacket.
A comprehensive work in itself, rich with enmeshed texts and illustrations of artworks, film stills, historical documents throughout in colour and in black and white.
Writers include: Theodor W. Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul Celan, Amílcar Cabral, Masao Miyoshi, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Jacques Rancière, Tadao Sato, Youssef Ishaghpour, Josef Beuys, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rem Koolhaas, Sandra Álvarez de Toledo, Witold Gombrowicz, Herve Joubert-Laurencin, Jean-François Chevrier, Marguerite Duras, Edward Said, Henri Alleg, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Uwe Johnson, Jerzy Grotowski, James Clifford, Primo Levi, Pierre Clastres, Andrea Branzi, Fabrizio Gallanti, Gérard Chaliand, Stig Björkman, Daniel Defert, Saskia Sassen, Catherine David, Benjamin Buchloh, Paul Virilio, Serge Daney, Étienne Balibar, Nadia Tazi, and many others.....
Artists include : Archigram, Martin Kippenberger, Archizoom Associati, Art & Language, Hans Haacke, Oyvind Fahlström, Samuel Beckett, Franz West, Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig, Nancy Spero, Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, Jörg Herold, Fischli & Weiss, Dan Graham, Robert Adams, Peter Friedl, Paweł Althamer, Liam Gillick, Mike Kelley & Tony Oursler & Diedrich Diederichsen, Stan Douglas, Harun Farocki, Ed van der Elsken, Walker Evans, Aldo van Eyck, Heiner Goebbels, William Kentridge, Ulrike Grossarth, Richard Hamilton, Vito Acconci, Raymond Hains, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Siobhán Hapaska, Ecke Bonk, Carsten Höller & Rosemarie Trockel, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Lois Weinberger, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Olaf Nicolai, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Thomas Schütte, Marc Pataut, Gordon Matta-Clark, Christian Philipp Müller, Matt Mullican, Antoni Muntadas, Jean-Luc Moulène, Reinhard Mucha, Álvaro Siza, Toyo Ito, John C. Portman Jr., Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Mariella Mosler, Josef Beuys, Steve McQueen, Chris Marker, Lothar Baumgarten, Jean Dubuffet, Kerry James Marshall, Maria Lassnig, Rem Koolhaas, Joachim Koester, Suzanne Lafont, Sigalit Landau, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Brassaï, Le Corbusier, Antonin Artaud, and so many more...
Very Good coy, light wear. Good dust jacket with some creasing and edge wear.
1969, English / German
Flexible plastic covers, screw-bound in acrylic spine, multiple stocks throughout, approx 500 pages, 28 x 15 cm
3rd enlarged edition,
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
$300.00 - Out of stock
The extraordinary, definitive 1960s art exhibition catalogue, in it's 3rd expanded and corrected edition, designed by Wolf Vostell for the Ludwig collection in Cologne in 1969. A work of art itself, "Kunst der sechziger Jahre" perfectly embodies the materiality of the pop-era in book form. Housed in thick blind-stamped clear soft plastic covers bound in a hard acrylic plexiglass spine with stainless steel screws, this remarkable book opens with an introductory text and lexicon in German and English, printed on styrofoam pages and graph stock, with contributions by Gert von der Osten, Peter Ludwig, Horst Keller, and Evelyn Weiss. Featuring 92 artists, all part of the private collection of Peter Ludwig, each artist is presented with a portrait on transparent acetate followed by a selection of glossy offset-printed colour artworks tipped-in (often concertina fold-out!) on thick raw kraft paper pages. This enlarged 3rd edition features over 200 objects in total, a vast expansion on the first editions.
