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.
1981, Spanish
Softcover, 104 pages, 17 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editorial Garsi / Madrid
$70.00 - In stock -
Very rare copy of UNA MUSICA PARA LOS 80 by Spanish experimental composer, poet and art critic Javier Maderuelo (b. 1950), published in 1981 in Madrid by Editorial Garsi. This essential compact chronicle was written by Maderuelo to introduce the phenomenon of so-called contemporary music in Spain (electroacoustic, musique concrète, experimental, ambient, sound art, et al.) and analyse the varied positions of its leading protagonists, such as the Zaj group, Suso Sáiz, Eduardo Polonio, Llorenç Balsach, Amadeu Marin, Llorenç Barber, Carles Santos, José Iges, Antoni Caimari, Pedro Estevan, Josep Lluís Berenguer Moreno, Javier Maderuelo (himself a member of studio Alea between 1973-1977 and the musical movement Elenfante), amongst others. With critical overviews, profiles, discographies, bibliographies, chronologies of exhibitions and concerts, this is indeed a vital document on Spanish avant-garde sound c. 1970—1981.
Javier Maderuelo (Madrid, 1950) became interested in experimental poetry and art in 1972 under the influence of Fernando Millán, José Luis Castillejo and Felipe Boso, as well as artists like Elena Asins, Juan Hidalgo and Javier Aguirre, with whom he collaborated. He began producing typewritten poems and collages with texts extracted from newspapers, which converge in the unpublished book Arte Cisoria (1981). Felipe Boso introduced him to the world of phonetic poetry and with Pedro Estevan and María Villa he cofounded the Glotis Group (1979), dedicated to disseminating both the work of avant-garde poets, as well as neo-avant-garde works, some of them expressly written for Glotis. As a composer, he worked at the electronic music studio Alea (1973-1977) and was part of the musical movement Elenfante. He was a member of the Seminar of Analysis and Automatic Generation of Musical Forms, run by Florentino Briones, collaborating on the SIMO concerts. At the end of the eighties he abandoned poetic and musical creation to devote himself to an academic career.
Very Good copy with cover wrap cleanly disconnected from book block (old glue), tanned spine, otherwise VG throughout.
1985—1997, Japanese
6 softcover books (w. dust jackets), 200 pages ea., 18.5 x 13 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
World Comics / Japan
$300.00 - In stock -
Rare lot of six early hentai manga books by underground Japanese erotic illustrator "El Bondage" (Miki Makimura), published by World Comics in Japan. An incredible collection of this little known in the West doujinshi master of the 1980s and forerunner to Kondom and his Bondage Fairies, featuring a huge collection of his best stories and galleries of truely demented, obsessively ink-rendered, sadomasochistic cartoon fantasies in his wild graphic technique. Worlds of endless woodgrain, rope and rubber, nobody is safe from El Bondage's madness and wicked sense of humour. There are even galleries of everyone's favourite manga and anime icons of the 1980's gagged and bound as you've never seen them before! A romp of total indecency and perverse imagination. Published by the same imprint as Bondage Fairies, each book is packed with maniac drawings, around 200 pages long, with original colour dust jackets. Lot includes: Bondage Zone (1985); Bondage Wars (1986); Yuri's Last Moments (1986); Another Bondage (1986); King of Laughter (1986); Silent Bondage (1997).
All VG—Near Fine copies, light tanning.
1987, Japanese / English
Softcover, 94 pages, 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fiction Inc. / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
Stunning special edition of the great SALE2 periodical from Tokyo Japan, dedicated entirely to the work of fetish artist and publisher John Willie. This over-sized September 1987, no. 32, volume is profusely illustrated throughout with Willie's comic strips, photography, sketches, and his letters and writings, including fold-out photographic spreads. Perfectly compiled in the way SALE2 did so well, with elegant scrapbook style, dense with imagery, blown-up, full-bleed reproductions from many publications, alongside beautifully reproduced sequences and documents and first-time translations into Japanese. Littered with great Japanese adverts from the 1980s underground fetish scene too.
