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
Art
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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Australian Art
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Fluxus
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Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
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Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
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Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
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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.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 22 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thomas Y. Crowell Company / New York
$280.00 - Out of stock
Bruno Munari's one and only A Flower with Love, in the collectable 1973 first hardcover "square" edition, published in English by Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York. A Flower with Love is beloved Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari's personal ikebana design book. The best ikebana book in the West. Munari's humour and creative playfulness is overflowing in this beautifully illustrated volume, with photographic spreads accompanying Munari's texts and drawings, presenting his whimsical and inventive creations in the Japanese art of flower arrangement, such as arranging dandelions and herbs in wine glasses, the use of a potato as a floral pin frog. Flipping the measured restraint of traditional ikebana on its head and eliminating the elitism we might associate with expensive flower arrangements. There is no force in A Flower With Love. It’s a really gentle, colourful presentation of joy. "...what really matters is the love with which a little daisy, a lavender sprig or some moss are chosen, that one there in particular and not that other one." For the child and adult alike, like most of Munari's wonderful books, A Flower with Love gives us a renewed awareness of the beauty of the world around us.
Bruno Munari (October 24, 1907, Milan – September 30, 1998, Milan) was an Italian artist, designer, and inventor who contributed fundamentals to many fields of visual arts (painting, sculpture, film, industrial design, graphic design) in modernism, futurism, and concrete art, and in non visual arts (literature, poetry) with his research on games, didactic method, movement, tactile learning, kinesthetic learning, and creativity.
Very Good Copy, Good—VG dust jacket, with single chip to back-top of dj and small closed tears, preserved under mylar. Only mild wear/ageing.
2022, English
Softcover, 456 pages, 15 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Ridinghouse / London
$69.00 - In stock -
This first ever queer history of St Ives weaves together biography with art and social history to shine new light on a pivotal era in the development of British modernism. At its centre is the sculptor John Milne (1931-1978), who arrived in the town in 1952 to work as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth.
Hidden behind 20-foot-high granite walls, Milne's house, Trewyn, became a meeting point for queer figures from the arts as well as the scene of legendary parties. The large cast - both queer and otherwise - featured in Queer St Ives and Other Stories includes artists Francis Bacon, Alan Lowndes, Marlow Moss, Patrick Procktor, Mark Tobey, Keith Vaughan and Brian Wall; Whitechapel Art Gallery director Bryan Robertson; actors Keith Barron and Richard Wattis; potter Janet Leach; and writers Tony Warren and Richard Blake Brown. There is also the extraordinary Julian Nixon, a queer Everyman whose involvement in the group has been little explored until now.
Based on original interviews and previously unpublished letters and diaries, Queer St Ives and Other Stories reveals a fascinating, previously undocumented history, adding vital new insights into the history of this fabled Cornish art colony. Publication supported by the Paul Mellon Centre.
2019, English
Softcover, 63 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Deakin University / Burwood
$12.00 - Out of stock
Publication to document the exhibition Studio Pottery from the John Nixon Collection, curated by James Lynch at the Deakin University Art Gallery, 31 October – 14 December, 2018.
This exhibition showcased the private collection of Australian artist John Nixon, who over the last fifteen years has acquired a ceramic collection of over 500 pieces by ceramic artists from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s who were working in and around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. The exhibition demonstrates how one person’s passion, knowledge and dedication to an art form has transformed the everyday act of collecting into a cultural treasure. This exhibition is the second in a series of exhibitions especially dedicated to the art of collecting.
This vital document on Australian ceramics presents a selection from the 200 works displayed, installation views (including archival printed materials from the collection), alongside texts and biographies on the artists exhibited.
1972, English / Japanese
Softcover, 184 pages, 22.5 cm x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Rare fourth issue from 1972 (complete with original issue printed slip-case) of this now classic 1970’s architectural series, the great GI (Global Interior) from Tokyo, Japan.
One of the finest interior architecture journal series ever published, GI “The Series of Global Interior” came from the producers of the highly esteemed GA (Global Architecture), GA Document, GA Houses, etc. architectural publications.
GI was produced throughout the 1970’s in a total of ten volumes. Each large volume highlighted a selection of architectural projects by renowned international architects, some volumes focusing on a specific architect entirely, and highlighted their work for houses and domestic spaces.