Featuring the greats of European-American Pop, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Art Informel, Abstraction, Minimalism and more, this mighty tome includes the work of Josef Albers, Carl Andre, Horst Antes, Shusaku Arakawa, Allan D'Arcangelo, Arman, Richard Artschwager, Jo Baer, Larry Bell, Miguel Berrocal, Joseph Beuys, Peter Blake, Gernot Bubenik, Anthony Caro, John Chamberlain, Dan Christensen, Alex Colville, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ronald Davis, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Richard Estes, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Dan Flavin, Lucio Fontana, Domenico Gnoli, Bruno Goller, Robert Graham, Nancy Stevenson Graves, Gunter Haese, Richard Hamilton, Hans Hartung, Erwin Heerich, Eva Hesse, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Allen Jones, Donald Judd, Howard Kantovitz, Ellsworth Kelly, Edward Kienholz, R. B. Kitaj, Konrad Klapheck, Yves Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Linder, Morris Louis, Heinz Mack, Piero Manzoni, Marisol, Malcolm Morley, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Louise Nevelson, Kenneth Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Niki de Saint Phalle, Nicolas Schoffer, Bernhard Schultze, George Segal, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Pierre Soulages, Daniel Spoerri, Lawrence Stafford, Lewis Stein, Frank Stella, Antoni Tapies, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Jean Tinguely, Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly, Gunther Uecker, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), Victor Vasarely, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Wols (Wolfgang Schulze).
A Very Good copy of this fragile and collectible catalogue. The usual bowing to pages, some general ageing, with a split to the lower back of plastic spine where the screw hole is, yet all still intact, nothing missing. Complete copy.
2019, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
Published by
MoMA / New York
$55.00 - Out of stock
The 50th anniversary edition of MoMA's landmark book on conceptual art.
In the summer of 1970, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the now legendary exhibition Information, one of the first surveys of conceptual art. Conceived by MoMA’s celebrated curator Kynaston McShine as an “international report” on contemporary trends, the show and attendant catalog together assembled the work of more than 150 artists from 15 countries to explore the parameters and possibilities of the emerging art practices of the era. Noting the participating artists’ attunement to the “mobility and change that pervades their time,” McShine underscored their interest in “ways of rapidly exchanging ideas, rather than embalming the idea in an ‘object.’” Indeed, much of the work in the exhibition engaged mass-communications systems, such as broadcast television and the postal service, and addressed viewers directly, often encouraging their participation in return.
The catalog, rather than merely document the show, functioned autonomously: it included a list of recommended reading, a chance-based index by critic Lucy Lippard, and individual artist contributions in the form of photographic documentation, textual description, drawings and diagrams—some relating to work in the exhibition and others to artworks as yet unrealized. This facsimile edition of the original Information catalog, which has long been out of print, invites reengagement with MoMA’s landmark exhibition while illuminating the early history of conceptual art.
Kynaston McShine was formerly Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Keith Arnatt, Art & Language Press, Art & Project, Richard Artschwager, David Askevold, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Barrio, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, Bernhard & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, George Brecht, Stig Broegger, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, James Lee Byars, Jorge Luis Carballa, Christopher Cook, Roger Cutforth, Carlos D'Alessio, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Group Frontera, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Giorno Poetry Systems, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Ira Joel Haber, Randy Hardy, Michael Heizer, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Peter Hutchinson, Richards Jarden, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Cildo Campos Meirelles, Marta Minujin, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, New York Graphic Workshop, Newspaper, Group Oho, Helio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Paul Pechter, Giuseppe Penone, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Alejandro Puente, Markus Raetz, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Edward Ruscha, J.M. Sanejouand, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Erik Thygesen, John Van Saun, Guilherme Magalhaes Vaz, Bernar Venet, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson.
2019, English
Softcover (w. flexi-disc), 280 pages, 26 x 21 cm
Ed. of 2500,
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$65.00 - Out of stock
Broken Music is an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and originally published in 1989 by DAAD. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989.
It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.
Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.
Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner.
Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art.
Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.
1970, Dutch
Hardcover, unpaginated, 27.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nederlandse Stichting Openbaar Kunstbezit / Netherlands
$45.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1970 by Dutch art historian and critic Carel Blotkamp (b. 1945), Na de beeldenstorm: drie opstellen over recente beeldende kunst (3 essays on recent visual art) surveys developments in art at the height of one of the most innovative periods in art history, the 1960s. Blotkamp traces the influence of historical avant gardes (Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, Duchamp...) into new abstraction, hard-edge, Color Field, Minimalism, Pop, Op Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Art Povera, Land Art, et al. Illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with fine examples of work by Barnett Newman, Josef Albers, Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg, Daan Van Golden, Richard Serra, Kenneth Nolan, Morris Louis, Jo Baer, Frank Stella, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Walter de Maria, Yves Klein, Robert Morris, Bridget Riley, Jasper Johns, Lawrence Weiner, Jan Dibbets, Armando, Panamarenko, Joseph Beuys, Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, Larry Poons, Barry Flanagan, JCJ Vanderheyden, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Martial Raysse, Richard Long, Wim T. Schippers, Marcel Duchamp, Michael Heizer, Ger van Elk, Mario Merz, Carl Andre, Pieter Engels, Andy Warhol, Edward Rushca, Jesús Rafael Soto, Peter Struycken, and many more...