John Alexander Scott Coutts (1902 – 1962), better known by the pseudonym John Willie, was the artist, fetish photographer, editor, and publisher of the cult fetish magazine Bizarre. Born to a British family in Singapore, Coutts moved to Brisbane, Australia, in 1926, where he was introduced to the print media of a community of "shoe lovers" and fellow fetishists when he joined the High Heel Club. In Australia met his second wife, Holly Anna Faram, who shared an interest in bondage and high heels and became his muse and model. Through the club's mailing list, Willie was able to begin producing and selling his own illustrations and photography whilst working odd jobs, eventually establishing a company to produce exotic footwear, called "Achilles". In 1945, Willie moved to North America, while Holly chose to remain in Australia. First settling in Canada, it was here that he established his legendary Bizarre magazine, which ran from 1946 to 1959, introducing Willie to America's fetish underground. Willie is best known for his bondage comic strips, specifically "Sweet Gwendoline", which he drew in a distinct, now iconic style that influenced later artists such as Gene Bilbrew and Eric Stanton. Though distributed underground, Bizarre magazine and Willie's erotic art had a far-reaching impact on later fetish-themed publications and artists and experienced a resurgence in popularity, along with fetish model Bettie Page, beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, resonating to the current day.
Published regularly as a sort-of fanzine/journal/catalogue/pocket-book by Fiction, Inc., a specialty shop and publisher of fetish and erotica in Tokyo in the 1980-90s. Each issue covers different themes and features, heavy on fetishism.
Very Good copy, with some light wear to cover, inc. one crease to cover corner.
2000, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 24 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Argo / Prague
$190.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the most comprehensive English-language monograph ever published on Czech Surrealist Toyen (Marie Cerninova; 1902-1980). Published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition in the Prague City Gallery, this exhaustive 400 page hardcover volume is profusely illustrated with around 480 of Toyen's works, many undocumented elsewhere, alongside contemporary specialist studies on her work, with major contributions by Czech art historian and curator Karel Srp, Radovan Ivsic, Karolina Vocadlo, and Marie Cerminova. Highly recommended.
Marie Čermínová (1902 – 1980), known as Toyen, was a Czech painter, drafter and illustrator and a member of the Surrealist movement. Born in Smíchov, Bohemia, she left home at the age of 16 and worked at a soap factory in Zizkov while putting himself through school. She worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský, both joining and exhibiting with the Devětsil group in 1923. In the 1920s they travelled to Paris and founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism, returning to Prague in 1928. Toyen's sketches, book illustrations, and paintings were frequently erotic, illustrating the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" under Štyrský's publishing imprint, Edice 69, as well as contributing many erotic sketches to Štyrský's Eroticka Revue (1930–33), published on strict subscription terms with a circulation of 150 copies. Toyen and Štyrský gradually grew more interested in Surrealism. After their associates Vítězslav Nezval and Jindřich Honzl met André Breton in Paris, they founded the Czech Surrealist Group along with other artists, writers, film makers and the composer Jaroslav Ježek. Toyen was one of the few female Surrealists, along with Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington and a handful of others. While Cahun examined the fluidity of gender roles, Toyen dispensed with gender altogether. Toyen often dressed in men's clothing and preferred masculine pronouns, choosing a non-conformist position when it came to gender and sexuality, themes heavily mined in Surrealist art. Forced underground during the Nazi occupation and Second World War, he sheltered his second artistic partner, Jindřich Heisler, a poet of Jewish descent who had joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938. The two relocated to Paris in 1947, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. In Paris, they worked with André Breton, Benjamin Péret, and other members of the surrealist movement.
Very Good copy in Good-Very Good dust jacket (small tear to bottom-left corner).
1974, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 31 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Filipacchi / Paris
$100.00 - Out of stock
First hardcover edition of the first major Toyen monograph, published by Editions Filipacchi Paris, in 1974. Profusely illustrated throughout with Toyen's surrealist paintings, drawings, collages and publications in colour and b/w, this volume collects a beautiful cross-section of works by the great Czech transgender surrealist, alongside a text in French, a biography of the artist, and photographic portrait by Man Ray.
Marie Čermínová (1902 – 1980), known as Toyen, was a Czech painter, drafter and illustrator and a member of the Surrealist movement. Born in Smíchov, Bohemia, she left home at the age of 16 and worked at a soap factory in Zizkov while putting himself through school. She worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský, both joining and exhibiting with the Devětsil group in 1923. In the 1920s they travelled to Paris and founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism, returning to Prague in 1928. Toyen's sketches, book illustrations, and paintings were frequently erotic, illustrating the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" under Štyrský's publishing imprint, Edice 69, as well as contributing many erotic sketches to Štyrský's Eroticka Revue (1930–33), published on strict subscription terms with a circulation of 150 copies. Toyen and Štyrský gradually grew more interested in Surrealism. After their associates Vítězslav Nezval and Jindřich Honzl met André Breton in Paris, they founded the Czech Surrealist Group along with other artists, writers, film makers and the composer Jaroslav Ježek. Toyen was one of the few female Surrealists, along with Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington and a handful of others. While Cahun examined the fluidity of gender roles, Toyen dispensed with gender altogether. Toyen often dressed in men's clothing and preferred masculine pronouns, choosing a non-conformist position when it came to gender and sexuality, themes heavily mined in Surrealist art. Forced underground during the Nazi occupation and Second World War, he sheltered his second artistic partner, Jindřich Heisler, a poet of Jewish descent who had joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938. The two relocated to Paris in 1947, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. In Paris, they worked with André Breton, Benjamin Péret, and other members of the surrealist movement.