Beautiful architectural photography of house interiors, exteriors and room details of living spaces, along with texts (mostly in Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured building or environment. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and printed journals (each more a book than a magazine) make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
Edited and Presented by Yukio Futagawa
GI Global Interior #4
Southern Europe
1972
Contents include:
Harnden & Bombelli (House in Malaga), Harnden & Bombelli (Cluster House in Port-Lligat), Harnden & Bombelli (Summer House in Port-Lligat), Harnden & Bombelli (Summer House in Montras), José Antonio Coderch (Tapies House), José Antonio Coderch (House in San Cugat del Valles), José Antonio Coderch (House in Sitges), Antonio Bonet (Villa La "Ricarda"), Tobia Scarpa (Scarpa House), Tobia Scarpa (Benetton House), Angelo Mangiarotti (House in Cisano), Angelo Mangiarotti (Bianchi House), Baldassini, Bichocchi & Monsani (House in Castiglione della Pescaia), Calro Moretti (House in Crenna), Vittoriano Vigano (House along Lake Garda), Luigi Moretti (Villa "La Saracena"), Piero Sartogo (Summer House in Circeo), Piero Sartogo (Cluster House in Circeo), Piero Sartogo (Sartogo House), Morassutti & Gussoni (Carlevaro House), Gio Ponti & Nanda Vigo (House in Malo), Umberto Riva (House in Taino), Cini Boeri (House in Osmate), Vico Magistretti (Cassina House)...
…
Very Good copy.
2021, English
Softcover, 190 pages, 17cm x 28 cm
2nd Edition, 700 copies,
Published by
Centre Centre / London
$59.00 - Out of stock
New (brown cover) edition of the quickly out-of-print, fantastic Brick Index, first published in 2019. 'Brick Index' is a collection of named bricks and the unseen makers' marks stamped by brickworks from across the UK. It celebrates the humble brick, relishing the textures, colours and graphics debossed into their 'frogs'. This collection serves to rethink a ubiquitous material and honour the graphic stamps hidden all around us. The book features 155 beautifully photographed bricks, printed at actual size, accompanied by an index that states the time, place, and maker of each brick.
Featuring an introduction from David Kitching, a brick historian and an essay from Professor Rick Poynor. Photography by Inge Clemente.
Limited to 700 copies
1982, English / German
Softcover, 32 pages, 14.8 cm x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Edition Copie / Hannover
$400.00 - Out of stock
Extremely rare and wonderful Lapo Binazzi artist book, "Cool Lights (Indifferent Technology)", first edition from 1982. Almost entirely illustrated with Binazzi's incredible lamp objects dating from 1973-1981, this small book compiles his works, drawings, and ideas, with accompanying text by Michael Erlhoff.
Lapo Binazzi is a quintessential figure in the Italian Radical movement and a founding member of Global Tools and the collective UFO, one of the “supergroups” of Italian architects, alongside Gruppo 9999 and Superstudio. The Italian Radical movement grew in response to the political state of Italy in the 1960’s, when groups of designers congregated together to create works that challenged the current political and economical system, violently opposing the standardisation and doctrines of the international style of design. Binazzi’s designs exemplify this movement through their provocative tones, humorous messages and symbolic imagery. Lingering between conceptual and pop art, Binazzi works in a variety of mediums including interior design, fashion, film and performance.
Very Good copy with only light tanning/spotting with age.
1986, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 239 pages, 25 x 31 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$80.00 - In stock -
Edited by Robert A.M. Stern, one of the world's leading exponents of the Post-Modern movement, "The International Design Yearbook 1985/86" was "the first volume of an important annual review of domestic design in an international context. It shows the best, the most characteristic and the most exciting recent designs in furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, glass and metalware. It illustrates the work not only of such leading figures as Rossi, Hollein, Venturi, Sottsass and Castiglioni, but of hundreds of other contemporary designers around the world, whose work is notable for its topicality and promise, or for its aesthetic or functional excellence."
As well as contemporary design of the mid 1980's, the annual "deals with the reproduction of classic designs by such masters as Eileen Gray, Hoffman, Mackintosh, Rietveld and Le Corbusier." The annual also functioned as a guidebook to the featured designers and the respective companies, manufacturers and retailers of their designs. Biographies for all those designers featured are included, plus texts throughout.
This large book is richly illustrated with wonderful examples of the featured designers in their many forms via 520 illustrations, 382 in colour. Many works rarely (some possibly never) seen documented in any other book.