Very Good copy without dust jacket (as issued), light tanning/wear to glossy, foiled boards.
2019, English
Softcover, 184 Pages, 12 x 19 cm
Published by
New Documents / Los Angeles
$36.00 - Out of stock
The Halifax Conference presents a transcript of a conference held at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design on October 5–6, 1970, transcribed and adapted by artist Craig Leonard. Organized by Seth Siegelaub, the Conference was conceived as a means of bringing about a “meeting of artists…[from] diverse art making experiences and art positions…in as general a situation as possible.” Infamously, the conference was held in the college’s boardroom, while students and other interested parties watched the proceedings on a video monitor in a separate space. The result was a conversation that devolved—technologically and ideologically—into a quasi-tragicomic farce, punctuated by remarkable moments of rupture initiated by activist resistance to the Conference from the outside and dissenting voices from within. Attendees at the Conference included Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Ronald Bladen, Daniel Buren, Gene Davis, Jan Dibbets, Al Held, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Murray, N.E.Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter), Richard Serra, Richard Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner.
Edited by Jeff Khonsary
2012, English
Hardcover, 304 pages, 216 x 254 mm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Lucy R. Lippard's famous book, itself resembling an exhibition, is now brought full circle in an exhibition (and catalog) resembling her book.
“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized.’” — Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. Nearly forty years later, the Brooklyn Museum takes Lippard’s celebrated experiment in curated concatenation as a template, turning a book that resembled an exhibition into an exhibition materializing the ideas in her book.
The artworks and essays featured in this publication recall the thrill that was tangible in Lippard's original documentation, reminding us that during the late sixties and early seventies all possible social and material parameters of art (making) were played with, worked over, inverted, reduced, expanded, and rejected. By tracing Lippard’s own activities in those years, the book also documents the early blurring of boundaries among critical, curatorial, and artistic practices.
With more than 200 images of work by dozens of artists (printed in color throughout), this book brings Lippard’s curatorial experiment full circle.
Edited by Catherine Morris and Vincent Bonin
Published on the occasion of the exhibition The Six Years' Project: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012-February 3, 2013, organized by Catherine Morris, Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center at the Brooklyn Museum, and the independent scholar Vincent Bonin.
1973, German
Softcover, 138 pages, 24 x 16.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum / Cologne
$40.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue published by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Köln, in 1973 to document the museums extensive collection of international contemporary sculpture. Profusely illustrated in black and white with the works of Jean Arp, Paul Thek, Nancy Graves, John Chamberlain, Larry Bell, Carl Andre, Christo, Eva Hesse, Joachim Bandau, Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Nevelson, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, Germaine Richier, Schöffer, Bernard Schultze, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Ursula (Schultze-Bluhm), John Tweed, Franz Erhard Walther, Hanns Gasser, Merdardo Rosso, Joseph Beuys, Günter Haese, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Jesús Rafael Soto, Richard Tuttle, Helmut Moos, Bruce Nauman, Ansgar Nierhoff, Jim Dine, Gary Indiana, Karl Zeno Rudolf Schadow, Julio Le Parc, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, G. F. Ris, George Segal, Nicolas Schöffer, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi, Jean Tinguely, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Arman, Claes Oldenburg, Marisol Escobar, Niki Saint-Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Günther Uecker, Heinz Mack, Wolf Vostell, Miguel Ortiz Berrocal, Pol Bury, Erwin Heerich, Horst-Egon Kalinowski, Brigitte Meier-Denninghoff, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Honoré Daumier, Gasser, Adolf von Hildebrand, Max Klinger, Rosso, Aristide Maillol, Tweed, Julio González, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, and many more... Texts in German.
Very Good copy.