Very Good copy with Good dust jacket preserved under plastic wrap.
2002, French
Softcover, 264 pages, 23.5 cm x 27.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Artha / Saint Etienne
$200.00 - In stock -
First edition of Une Femme Surrealiste — one of the finest reference volumes ever published on the great Czech transgender surrealist Toyen (1902—1980). Edited by noted Toyen authority and exhibition curator Karel Srp, this lavishly illustrated catalogue was published on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition held June 20 —Sep 30, 2002 at the Musee d'Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, France. Photo illustrated chronology and extensive catalogue of artworks in colour and b/w (149 works — paintings, drawings, lithographs, collages.....) Texts in French.
Marie Čermínová (1902 – 1980), known as Toyen, was a Czech painter, drafter and illustrator and a member of the Surrealist movement. Born in Smíchov, Bohemia, she left home at the age of 16 and worked at a soap factory in Zizkov while putting himself through school. She worked closely with fellow Surrealist poet and artist Jindřich Štyrský, both joining and exhibiting with the Devětsil group in 1923. In the 1920s they travelled to Paris and founded an artistic alternative to Abstraction and Surrealism, which they dubbed Artificialism, returning to Prague in 1928. Toyen's sketches, book illustrations, and paintings were frequently erotic, illustrating the Marquis de Sade's "Justine" under Štyrský's publishing imprint, Edice 69, as well as contributing many erotic sketches to Štyrský's Eroticka Revue (1930–33), published on strict subscription terms with a circulation of 150 copies. Toyen and Štyrský gradually grew more interested in Surrealism. After their associates Vítězslav Nezval and Jindřich Honzl met André Breton in Paris, they founded the Czech Surrealist Group along with other artists, writers, film makers and the composer Jaroslav Ježek. Toyen was one of the few female Surrealists, along with Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington and a handful of others. While Cahun examined the fluidity of gender roles, Toyen dispensed with gender altogether. Toyen often dressed in men's clothing and preferred masculine pronouns, choosing a non-conformist position when it came to gender and sexuality, themes heavily mined in Surrealist art. Forced underground during the Nazi occupation and Second World War, he sheltered his second artistic partner, Jindřich Heisler, a poet of Jewish descent who had joined the Czech Surrealist Group in 1938. The two relocated to Paris in 1947, before the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948. In Paris, they worked with André Breton, Benjamin Péret, and other members of the surrealist movement.
Good copy with knock to bottom spine corner, light age wear.
1969, Japanese
Softcover, 218 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$45.00 - Out of stock
Erotica September 1969, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica September 1969 is themed "The Situation of Eros".
Good copy, wear/age.
1970, Japanese
Softcover, 250 pages, 21 x 14.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Misaki Shobo / Tokyo
$30.00 - Out of stock
Erotica December 1970, Japan's erotic magazine for bibliophiles, published in the 1960s—1970s by Misaki Bookstore. Each issue densely packed with illustrations, articles, news, and feature stories around the universe of Eros from around the world during a time of great sexual revolution. Covering all manner of sexual customs and subject matter from the arts and literature, film and manga, philosophy and radical politics, Erotica was Japan's leading erotic academic journal, featuring, amongst it's heavy historical and contemporary papers, the cutting-edge of Japanese and international erotic artists, from Hans Bellmer to Toshio Saeki.
Erotica December 1970 is themed "The Eros of Theatre: The Aesthetics of Voluptuousness".
Good copy, light wear/age.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket and obi strip),
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Shincho Sha / Tokyo
$120.00 - In stock -
First 1994 edition of Hair by Kishin Shinoyama, his glossy full-colour photo collection of elegant nudes where the focal point is women's pubic hair, the forbidden fruit of Japanese censorship laws.