Includes the work of: Verner Panton, Nathalie du Pasquier, Charlotte Perriand, Paolo Piva, Andrée Putman, Dieter Rams, Gerrit Rietveld, Aldo Rossi, Stanley Tigerman, Brian Faucheux, Jay Stanger, Yrjo Kukkapuro, Hans Gunnarsson, Studio Alchimia, Gabrielle Regondi, John Smith, Alberto Salvati and Ambrogio Tresoldi, Paolo Deganello, Alessio Sarri, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Matteo Thun, Pierre Jeanneret, Memphis, Giuseppe Terragni, Robert George Sowden, SITE, Afra Scarpa, Tobia Scarpa, Robert Venturi, Ugo La Pietra, Le Corbusier, Ettore Sottsass, Adolf Loos, Robert Mallet-Stevens, Richard Meier, Alessando Mendini, Fujiwo Ishimoto, Hans Hollein, Josef Hoffmann, William Morris, Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, Eileen Gray, Michael Graves, Michele De Lucchi, Joe Colombo, Achille Castiglioni, Mario Bellini, Gae Aulenti, Hans Ansems, Ron Arad, Emilio Ambasz, Alver Aalto, Daniel Weil, Marco Zanini, to name but a few!
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket, light tanning to page edge.
1984, Italian
Softcover (loop stitched), 60 pages, 30 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Memphis Milano / Milan
$340.00 - Out of stock
Very rare, early original Memphis Milano trade catalogue from 1984. Beautifully preserved copy of this lavishly illustrated and iconically designed (by Christoph Radl and Sottsass Associati) catalogue presenting furniture pieces, lamps, ceramics, glassware, metalware, and textiles produced between 1981 and 1984 by Ettore Sottsass, Peter Shire, Andrea Branzi, George James Sowden, Hans Hollein, Aldo Cibic, Martine Bedin, Gerard Taylor, Michele De Lucchi, Mattheo Thun, Marco Zanini, Masanori Umeda, Nathalie du Pasquier, Michael Graves.
A wonderful collector's item.
Very Good copy, bright and clean throughout.
1972, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and complete 5 cut-outs), 432 pages, 20 x 25cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MoMA / New York
Centro Di / Florence
$180.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the stunning "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape (Achievements and Problems of Italian Design)", published by Museum of Modern Art, New York, in association with Centro Di Florence, in 1972. Includes the famous glassine dust jacket with all five (rarely present) cardboard cutout inserts. A most complete copy of this very important reference book on Italian design of the 1960s-1970s.
Edited by Emilio Ambasz while he was the curator of design at Museum of Modern Art, this is the first book to comprehensively survey the important design developments of 1960s Italy, published to coincide with the landmark exhibition at MoMA, May 26 - September 11, 1972. The museum commissioned 12 environments especially for the exhibition, covering two modes of contemporary living; Permanent Home and the Mobile Home, using 180 objects produced in Italy during the decade by more than 100 designers, including the finest examples of product design, furniture, lighting, appliances, flatware, glass, ceramic, putting new (radical) Italian design on the international map. Profusely illustrated throughout with over 500 illustrations across over 400 pages, alongside essays by Paolo Portoghesi, Maurizio Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Leonardo Benevolo, Vittorio Gregotti, Germano Celant, Manfredo Tafuri, Filiberto Menna and others. Includes the work of Archizoom, Joe Colombo, Gae Aulenti, Sergio Asti, Tobia and Afra Scarpa, Mario Bellini, Jonathan De Pas, Andrea Branzi, Cesare Casati, Rodolfo Bonetto, Cini Boeri, Achille Castiglioni, Piergiacomo Castiglioni, Piero Gilardi, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Gruppo Strum, Ugo La Pietra, Paolo Lomazzi, Vico Magistretti, Superstudio, Angelo Mangiarotti, Enzo Mari, Bruno Munari, Adolfo Natalini, Gaetano Pesce, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Massimo Vignelli, Nanda Vigo, Marco Zanuso, Arflex, Arredoluce, Arteluce, Artemide, Brionvega, Cassina, C & B Italia, Danese, Driade, Flexform, Flos, Gufram, Kartell, Olivetti, Poltronova, Stilnovo, Zanotta, and so many more...
Very Good copy with tanning to edges and the usual yellowing to glassine dust jacket. Otherwise well-preserved with the rarely preserved 5 cut-out inserts present.