2019, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$58.00 - Out of stock
Conceptual Art in a Curatorial Perspective: Between Dematerialization and Documentation focuses on the curatorial practice of exhibiting conceptual art. The fact that conceptual works are not object-based, creates challenges in exhibiting or re-exhibiting them. This book offers various perspectives on how to handle conceptual art in the context of the museum, based on three detailed case studies and an extensive introduction in which the paradox of conceptual art is analyzed. It also elaborates on the history of exhibiting conceptual artworks, and on the influence of curators in their canonization.
The aim of the book is not to offer clear-cut practical solutions, but to raise awareness of the issue and the different ways of dealing with it within the traditional curatorial field. It is relevant for students of art and culture (particularly in museum and curatorial studies), art and museum professionals, and everyone interested in the art of the 1960s and 1970s.
Nathalie Zonnenberg is an art historian and curator. She holds a PhD in Art History from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam (NL). Zonnenberg regularly writes on contemporary art, and she lectures at the post-graduate Curatorial Studies programme at KASK/the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (BE).
2020, English
Softcover, 350 pages, 15 x 23 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$50.00 - In stock -
Exploring the relationship between art and pop music over the last fifty years.
Why did Andy Warhol decide to enter the music business by producing the Velvet Underground, and what did the band expect to gain in return? What made Yoko Ono use the skills she developed in the artistic avant-garde in pop music, and what drew John Lennon, in turn, to visual art? Why, in 1982, did Joseph Beuys record the pop single “Sonne statt Reagan,” and why, around the same time did, West German artists such as Michaela Melián move into pop music?
In Double Lives in Art and Pop Music, Jörg Heiser argues that context shifting between art and pop music is an attempt to find solutions for contradictions faced in one field of cultural production. Heiser looks closely at the careers of artists and pop musicians who work in both fields professionally. The seeming acceptance and effortlessness today of current border crossings can be deceptive, since they might be serving vested economic or ideological interests. Exploring a pop and art history of more than fifty years, Heiser shows that those leading double lives in art and pop music may often be best able to detect these vested interests while he points toward radical alternatives.
2015, English / German
Softcover, 288 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$85.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Texts by Alain Badiou, Karen Barad, Gregory Bateson, Bruce Chatwin, Gilles Deleuze, John Dewey, John Dupré, Sergei Eisenstein, Félix Guattari, Donna Haraway, Alexandre Kojève, Osip Mandelstam, Cord Riechelmann
The question of life has always been one of modernity’s main preoccupations, but it was the advent of the camera—with its ability to record moving creatures—that initiated a new phase in the human investigation of animal behavior. In the world of contemporary art, animals now occupy center stage. Artworks such as Joseph Beuys’s I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), a weeklong performance in New York during which the artist lived with a coyote, and Rosemarie Trockel and Carsten Höller’s Haus für Schweine und Menschen at documenta X (1997), demonstrate the idea that culture, self-consciousness, and language do not exclusively belong to man. Drawing on key texts by Sergei Eisenstein, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Donna Haraway, and analyzing works by Pierre Huyghe, Christoph Keller, and Helen Marten, this volume brings together theory and art, showing how both turned to animals to find new ways of problematizing “life.”
The Jahresring series is edited by Brigitte Oetker and published on behalf of Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V.
Design by Surface
2015, English
Hardcover, 200 pages, 13 x 20 cm
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$52.00 - Out of stock
Primary Information reprint of the seminal book, Fantastic Architecture, first published in 1969 by Droste Verlag in German (with the title Pop Architektur) and later in 1970 by Something Else Press as Fantastic Architecture. Edited by Dick Higgins and Wolf Vostell, this artist’s book/anthology explores the boundaries between pop art and architecture through writings and projects by key artists and thinkers of the 1960s and earlier—from John Cage and Buckminster Fuller to Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Beuys. It will retain the book’s unique design, specifically its Mylar inserts, which add unique depth and elaborate the publication’s content.