Kishin Shinoyama was born in Tokyo in 1940. He began shooting award-winning advertising photography while still a student at Nihon University. After several years with the advertising agency Light Publicity, Shinoyama began working as an independent photographer in 1968. In the decades since, he has taken portraits of some of the most recognized people of our time, including Yukio Mishima, Momoe Yamaguchi, Rie Miyazawa, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In his Gekisha and Shinorama series, Shinoyama has used the latest technologies to create new modes of expression. His recent digital multimedia project digi KISHIN brings a new perspective to both photography and cinema He has dedicated his practice to exploring intimacy and the human body, as well as documenting his home place of Tokyo. His sensual photographs often depict the body within the architecture of the city or conversely, the inherent sculptural qualities of the naked human form.
Near Fine copy with good obi strip.
1983, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 48 pages, 21 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Art Space Bibudju / Japan
Edition Mibuduki / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare Japanese book of the illustrated works by the great Czech transgender surrealist Toyen (1902—1980), issued in Japan in 1983, limited to 1000 copies, each hand-numbered. Wrapped in gold foil covers with bottle green obi-strip, this lovely publication reproduces Toyen's illustrations for the books Débris Des Rêves and Le puits dans la tour by Toyen and radical Croatian author Radovan Ivšić's Le Puits Dans La Tour & Débris Des Rêves, and her illustrations for La Forêt Sacrilège by French poet and artist Jean-Pierre Duprey, accompanied by essays by Japanese author Kunio Iwaya and André Breton, from the original French translated to Japanese. Also includes a chronology of Toyen. Texts in Japanese.
Good copy with tanning and some wear to foiled covers/obi.
2023, English
Hardcover, 240 pages, 22.3 x 27.3 cm
Published by
Princeton University Press / New York
$70.00 - In stock -
A richly illustrated exploration of Mina Loy's art and writings.
Mina Loy (1882-1966) was one of the most iconoclastic figures in modernism. A groundbreaking poet, she also left an indelible mark in painting, drawing, prose, art criticism and fashion. This book is the first to examine the full scope of her extraordinary career, demonstrating Loy's transformative impact on the visual arts as well as the literary avant-garde of the twentieth century. Presenting dozens of Loy's paintings, drawings and constructions alongside selections of her poems and writings, this book gives a comprehensive overview of the complex images and objects Loy created and situates them in the larger context of her life and work. It explores Loy's pursuit of truth and beauty, arguing that her engagement with the emphatically "unbeautiful" materials of the Bowery - such as rags and bottle caps - reflects her questioning of truth.
The book positions Loy within the broader context of surrealist art; sheds light on her relationships with influential figures such as Gertrude Stein, Marcel Duchamp and Wyndham Lewis; and addresses Loy's enduring relevance today. Featuring rare and previously unpublished artworks, Mina Loy: Strangeness Is Inevitable reveals this visionary artist's extraordinary contributions as an image-maker, writer, and cultural arbiter, introducing her work to a new generation of readers and charting new directions in art history, women's studies, poetry, and modernist studies.
Published in association with the Bowdoin College Museum of Art Exhibition Schedule Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine April 6 September 17, 2023
2024, English
Softcover, 200 pages, 23 x 17 cm
Published by
Scheidegger und Spiess / Zürich
$90.00 - In stock -
A groundbreaking, richly illustrated book on Hannah Höch’s montages in the context of film and the visual culture of Modernism. Sheds light for the first time on Hannah Höch’s significance as a pioneering artist to confront the industrial age’s flood of images.
Hannah Höch (1889-1978) moved between differing worlds: as an editorial assistant with a major Berlin-based magazine publisher, and as the only woman who could hold her own in the German capital's vibrant Dada scene of the 1920s. Her works dissected a world marked by the catastrophe of the Great War and an intense consumer culture, and reassembled it in revolutionary, poetic, and often ironic ways. Scissors and glue were the weapons of her art of montage, of which she was a coinventor.
Cutting and montage also shaped film, still a new medium in the 1920s, which strongly influenced Höch's art: she understood her assembled pictures as static films. This richly illustrated and expertly annotated book explores comprehensively for the first time Höch's life-long fascination with film and the visual culture of the modern industrial age. Covering her entire career, It demonstrates how montage evolved in a field of tension between artistic experimentation, commercial exploitation, and political appropriation. A text on photomontage by Höch, written in 1948, and a text-collage on the history of montage, in which major protagonists of Modernism and Avant-garde have their say, round out this volume.
Contributors:
Martin Waldmeier is a curator at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Nina Zimmer is director of the Kunstmuseum Bern and its affiliate Zentrum Paul Klee.