2005, English
Hardcover (w. dust jakcet), 80 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Assouline / Paris
$80.00 - Out of stock
Now long out-of-print hardcover book on Charlotte Perriand published in France by Assouline as part of their collectible memoire series — each volume like a glossy photo-portraits, scrapbooking the works of important icons in art and design — Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons, Picabia, Yohji Yamamoto, Pierre Paulin, Balenciaga, etc. An important figure of modernism in the 1930s, and the principal protagonist of organic design in the 1950s, Charlotte Perriand was a true 20th century pioneer. Although her name has long been inseparable from that of Le Corbusier, in this volume Charlotte Perriand is brought to a new light as her vital energy as well as the simple, rigorous, and natural forms of her furniture and integrated spaces are examined. Ultimately, this is the portrait of a free and generous woman, with a fascinating and active life, whose accomplishments continue to embellish our everyday life. Lavishly illustrated throughout wit text (in English) by Elisabeth Vedrenne.
As New copy.
2002, English
Hardcover (dust jacket), 140 pages, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Umberto Allemandi / Milan
$280.00 - In stock -
Rare first English hardcover edition of this outstanding survey, exhibition catalogue and invaluable reference to the fascinating light objects produced in Italy between 1967 and 1972 — a period generally known as "gli anni d´oro" (The Golden Years). Published in 2002 by Milan's legendary Allemandi publishing house and compiled by light designer and writer Fulvio Ferrari and author behind all the best books on Carlo Mollino, Napoleone Ferrari. Lavishly illustrated in colour and b/w on gloss stock, this large volume offers and outstanding survey of Italian light-design with more than 150 objects illustrated and detailed entries on each and every one, including materials and exhibition histories. Includes the work of designers, artists and manufacturers Livio Castiglioni & Gianfranco Frattini, Archizoom, Cini Boeri, Ettore Sottsass, Nanda Vigo, Ugo La Pietra, Achille Castiglioni, Lapo Binazzi, UFO, Angelo Lelli, Ingrid Hsalmarson, Gino Sarfatti, Rinaldo Cutini, Gae Aulenti, Superstudio, Gaetano Pesce, Angelo Mangiarotti, Joe Colombo, Gianfranco Fini, Mario Bellini, Memphis, Fabrizio Cocchia, Alchimia, Sergio Asti, Tomoko Tsuboi Ponzio, Gianni Gamberini & Studio ARDITI, Fulvio Ferrari, Gino Marotta, Studio Uno, Cesare Casati, Theodore Waddell, George Sowden, Arteluce, Zanotta, Stilnovo, Valenti, Kartell, Poltronova, Arredoluce, Flos, Lumenform, Zanotta, and many more. Also includes introductory essays and a full index of designers and manufacturers.
Very Good-Fine copy in VG-Fine dust jacket.
1967, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 144 pages, 37 x 28.5 cm
1st US Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Viking Press / New York
$160.00 - Out of stock
Handsome and rare first 1967 hardcover edition of "English Style In Interior Decoration", A Studio Book, published in London by Bodley Head and in New York by The Viking Press, and edited by Mary Gilliatt and Michael Boys. This gorgeous over-sized landscape-format interior design book covers the chapters: the Post-Festival influence; Sturdy English; the Purists; the New Wave; English Style; old-houses renewed; Fantasy in Fashion; the English Decorators; Synthesis - surveying a diverse array of English interiors from the end of the 1960's through the large full-colour photographs of Michael Boys.
Includes interiors, furniture and artwork by Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, Arne Jacobsen, Marcel Breuer, Lynn Chadwick, Robin Day, Lucienne Day, Anthony Caro, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eduardo Paolozzi, Eero Saarinen, Francis Bacon, Le Corbusier, Terence Conran, Olivier Mourgue, William Morris, Phillip King, Milton Avery, Clement Meadmore, Tim Scott, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Cecil Beaton, Mario Praz, Edinburgh Weavers, George Nelson, Donald Brothers fabrics, Biba, Habitat, and many more.
Very difficult to find preserved with the original dust jacket. Very Good copy with Good jacket, only light wear to this large book.