Contributors to this publication are Ay-O, Joseph Beuys, Erich Buchholz, Pol Bury, John Cage, Philip Corner, Jan Dibbets, Robert Filliou, Buckminster Fuller, Geoffrey Hendricks, Richard Hamilton, Raoul Hausmann, Michael Heizer, Jan Jacob Herman, Bici Hendricks, Dick Higgins, K.H. Hoedicke, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Milan Knizak, Alison Knowles, Addi Koepcke, Franz Mon, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, GerhardRühm, Diter Rot, Carolee Schneemann, Kurt Schwitters, Daniel Spoerri, Frances Starr, Jean Tinguely, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell, Lawrence Weiner, Stefan Wewerka.
2005, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 15.9 x 24.8cm
Published by
Anthroposophic Press / UK
$56.00 - Out of stock
This book introduces a new way for thinking about, creating, and viewing art. Rudolf Steiner saw his task as the renewal of the lost unity of science, the arts, and religion; thus, he created a new, cognitive scientific and religious art in anthroposophy. The implications of his act--recognized by such diverse artists as Wassily Kandinsky and Joseph Beuys--are only now coming fully to light.
In his thorough introduction of more than a hundred pages, Michael Howard takes readers through these thought-provoking chapters:
Is Art Dead?; To Muse or Amuse; Artistic Activity as Spiritual Activity; The Representative of Humanity; Beauty, Creativity, and Metamorphosis; New Directions in Art
Rudolf Steiner's Lectures :The Aesthetics of Goethe's Worldview; The Spiritual Being of Art; Buildings Will Speak; The Sense Organs and Aesthetic Experience; The Two Sources of Art; The Building at Dornach; The Supersensible Origin of the Arts; Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; Christ, Ahriman, and Lucifer
2013, English
Paperback, 92 pages, 15.2 x 22.9
Published by
Temple Lodge / Forest Row
$59.00 - In stock -
Freedom for the spiritual-cultural life, equality and democracy for human rights, initiative and solidarity for the economic sphere! Revolutions happen when society does not change and evolve. Stagnation and resistance create a situation in which a leap in development is required. In nature, living organisms suffering from inner blockages must heal or die. The same applies to the social organism--society--which occasionally requires drastic change to avoid complete collapse or violent revolution. With his often repeated phrase 'We are the Revolution!', the artist and social activist Joseph Beuys was intimating that true transformation develops from within, in an artistic or creative way. People are the source of metamorphosis in the social realm. But in modern times a "we" is also required--an agreement with others. The individual connects with fellow human beings, in active cooperation, as a solid foundation for healthy forms of coexistence.
In a series of clear and insightful essays, Ulrich Rösch builds on the "threefold" social thinking of Rudolf Steiner, Joseph Beuys and others, presenting ideas for change in the context of twenty-first-century life. Our world has become unified through the global division of labor and interdependence, which calls for fresh thinking and rejuvenated social forms. Rösch compares the spirituality and social action of Mahatma Gandhi and Rudolf Steiner; takes the living example of a biodynamic farm as a social organism; and studies the tangible situation of the production and worldwide sale of bananas as a symptom of inequitable commerce.
2013, English
Hardcover, 184 pages, 19 x 24 cm
Published by
Spurbuchverlag / Germany
$40.00 - In stock -
Few people are indifferent to Joseph Beuys and Rudolf Steiner - although it is decades since their death. One is a political clown and artistic agitator, the other an eccentric and esoteric philosopher. This is a judgement that many people still hold fast. Death Keeps Me Awake does not only show the intimate connection between Joseph Beuys' and Rudolf Steiner's thought. It also reveals the internal consistency and depth of their thinking, their determination and seriousness, and this, despite all the humour apparent in many of their works and statements. This book shows clearly that they attempt nothing less than to change the world.
2010, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 13.8 x 21.6 cm
Published by
Clairview Books / Forest Row
$28.00 - Out of stock
'If we want to achieve a different society where the principle of money operates equitably, if we want to abolish the power money has developed over people historically, and position money in relationship to freedom, equality and fraternity ...then we must elaborate a concept of culture and a concept of art where every person must be an artist...' - Joseph Beuys. The world of finance exerts a huge influence over our lives, being responsible for economic turmoil and seemingly interminable peaks and crashes. Whereas money was once a simple means of exchange, today it is a commodity in itself and as 'capital' exerts power over individuals, degrading work to tradable labour. Can we find a new way of understanding money today, so that we can begin to overcome its destructive aspects? In November 1984, a remarkable discussion took place at the Meeting House in Ulm, Germany. It featured the radical artist Joseph Beuys, two professors (of Financial Sciences and Political Economics) and a banker. Beuys would appear to be out of place among these heavyweight academics, professionals and authors.