1982, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 96 pages, 30 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hama Shobo / Tokyo
$600.00 - Out of stock
Very rare first controversial photo book by Japanese photographer Ikko Kagari, published in 1982 in Tokyo. Kagari made a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, featuring secret "close-up photography" documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places — groping and upskirt photographs taken on packed Tokyo Metro commuter trains, in nightclubs, on escalators, couples making it in public toilets, parked cars and in parks with infrared strobe techniques reminiscent of Kohei Yoshiyuki's incredible Document Park (the two often featured side-by-side in books and journals). Document Commuter Train is his cult highly sought-after "masterpiece", made most collectible in the West through it's feature in Parr & Badger's "The Photobook: Vol. III". Document Commuter Train is a beautifully produced photo book entirely made up of the infamous rush hour train carriage photography. Cover-to-cover b/w reproductions of Kagari's grainy, blown-out infrared images that blur all lines between voyeur/participant and simulated/real, make for disorientating, sometimes claustrophobic, uneasy viewing. But they are also absolutely stunning, effective photo books that feel as conceptual as they do devious. Kagari's fleeting in flagrante scenes capture erotic desire and criminal impulse engulfed by the soft folds of entangled garment fabrics with stunning technique. He went so far as to publish a how-to book for amateurs! Thankfully the 2000s saw the introduction of women-only carriages on the Tokyo Metro, relegating such expertise to history.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket.
1994, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 29.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Heart Deluxe / Tokyo
Outo Shobo / Tokyo
$400.00 - Out of stock
Very rare photo book by Japanese photographer Ikko Kagari, published in 1994 in Tokyo. Kagari made a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, featuring secret "close-up photography" documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places — groping and upskirt photographs taken on packed Tokyo Metro commuter trains, in nightclubs, on escalators, couples making it in public toilets, parked cars and in parks with infrared strobe techniques reminiscent of Kohei Yoshiyuki's incredible Document Park *the two often featured side-by-side in books and journals). Chikan Rush (Molester Rush) is entirely made up of the infamous rush hour train carriage photography, and has become one of the most sought after. Cover-to-cover b/w reproductions of Kagari's grainy, blown-out infrared images that blur all lines between voyeur/participant and simulated/real, make for disorientating, sometimes claustrophobic, uneasy viewing. But they are also absolutely stunning, effective photo books that feel as conceptual as they do devious. Including many selections from Kagari's "Document Commuter Train" (1982), as featured in The Photobook: Vol. III, by Parr & Badger, Kagari's fleeting in flagrante scenes capture erotic desire and criminal impulse engulfed by the soft folds of entangled garment fabrics with stunning technique. He went so far as to publish a how-to book for amateurs! Thankfully the 2000s saw the introduction of women-only carriages on the Tokyo Metro, relegating such expertise to history.
NF copy with VG dust jacket. Only a small pressure mark to the back cover, otherwise Near Fine, beautifully preserved copy.
2005, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 21.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Futami Shobo / Japan
$140.00 - In stock -
Rare, controversial photo book of Ikko Kagari, publisher of a number of these extraordinary, extremely questionable, surreptitious infrared photography collections in the 1980's—1990's, including the controversial coveted classic "Molester Rush" and "Document Commuter Train". This 2005 collection was published by Futami Shobo, collecting his colour and b/w photography from the streets of Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho areas of Tokyo. Candid and voyeuristic, this is the side of Tokyo usually hidden from view — violence, despair, gluttony and perversion — street photography behind the veil. While many are sexual in nature, in the same vein as his earlier photo books documenting clandestine sexual activities in public places, others show various human dramas unfolding on the street, like unauthorised photo journalism capturing the violent and desperate side of Tokyo. Homicide, suicide, gang violence, overdoses and intoxication, homelessness... Human behaviour seldom published. File alongside the works of Kohei Yoshiyuki, Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, and ¡Alarma!.
Very Good—Near Fine copy.
2024, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 13.4 x 9.1 cm
Published by
Urbanomic / Cornwall
$40.00 - Out of stock
An impassioned philosophical celebration of the multiple dimensions of contemporary cuteness.
Involuntarily sucked into the forcefield of Cute, Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic decided to let go, give in, let the demon ride them, and make an accelerationism out of it—only to realize that Cute opens a microcosmic gate onto the transcendental process of acceleration itself.
Joining the swarming e-girls, t-girls, NEETS, anons, and otaku who rescued accelerationism from the double pincers of media panic and academic buzzkill by introducing it to big eyes, fluffy ears, programming socks, and silly memes, they discover that the objects of cute culture are just spinoffs of an accelerative process booping us from the future, rendering us all submissive, breedable, helpless, and cute in our turn. Cute comes tomorrow, and only anastrophe can make sense of what it will have been doing to us.