1980, French
Softcover, 122 pages, 23 x 39 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Parenthèses / Marseille
$150.00 - In stock -
First French edition of this visionary book by Italian architect Paolo Soleri (1919 Turin — 2013 Scottsdale, Arizona), published by Editions Parenthèses, Marseille, in 1980. This stunning over-sized landscape book reads like a manifesto/blue-print/scrap-book of Soleri's Arcology (Architecture+Ecology), through his own words (here in French) and 120 pages of his intricate and fantastic architectural drawings.
"I am advocating a Lean Hypothesis about reality and a Lean Alternative to our materialistic culture. With the lean urban development I put tangibility to my conjecturing. Years ago I declared that Leanness is frugality fraught with sophistication. The gazelle is lean, i.e. frugality wrapped in grace. Can anyone imagine a frozen tundra or a scorching Sahara colonized by millions of hermitages, single homes? A nightmarish American Dream incapable of supporting any kind of dignified life, let alone the evolution of a civilization. Is the exurban (ever-expanding suburban) metastasis a bejeweled dream? Of food and shelter, the two indispensable needs of life, shelter is the direct responsibility of planners; architects, urban planners, builders, developers, speculators, politicians, students ... time to wake up!" — Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti, Arizona
Through his work as architect, urban designer, artist, craftsman and philosopher, Paolo Soleri has been exploring the countless possibilities of human aspiration. The envisioned future taking shape in his mind has been expressed in various media. One outstanding endeavor is Arcosanti, an urban laboratory, constructed in the high Arizona desert. It attempts to demonstrate an alternative human habitat much needed in this increasingly perplexing world. This project also exemplifies his steadfast devotion to creating an experiential space to "prototype" an environment in harmony with man. Through his articulated philosophy "Arcology (Architecture+Ecology)", Soleri formulates a path that may aid us on our evolutionary journey toward a state of aesthetic, equity and compassion. The half century work of his broad-ranging and coherent intellect (so scarce in the age of specialization) has influenced many in the field in search of a new paradigm for our built environment. — Tomiaki Tamura
Very Good copy with light bump to top-right cover corner, light tanning and ex-shop sticker mark.
1968, Italian / English
Softcover, 98 pages, 32.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editoriale Domus / Milan
$65.00 - Out of stock
Founded in 1928 as a “living diary” by the great Milanese architect and designer Gio Ponti, domus has been hailed as the world’s most influential architecture and design journal, distributed in 89 countries. With exuberant style and rigor, it offered energetic up-to-date coverage and analysis of major themes, developments and stylistic movements in product, structure, interior, and industrial design. Called the "Mediterranean Megaphone," domus has always been considered the most concrete published expression of Italian style, documenting generations of radical, practical, and beautiful production, both local and across the world. Amongst a seemingly endless archive of contributions and features, domus frequently covered the works of the protagonists of the Anti and Radical Design movements, modern architecture, new experiments in environmental/spatial/commercial design, international product design, the activities of the Arte Povera, Pop art, Minimal Art and Nouveau Réalisme movements, and much more.
No. 466 Settembre 1968
Editor : Gio Ponti
Editorial committee and contributors include : Cesare Casati, Pierre Restany, Agnoldomenico Pica, Pierre Restany, Carmela Haerdtl, Joseph Rykwert, Ettore Sottsass jr., Charles and Ray Eames,
Kho Liang je, Bernard Rudofsky, George Nelson, Fausto Melotti, Tommaso Trini, Tapio Wirkkalaand, Rut Bryk, Hans Hollein, and more.
features :
Archizoom; Lucio Fontana; "Tatlin" by Agnoldomenico Pica; "Apartment Building in Ramat Gan Tel Aviv" by architects Alfred Neumann, Zvi Hecker, Eldar Sharon, "The 18th Aspen Design Conference" by Hans Hollein; Olivetti store in Buenos Aires by architect Gae Aulenti; XIV Triennial of Milan "Il Grande Numero" (Arata Isozaki); "Venice Biennale 1968: A Failure in Attempted Suicide" by Pierre Restany; "For a New Biennale" by Tommaso Trini; Book reviews; and much more.
Beautifully printed in Italy and heavily illustrated throughout with vivid colour and black and white photography across multiple paper stocks, page crops and fold-out spreads.
2019, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 23.5 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$74.00 - Out of stock
“Doing is living. That is all that matters.”—Ruth Asawa
Throughout her long and prolific career American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) developed innovative sculptures in wire, a medium she explored through increasingly complex forms using craft-based techniques she learned while traveling in Mexico in 1947. In 1949, after studying at Black Mountain College, Asawa moved to San Francisco and created dozens of wire works, among them an iconic bronze fountain—the first of many public commissions—for the city’s Ghirardelli Square.