But rather than being intimidated by his fellow panellists, Beuys - also a social and political activist - demonstrates his groundbreaking thinking on the subject, and his ability to bring fresh perspectives. Here for the first time is a transcript of this debate, together with analysis by Ulrich Rosch, which will be of equal interest to artists, economists and spiritual seekers.
2007, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 19 x 25 cm
Published by
Clairview Books / Forest Row
$43.00 - In stock -
Joseph Beuys' work continues to influence and inspire practitioners and thinkers all over the world, in areas from organisational learning, direct democracy and new money forms to new art pedagogies and ecological art practices. Here, in dialogue with Volker Harlan - a close colleague, whose own work also revolves around understandings of substance and sacrament that are central to Beuys - the deeper motivations and insights underlying 'social sculpture', Beuys' expanded conception of art, are illuminated. His profound reflections, complemented with insightful essays by Volker Harlan, give a sense of the interconnectedness between all life forms, and the foundations of a path towards an ecologically sustainable future.
1974 / 2001, German / English
Offset printed poster + English translation (41.5 x 29 cm + photocopy)
Published by
VG Bild-Kunst / Bonn
$30.00 - In stock -
Poster of Joseph Beuys' 1974 "Unbetitelt" (evolution drawing), printed in Germany in this offset edition in 2001 by VG Bild-Kunst in Bonn. This special edition comes with a photocopied English translation to accompany the original German-language work, courtesy of the Joseph Beuys Cafe, Melbourne.
Joseph Beuys sought the opportunity to make his evolutionary ideas comprehensible in a “parallel process” of exhibiting his work on the one hand and lecturing, discussing, and talking on the other. He thereby often accompanied his oral presentations with drawings and notes that he drew on blackboards or on sketch sheets. Here word and image (or character) complemented each other in such a way that they supported and explained each other and thereby became a unity that created a new type of work. The many diagram-like drawings that were created in this way essentially have – in terms of content – four directions, which often appear together with different emphasis: evolution of the earth, of the kingdoms of nature, of the human being and of the societal forms; "plastic theory"; the threefold social organism; information processes between the respective 'sender' and 'receiver'
The original drawing was sketched quietly at his home in pencil on paper measuring 42 × 29.7 cm and was signed on the back: 1.7.1974 for Volker Harlan. The drawing represents in a particularly aesthetic way the type of work that Beuys called the “work result from a cultural revolutionary activity”. Because this drawing primarily develops the aspect of evolution, it has been called 'evolution' (drawing) since its first publication in 1974 – although it was not titled by Beuys himself. (excerpt from an essay: The Threefold Social Order as a World-Principle by Volker Harlen)
Dimensions : 41.5 x 29 cm
As New.
2003, English
Softcover, 632 pages, 17.8 x 22.9 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
October Books / New York
$130.00 - In stock -
Eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years, each looking at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions.
Some critics view the postwar avant-garde as the empty recycling of forms and strategies from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Others view it, more positively, as a new articulation of the specific conditions of cultural production in the postwar period. Benjamin Buchloh, one of the most insightful art critics and theoreticians of recent decades, argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.This collection contains eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years. Each looks at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions. The art movements covered include Nouveau Realisme in France (Arman, Yves Klein, Jacques de la Villegle) art in postwar Germany (Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter), American Fluxus and pop art (Robert Watts and Andy Warhol), minimalism and postminimal art (Michael Asher and Richard Serra), and European and American conceptual art (Daniel Buren, Dan Graham). Buchloh addresses some artists in terms of their oppositional approaches to language and painting, for example, Nancy Spero and Lawrence Weiner. About others, he asks more general questions concerning the development of models of institutional critique (Hans Haacke) and the theorization of the museum (Marcel Broodthaers); or he addresses the formation of historical memory in postconceptual art (James Coleman). One of the book's strengths is its systematic, interconnected account of the key issues of American and European artistic practice during two decades of postwar art. Another is Buchloh's method, which integrates formalist and socio-historical approaches specific to each subject.