Evading all discipline, sliding across all possible surfaces, Cute Accelerationism embraces every detail of the symptomatology, aetiology, epidemiology, history, biology, etymology, topology, and even embryology of Cute, joyfully burrowing down into its natural, cultural, sensory, sexual, subjective, erotic, and semiotic dimensions in order to sound out the latent spaces of this Thing that has soft-soaped its way into human culture.
Traversing tangents on natural and unnatural selection, runaway supernormalisation, the collective self-transformation of genderswarming cuties, the hyperstitional cultures of shojo and otaku, denpa and 2D love, and the cute subworlds of aegyo and meng, moé and flatmaxxing, catboys and dogon eggs, bobbles and gummies, vore machines and partial objects, BwOs and UwUs…glomping, snuggling, smooshing and squeeeeing their way toward the event horizon of Cute, donning cat ears and popping bubbles as they go, in this untimely philosophical intensification of an omnipresent phenomenon, having surrendered to the squishiest demonic possession, like, ever, two bffs set out in search of the transcendental shape of cuteness only to realize that, even though it is all around us, we do not yet know what Cute can do.
Seriously superficial and bafflingly coherent, half erudite philosophical treatise, half dariacore mashup, 100 percent cutagion, this compact lil' textual machine is a meltdown and a glow up, as well as a twizzled homage to Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. Welcome to the kawaiizome: nothing uncute makes it out of the near future, and the cute will very soon no longer be even remotely human.
1985, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 60 pages, 26 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gakutokan / Japan
$180.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful 1985 Japanese edition of Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda, illustrated throughout with all the original illustrations by Hans Bellmer. Madame Edwarda first appeared in Paris under Georges Bataille's pseudonym Pierre Angelique in two small underground editions in 1941 and 1945. It was finally published under Bataille's own name by the publishing house of Jacques Pauvert in 1956. Translated here by Kosaku Ikuta, all illustrations by German artist Hans Bellmer, complete with inserted preface booklet by Georges Bataille and additional insert of publisher's catalogue.
In Madame Edwarda, a man becomes erotically obsessed with an old whore who turns out to be God. Bataille's erotic prose fuses elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. A world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Intoxication and insanity are so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
"Madame Edwarda's truth consists in confronting us with an obvious scandal that we wouldn't even know where to place. We could incriminate her words: there have never been such rigorous ones; or the circumstances, the fact that Madame Edwarda is a brothel whore, but this, indeed, it could be reassuring; or even that certain details, which must be said to be obscene, are so with a necessity that ennobles them and makes them inevitable, not so much in the name of art, but for a perhaps moral, perhaps fundamental need. (...) That the most incongruous of books, as Georges Bataille defines it in his preface, is also the most beautiful book, and perhaps the most tender, is above all scandalous."—Maurice Blanchot
Very Good copy throughout, light tanning.
2024, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by
Semiotext(e) / Los Angeles
$36.00 - In stock -
What it means to be sexually promiscuous in contemporary American culture, edited by cult-favorite author Michelle Tea.
SLUTS, the first publication from vulgarian queer publisher DOPAMINE BOOKS, is an exploration of what it means to be sexually promiscuous in contemporary American culture. Featuring personal essays, spilled secrets, fiction, memoir, and experimental works, SLUTS asks writers and readers to investigate the many ways the notion of the slut impacts our inner and outer lives, as a threat or an identity, a punishment or an aspiration, a lifestyle, an aesthetic, a philosophy and rallying cry. From hideous and terrifying first encounters to postapocalyptic polyamory, from unionizing sex workers to backstage tableaux of sex and drugs and rock and roll, SLUTS's stories probe the liberating highs and abject lows of physical abandon. Featuring work from performer Miguel Gutierrez, hailed by the New York Times as “an artist of ordered excess”; former Nylon magazine editor in chief Gabrielle Korn; award-winning author Brontez Purnell; Whore of New York author Liara Roux; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Jeremy Atherton Lin; and a host of additional artists and writers, SLUTS reveals the knowledges provoked by a dalliance with desire.