Bringing together examples from across Asawa’s full and extraordinary career, this expansive volume serves as an unprecedented reorientation of her sculptures within the historical context of 20th-century art. In particular, it includes careful consideration of Asawa’s advocacy for arts education in public schools, while simultaneously focusing on her vital—and long under-recognized—contributions to the field of sculpture. Insightful essays explore the intersection of formal experimentation and identity to offer a fresh assessment of this celebrated artist. Richly illustrated with exquisite new installation views, Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work introduces original scholarship that traces the dynamic evolution of form in the artist’s work.
Edited by Tamara H. Schenkenberg; With essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg
Tamara H. Schenkenberg is curator at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis.
2021, English
Hardcover, 320 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Information Office / Vancouver
$75.00 - In stock -
Edith Heath: Philosophies serves as the definitive resource on Edith Kiertzner Heath (1911–2005) and the history of Heath Ceramics, emphasizing the philosophical foundations and influences of one of the most significant creative forces in post-World War II America. Heath considered her dinnerware more than a collection of simple objects; rather, it was a commentary on good design and what she believed was indicative of a new and more informal lifestyle in postwar America. This book offers in-depth commentary on the many themes that shaped Heath’s ceramics practice—the environment, feminism, education, experimentation, architecture, politics, societal trends, collaborations—while also solidifying the relevance of Edith Heath’s story in contemporary life and society.
Contents include a foreword, preface, visual historical timeline, selected product and dinnerware glaze history, and a collection of essays contributed by historians and designers, all of whom have conducted specialized research in the Brian and Edith Heath/Heath Ceramics Collection at the Environmental Design Archives (EDA), UC Berkeley. Highlighting the richness of the EDA’s collection, the book utilizes rarely seen images, many of which show the character of their original archival state. The interdisciplinary nature of the content and visually engaging illustrative materials will appeal to a wide audience interested in postwar design, material culture, and California history.
Contributors include Catherine Bailey and Robin Petravic, Allan Collier, Drew Heath Johnson, Waverly B. Lowell, Chris Marino, JC Miller, Julie M. Muñiz, Rosa Novak, Ezra Shales, Mara Holt Skov, Jay Stewart, Brian Trimble, Emily Vigor, and Jennifer M. Volland.
2021, English / Dutch
Softcover, 176 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Nai010 Publishers / Rotterdam
$60.00 - Out of stock
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one of the most important avant-garde artists of the 20th century and continues to inspire artists, designers and architects. He is known for his iconic monochromatic paintings with vertical cuts. Lucio Fontana: The Conquest of Space highlights the ideas of Fontana's Concetto spaziale and shows how these spatial notions took shape not only in his slashed canvases, but also in his sculpture, jewellery, and installations. With photography by Anuschka Blommers and Niels Schumm, and texts by Colin Huizing and Paulo Campiglio, this publication is an indispensable overview of Fontana's innovative spatial views on art.
1999, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 400 pages, 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charta / Milan
$150.00 - Out of stock
First edition of one of the largest and most comprehensive English-language books on Lucio Fontana, edited by esteemed Italian art critic and leading Fontana author Enrico Crispolti and published on the occasion of a major Lucio Fontana retrospective exhibition held in Milan, 23 April—30 June, 1999. Profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with a huge array of Fontana's works, accompanied by texts from Enrico Crispolti, Antonello Negri, Luciano Caramel, Paolo Biscottini, Tommaso Trini, and a conversation between art critics Guido Ballo and Tommaso Trini, together covering every dimension of this highly original and influential artist's career. Also includes an incredible photo album edited by Nini Ardemagni Laurini and Valeria Ernesti, documenting the artist's world, studio, exhibitions, social life through the lens of many photographers, including many by the great Ugo Mulas, whose photographs adorn the covers. Includes a biography, list of works, exhibitions and a selected bibliography. A rare and in-depth insight into the life and work of a rare artist.
