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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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.
1982, English / Japanese / Italian / French
Softcover (w. wax dust jacket), 128 pages, 21 x 29 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
The Japan Foundation / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this wonderful Japanese catalogue published in 1982 to accompany an exhibition that brought together the work of 5 Western artists (Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, Bruce Mclean, and Giulio Paolini) for a major group show held at the Laforet Museum, Tokyo and The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Each artist has many pages of work reproduced in black and white, accompanied by artists' statements, essays on each artist, and artists' biographies, in English, Japanese, Italian and French. Bound in various raw paper stocks and wrapped in printed wax paper dust-jacket.
Good-Very Good copy. Perfectly preserved with small chips and wear to dust jacket edges.
1970, English
Softcover, 208 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
MoMA / New York
$600.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare first 1970 edition of MoMA's landmark book on conceptual art, published to accompany this groundbreaking avant-garde show.
In the summer of 1970, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted the now legendary exhibition Information, one of the first surveys of conceptual art. Conceived by MoMA’s celebrated curator Kynaston McShine as an “international report” on contemporary trends, the show and attendant catalog together assembled the work of more than 150 artists from 15 countries to explore the parameters and possibilities of the emerging art practices of the era. Noting the participating artists’ attunement to the “mobility and change that pervades their time,” McShine underscored their interest in “ways of rapidly exchanging ideas, rather than embalming the idea in an ‘object.’” Indeed, much of the work in the exhibition engaged mass-communications systems, such as broadcast television and the postal service, and addressed viewers directly, often encouraging their participation in return.
The catalog, rather than merely document the show, functioned autonomously: it included a list of recommended reading, a chance-based index by critic Lucy Lippard, and individual artist contributions in the form of photographic documentation, textual description, drawings and diagrams—some relating to work in the exhibition and others to artworks as yet unrealized.
Artists include Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Keith Arnatt, Art & Language Press, Art & Project, Richard Artschwager, David Askevold, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge, John Baldessari, Michael Baldwin, Barrio, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, Bernhard & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Bill Bollinger, George Brecht, Stig Broegger, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden, James Lee Byars, Jorge Luis Carballa, Christopher Cook, Roger Cutforth, Carlos D'Alessio, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Jan Dibbets, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Group Frontera, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Giorno Poetry Systems, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Ira Joel Haber, Randy Hardy, Michael Heizer, Hans Hollein, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Peter Hutchinson, Richards Jarden, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Cildo Campos Meirelles, Marta Minujin, Robert Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, New York Graphic Workshop, Newspaper, Group Oho, Helio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, Paul Pechter, Giuseppe Penone, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Alejandro Puente, Markus Raetz, Yvonne Rainer, Klaus Rinke, Edward Ruscha, J.M. Sanejouand, Richard Sladden, Robert Smithson, Keith Sonnier, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Erik Thygesen, John Van Saun, Guilherme Magalhaes Vaz, Bernar Venet, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson.
Kynaston McShine was formerly Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Very Good copy. Light cover wear, single spine crack, all crisp, clean interior and tightly bound copy of a book that usually sees serious page detachments. Best copy we have seen.
1993, Japanese / French
Softcover (w. french folds), 190 pages, 22 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yomiuri Shimbun / Tokyo
$100.00 - In stock -
Scarce and visually rich monograph on Supports/Surfaces, the radical painting movement that began in the South of France in the late-1960s, published in Japan on the occasion of a rare major exhibition that toured throughout 1993—1994. This definitive catalogue gives a generous overview of the many works of the artists of Supports/Surfaces from 1966—1974 through colour and black and white photographs. It also provides texts (in Japanese and French), interviews, historical photos of the group and their installations, work list, a chronology, a biography and many essays. One of the few major publications on the work of Supports/Surfaces. Comes with original 1993 illustrated exhibition flyer inserted.
Supports/Surfaces developed away from Paris, in the south of France, with the first major exhibition held in 1969 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In June 1969, during an exhibition at the Havre Museum entitled “La peinture en question”, Vincent Bioulès, Louis Cane, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour, André Valensi, Bernard Pagès and Claude Viallat write in the catalog: “The subject of the painting is the painting itself and paintings on display refer only to themselves. They make no appeal to an “elsewhere” (the personality of the artist, his biography, history of art, for example). Early exhibtions took place in towns like Coaraze, Montpellier, Nimes and Nice in the mid-1960s. After the student revolts of 1968, the movement ratcheted up its activities, exploding in such exhibitions as “Supports/Surfaces,” which took place at ARC in Paris in September 1970. These shows occurred at or around the same time as those of other French artist groups like GRAV and BMPT (Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni). Like them, Supports/Surfaces questioned the role of painting as both an art object and a social one.