Contributors:
DL Alvarez, Vera Blossom, Chloe Caldwell, Cristy Road Carrera, Sam Cohen, Tom Cole, Lydia Conklin, jimmy cooper, Lyn Corelle, Jenny Fran Davis, Cyrus Dunham, Hedi El Kholti, Robert Gluck, Miguel Gutierrez, Gary Indiana, Taleen Kali, Cheryl Klein, Gabrielle Korn, Jeremy Atherton Lin, Nate Lippens, Meredith Maran, Carta Monir, Amanda Montell, Carely Moore, Bradford Nordeen, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Kamala Puligandla, Brontez Purnell, Liara Roux, Andrea Sands, Daviel Shy, Jen Silverman, Anna Joy Springer, Laurie Stone, McKenzie Wark, Zoe Whittall
1994, Japanese / English
Slipcase (w. obi), corrugated envelope, unpaginated book, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
B-Sellers / Japan
$200.00 - Out of stock
First book edition of Scene of Death, a rare 1994 death photo collection, published by B-Sellers in Japan only, compiled by Noriaki Nakagawa, Hitomi Komukai, and Yoichi Shihata. An elaborate and beautiful production of the macabre. Housed in an illustrated slipcase with illustrated obi-strip and further within a stamped, labelled, corrugated envelope, housing the bound book containing 64 monochrome photographic plates reproducing images from "Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin", an absolutely fascinating collection by Weiman / Prokop, first published in 1963. Atlas der Gerichtsmedizin was originally a serious German scientific reference book for criminal investigators and those in the medical field — a photo book scrapbook of thousands of images of graphic human death scenes — suffocation and strangulation, drowning and death by water, death by burning and electrocution, crimes of passion, abuse and neglect, and more. In turn, this visual opus became a bible of reference imagery to a wave of musicians, artists and authors during the industrial avant-garde, from Throbbing Gristle to Paul Buck to Atrax Morgue. This meticulous and unique Japanese offering further influenced many Japanese artists in the 1990's.
"We believe the scenes of death is, in one sense, the most erotic of human nature. It is at the time of death that man no longer can attempt to control his inner self and therefore the real self appears vividly. Here we have opened the doors to a topic that is usually not only hidden but also shut out of the minds of man. Please share our excitement and take a glance into the world of hidden eroticism"—Scene of Death blurb.
Very Good copy throughout. some edge wear and damage to obi strip, light tanning to box.
1994 / 1995, Japanese / English
2 Vol. set, hardcovers (w. corflute envelope slipcases) in box, 196 + 182 pages, 32.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Sequoia / Tokyo
$500.00 - Out of stock
"I dedicate this book to all lives"
Very rare, highly collectible cult classic two-volume death photo book series, SCENE Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, published in 1994 and 1995 in Japan only. A lavish production, with both heavy books printed in hardcover filled with high-quality reproductions of anonymous, uncredited corpse photography, seemingly sociopolitical photo-journalism of human massacre stripped of text/language as a confronting stream of graphic images in conceptual photo book form. SCENE presents an unwavering, unapologetic exploration of a world usually hidden from view — the dead and death. Not for the faint of heart. Compiled by Kunio Shimizu and Yoichi Shibata for publisher Hirofumi Nagashima, each book is housed in elaborate button-and-tie-bound corflute envelopes, Vol. 1 in black, Vol. 2 in silver. Select plates have been featured in the pages of Kotaro Kobayshi’s underground publications TOO NEGATIVE and ULTRA NEGATIVE from the same period.
This extra special copy was issued as both volumes together in publisher's printed box with seldom seen single promo sheet included for each book (inserted into each book). The ultimate complete edition of this underground photo classic. HEAVY in every sense.
Both books 1990's dead stock with only standard storage wear from button-bind pressure to envelopes/wear to button metal, box with yellowed tape seal (opened) and general storage wear/age.
2024, English
Softcover, 104 pages, 26.6 x 22.8 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$60.00 - Out of stock
“In early 2014, my father gave me a Polaroid camera that had been lying around his office unused for years and was set to be thrown out. The Polaroid Macro 5 was originally intended for dental and crime scene photography, but my own uses for the clunky device were unclear at first. Over the next few months, through experimentation and trial and error, a potential use gradually emerged. The camera quickly proved capable of capturing a feeling present in some of my (then) past images which I favoured most, but I was not able to readily recreate. The prior images captured ordinary materials or subjects, but resulted in images that appear elusive and abstract—transformed by the staging, the framing and the process of being photographed.”
Text and photographs by Yair Oelbaum.
Yair Oelbaum was born in 1988. He grew up in West Hempstead in Long Island and now lives in Milan, NY, where he works as a clinical social worker.
2024, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 28.6 x 19.1 cm
Published by
Inventory Press / New York
Visual Arts Center at the University of Texas at Austin / Austin
$75.00 - Out of stock
This is the most comprehensive monograph to date on Los Angeles–based artist Lisa Lapinski (born 1967), celebrated for her formally complex sculpture in a variety of mediums—including wood, wire, cement and clay—in addition to painting, photography, drawing and found material, often containing philosophical and historical references.