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one the most innovative artists of the 20th century. A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Fontana blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. The founder of Spatialism, a movement focused on the spatial qualities of sculpture and paintings with the goal of breaking through the two-dimensionality of the traditional picture plane, he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts. He was best known for his monochrome canvases known as Concetti Spaziale that he would cut or puncture, leaving distinctive gaping slash marks and holes that imbued the finished work with an almost violent energy. In his seminal writing, White Manifesto (1946), the artist traced ideas for creating a new medium that blended architecture, painting, and sculpture. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture,” he said of his work. Fontana had widespread impact on the following generation of artists, who began to use installation media more aggressively to address the dynamics of space in gallery environments and Land Art. Fontana died on September 7, 1968 in Varese, Italy at the age of 69, just two years after being awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.
Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.
1963, French
Hardcover, 1083 pages, 20 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Flammarion / Paris
$160.00 - Out of stock
The French bible of mid-century modern home-making, l'art Ménager (Household Art), was published in 1963 to advise and vividly illustrate across 1083 pages(!) the design of the modern habitat, from the latest furniture, decorative arts, the lighting, the textiles, the materials, the room arrangement, the kitchen, the bathroom, the storage, the cookware... it's comprehensive and heavy! Stunning photography and graphic design throughout in gorgeous colour and b/w reproduction, this tome is a treasure of a reference for anyone interested in mid-century European interior design. Directed by Paul Breton for Flammarion.
Scarce first edition, incredible condition. Only very light wear and dust ageing to board edges, interior clean and bright with strong binding.
2015, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 15.6 x 23.4 cm
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic / London
$59.00 - Out of stock
In four decades of abstract art practice, Lynda Benglis has not merely challenged the status quo. She has tied it in knots, melted it down and poured it across the floor, cast it in glass, clay and bronze. Daring and sometimes outrageous, her intense and provocative practice has produced some of the most iconic pieces of art from the late twentieth century. Richmond gives serious critical attention to work often dismissed as trivial and rootless, recovering the themes that link the different phases of the artist's quest to capture the 'frozen gesture'. Whether challenging popular tastes and definitions of art with her 1970s abstract knotwork or mocking puritanical aesthetics of gender with her colourful latex pourings and their allusions to corporeal topographies, Benglis never failed to provoke. Her sculptures commemorate and celebrate the processes of creation themselves, combining architectonic abstraction and feminized sensuality in a haunting, visceral theme of the strangeness of the body that runs through all her experiments in glass, video, metals, ceramics, gold leaf, paper and plastics.
Lynda Benglis: Beyond Process examines in depth the work and critical neglect of an artist who, perhaps more than any of her contemporaries, changed the face of American art in the 1960s and 1970s, and continues to fetishise, provoke and demand your attention.
1987, English
Softcover, 80 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
A&D / London
$25.00 - Out of stock
April 1987 of London's esteemed Art & Design magazine (A.D.), a special issue dedicated to "The Post Modern Object". Features include : Peter Fuller — Towards a New Nature for the Gothic; Michael Collins — Post-Modern Design; Hugh Cumming — The Designed Object: An International Survey; Charles Jencks — Symbolic Objects; Volker Fischer — Post-Modernism and Consumer Design; Geoffrey Broadbent — Functionalism versus Post-Modernism; Stuart Durant — Proto Post-Modernism; Hans Hollein — Post-Modern Performance Art; and much more. Profusely illustrated throughout with the work of Hans Hollein, Memphis, Robert Venturi, Ettore Sottsass, Aldo Rossi, Tadao Ando, Michael Graves, George Sowden, Mario Botta, Arata Isozaki, Matteo Thun, Shuji Hisada, Beppe Caturelli, Michele de Lucchi, Stanley Tigerman, SITE, Helmut Jahn, Landes and Rang, Charles Jencks, Richard Meier, Robert Stern, Alessi, Takefumi Aida, Eva Jiricna, Studio 65, Paolo Portoghesi, Oscar Tusquets, Terry Farrell, Tomas Taveira, Om Ungers, Swid Powell Ceramics, Lee Payne, and more...
"This issue of Art & Design takes a critical look at the controversial area of product design, a subject which does not often receive the same serious attention as painting or sculpture, although it probably concerns more people, on a day-to-day basis, than the fine arts. The Post-Modern Object focuses in particular on developments over the past few years by designers who have pulled away from the Modernist preoccupation with functionalism as an aesthetic and created a wide range of objects — from sofas to jewellery, cutlery to kettles — which are highly original and decorative. Included in this Profile are works by celebrated designers such as Ettore Sottsass, Michael Graves, Robert Venturi and Hans Hollein."
Good ex-libris copy with light associated markings, tanning and light wear to covers.
1988, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 388 pages, 25 x 2.5 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$160.00 - Out of stock
Rare first edition of the best, largest volume on visionary architect Bruce Goff, published by MIT in 1988! Distilled from years of research and friendship, this is the first comprehensive study to capture the essential Goff — the idiosyncratic and profoundly original designs, the erratic yet exuberant career that produced some of the most challenging and inventive architecture of this century. Bruce Goff spent most of his life (1904-1982) in the American heartland. In the seven decades of his practice he designed nearly 500 projects, of which some 140 were built. Although he loved to flaunt the novel use of found materials (steel pipe, coal, rope, plexiglas aircraft domes, cake pans) and flashy decorative surfaces including white goose feathers and egg crates Goff's central and abiding concern was with the mastery of space.
As David De Long shows in this engaging book, Goff's spatial creativity was unbounded, his diversity seemingly unlimited. De Long discusses the architect's development and early work in Tulsa, the formative influences that shaped his career, his first independent work in Chicago, the periods of working on speculation in Bartlesville and Kansas City, his withdrawal from active practice following charges of homosexuality, and Goffs triumphant resurgence with his design for the Japanese Wing of the Los Angeles County Museum. De Long devotes an entire chapter to Goff's major projects - the Ledbetter, Ford, Bavinger, and Wilson houses, the Hopewell Baptist Church, and Crystal Cathedral, whose complex geometries, spatial richness, and modified prefabricated elements set them radically apart from the conformity of small town America. The story is a fascinating one, incorporating significant design details with local reactions and sometimes devastating professional criticism.
Bruce Goff: Toward Absolute Architecture, contains a complete catalogue raisonné of buildings and projects; it is included in The Architectural History Foundation's American Monograph Series.
1967, English
Softcover, 60 pages, 21.5 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
University of California / Berkeley
$100.00 - Out of stock
One of the great American exhibition catalogues, "Funk" was published on the occasion of the historical exhibition curated by the first director of the University of Art Museum in Berkeley, California, Peter Selz, April 18 - May 29, 1967. "Funk" captured a new anti-establishment spirit in the Bay Area arts encompassing experimentation in unusual materiality, ceramics and assemblage, “making things with the detritus of society”. Curator Peter Selz writes that the term funk was “borrowed from jazz: since the Twenties, Funk was jargon for the unsophisticated deep-down New Orleans blues played by marching bands, the blues that give you that happy/sad feeling… Funk art is hot rather than cool; it is committed rather than disengaged; it is bizarre rather than formal; it is sensuous; and frequently it is quite ugly and ungainly.”
This wonderful heavy illustrated catalogue features colour and b/w documentation of works of all exhibiting artists, including Arlo Acton, Bob Anderson, Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Mowry Baden, Jerrold Ballaine, Sue Bitney, Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Roy De Forest, William Geis, David Gilhooly, Mel Henderson, Robert Hudson, Jean Linder, James Melchert, Gary Molitor, William Morehouse, Manuel Neri, Harold Paris, Don Potts, Kenneth Price, Peter Saul, Peter Voulkos, William T. Wiley, and Franklin Williams. Includes text by curator Peter Selz, artists' biographies and statements, and exhibition checklist across various paper stocks.
Fine copy.
2014, English
Softcover, 128 pages, 22 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1960s, Leatrice and Melvin Eagle have acquired decorative arts of the highest quality, beginning with contemporary ceramics and then expanding to works in other mediums produced from the 1940s to the present. Although primarily American in scope, their collection also encompasses significant pieces by acclaimed international artists. This book presents, for the first time, key highlights from the Eagle collection, which was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2010. At the core of the collection are stunning examples of ceramics by groundbreaking California-based artists, such as Robert Arneson, Ralph Bacerra, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Ron Nagle, Ken Price, Adrian Saxe, and Peter Voulkos. Also included is furniture by Wendell Castle and Sam Maloof; textile and fiber art by Olga de Amaral, John Garrett, John McQueen, and Cynthia Schira; and jewelry and metalwork by William Harper, Albert Paley, Earl Pardon, and Joyce J. Scott. This catalogue features works by about 40 key artists and an illustrated checklist of about 170 objects in the collection.
As New copy.