Published on the occasion of Lisa Lapinski: Drunk Hawking, her 2020 midcareer survey at the Visual Arts Center (VAC) at the University of Texas at Austin, Lisa Lapinski: Miss Swiss includes previously unpublished images of Lapinski’s exhibitions and artworks from 2000 to the present. It also features contributions by Bruce Hainley, Graham Bader, Kyle Dancewicz, Sabrina Tarasoff and MacKenzie Stevens, as well as a conversation between the artist and linguist Viola Schmitt.
2024, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 216 pages, 27.94 x 27.94 cm
Published by
Karma / New York
$85.00 - In stock -
A 50th-anniversary tribute to one of America's first racially integrated exhibitions.
In August 1971 Peter Bradley mounted the landmark exhibition The De Luxe Show at the legendary DeLUXE theater in Houston's Fifth Ward. The De Luxe Show was a milestone in civil rights history, as one of the first racially integrated shows in the United States. Curated by Bradley with the backing of collector and philanthropist John de Menil, the exhibition featured emerging and established abstract modern painters and sculptors of the time, including Darby Bannard, Peter Bradley, Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Ed Clark, Frank Davis, Sam Gilliam, Robert Gordon, Richard Hunt, Virginia Jaramillo, Daniel Johnson, Craig Kauffman, Alvin Loving, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Michael Steiner, William T. Williams and James Wolfe.
In August 2021, for its 50th anniversary, Karma and Parker Gallery staged a contemporary bicoastal tribute to The De Luxe Show. The tribute honors the long, pioneering legacies of the artists of The De Luxe Show, and continues the dialogue between these innovators in the field of abstraction that began 50 years ago. This fully illustrated catalog includes texts and installation images from the original 1971 catalog, as well as a newly commissioned text by Amber Jamilla Musser and a text by Bridget R. Cooks that expands upon her 2013 essay in Gulf Coast.
2006, English / French
Softcover (french folds), 208 pages, 24 x 20 cm
Published by
Halle Saint-Pierre / Paris
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this wonderful Unica Zürn monograph, published by Publisher Éditions du Panama to accompany a major survey exhibition in Paris in 2006—2007 at the Halle Saint Pierre, curated by Martine Lusardy and Sepp Hiekisch-Picard. Lavishly illustrated, this important catalogue, now long out-of-print, includes a large number of illuminating texts by scholars in bi-lingual English/French, including: "Unica Zürn: designs so dense" by Roger Cardinal; “Du wirst dein Geheimnis sagen (“You will tell your secret”). The anagram in the work of Unica Zürn" by Victoria Appelbe; "The magical encounter between writing and image" by Barbara Safarova; "The work of Unica Zürn, genesis and reception" by Sepp Hiekisch-Picard; "Read Unica Zürn: the contagion of the void" by Jean-Louis Lanoux; "Unica Zürn (July 6, 1916 – October 19, 1970): biographical references" by Rike Felka and Erich Brinkmann. An important, heavily illustrated reference of Zürn's life and work.
The German artist and writer Unica Zürn (1916-1970) joined the ranks of Surrealism in the 1950s, after moving to Paris and taking up residence with fellow German-born Surrealist Hans Bellmer. Already an accomplished author, Zürn was drawn to the Surrealist movement's espousal of automatic drawing and writing, Zürn pursued Henri Michaux's declaration that "the hand dreams," making a vocation of these techniques with her dense, otherworldly drawings and paintings that are labyrinthine in detail, as one form sprouts out of another. Also with her experimental anagrams, natural extensions of her established interest in hidden meanings and coincidences. Zürn produced most of her oeuvre during this intensive period in the 1950s and 60s, though one marked by her deteriorating mental health. Many of her works were made during periods of hospitalisation. In 1970, Zürn leapt to her death from the balcony of the Paris apartment she had shared with Bellmer. Upon his death in 1975, Bellmer was buried, at his request, next to Zürn in Paris’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery. Their grave is marked with the words Bellmer wrote for Zürn’s funeral wreath nearly five years before: “My love will follow you into Eternity.”
Zürn has left us an account of the sensation of automatic drawing: "After an initial moment when the pen 'swims' hesitantly on the paper, she discovers the place assigned to the first eye. It is only when she is being watched from the depths of the paper that she begins to get her bearings and, effortlessly, one motif is added to another."
Very Good copy with small tears to spine tips and light waving to book block.