As its name suggests, Supports/Surfaces was interested in articulating what its artists felt were all too readily ignored aspects of painting: basic concepts like ‘support’ and ‘surface,’ for example, and the presence of painting as a product of individual labor. At the same time, these artists were very much interested in painting and its own peculiar history. Daniel Dezeuze points out that he was looking for a means of “revolting against the art world and the world in general without having to make anti-art.” (Raphael Rubinstein, Polychrome Profusion: Selected Art Criticism: 1990 – 2002.) In fact, those involved with Supports/Surfaces, as Rubinstein also notes, were some of the few French artists of the period to engage directly with American Painting from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field, albeit doing so within the context of their Maoist discourse.
Very Good copy with light wear/age/foxing. Comes with original 1993 illustrated exhibition flyer inserted.
2001, English
Softcover, 420 pages, 28.1 x 21.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Richter Verlag / Dusseldorf
$220.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the now out-of-print Dan Graham catalogue raisonne, published to accompany a major traveling exhibition held from 13 January to 25 March 2001 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Serralves, 21 June to 30 September at the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris from 25 November to 10 February 2002 in Kroller Müller Museum in Otterlo and May to August 2002 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki.
Since the 1960s, Dan Graham has carved out a unique space in the field of contemporary art, combing his work as an artist and as a critic of architecture and art in a unique fusion of theory and practice. From the outset, Graham engaged seriously with the aesthetic and political ramifications of Structuralism, taking the artist's critical perceptions of reality to an increasingly conceptual level. His early articles grappled with the question of architecture, arguing that behind the high-rise apartment complexes and housing projects spreading over the Western world lay the phenomenon of economic and social rationalization. Since the beginning of the 1970s Graham has pursued these and other observations with installations, videos, films and large-scale pavilions that serve as thought-models for his critical insights.
This catalogue raisonne provides a comprehensive, chronological documentation of 165 works and writings from 1965 until the present day, and includes articles, written sketches, Graham's reports about his artistic activities, art critical essays, film stills, architectural models, pavilions and video rooms, as well as an extensive bibliography. With essays by preeminent critic/philosophers Benjamin Buchloh and Thierry de Duve, among others, the result is a complete and edifying look at one of the premier artist-scholars of the past thirty years.
VG in VG dust jacket with some shelf rubbing, preserved now under mylar wrap.
2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 360 pages, 21 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Ediciones Polígrafa / Barcelona
$140.00 - In stock -
Since the mind-1960s, Dan Graham (Urbana, Illinois 1942) has produced an important body of art and theory that engages in a highly analytical discourse on the historial, social and ideological functions of contemporary cultural systems. He is a highly influential figure in the field of contemporary art, both as a practitioner of conceptual art and a well-versed art critic and theorist. Graham s work questions the relationship between people and architecture and the psychological effects it has on us. His work highlights the awkwardness that occurs when intimate moments or details are rudimentarily broadcast in an impersonal manner, as he continues to investigate the voyeuristic act of seening onself reflected, whilst at the same time watching others. This monograph analyzes his main works and collects some of seminal writings by the artist.
With a text by Alexander Alberro.
First English hardcover edition, now out-of-print.
2007, English
Softcover, 336 pages, 26 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College / New York
$380.00 - In stock -
First edition of this very special, now very rare catalogue published in 2007 on the occasion of the major survey exhibition Witness To Her Art, featuring the work of Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and the seminal magazine Eau de Cologne, published by gallerist Monika Sprüth between 1985 and 1989. Profusely illustrated throughout with artworks by all artists, reproductions of important artist publications, installation views, and many works by other related artists, alongside texts by Adrian Piper, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Monika Sprüth, Rhea Anastas, Michael Brenson, Norton Batkin, Johanna Burton, Aruna D’Souza, Pamela Franks, Janet Kraynak, David Levi Strauss, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Ann Reynolds, Hamza Walker, and many more.
Publisher's blurb:
"This radical new study aims to change the way that some of the most influential artists of the past 40 years are seen—all of them women. Emphasizing questions of autonomy, critical intelligence and artistic intention, "Witness to Her Art" presents works by Adrian Piper, Mona Hatoum, Cady Noland, Jenny Holzer, Kara Walker, Daniela Rossell and "Eau de Cologne," a magazine published by gallerist Monika Sprüth. The artworks are accompanied by original writings by the artists, contemporaneous criticism and newly commissioned essays by Pamela Franks, Aruna D'Souza, Johanna Burton, David Levi Strauss, Hamza Walker and Cuauhtémoc Medina. The ambitious works presented and interpreted herein invite us to consider the impact of the feminist revolution across generations while rendering obsolete any stigma associated with shows or catalogues limited to women artists. Taking its lead from Conceptualism, feminism, and from its included artists, "Witness to Her Art" reaches for art history's capacity as a medium of world-making."
Highly recommended. Very Good copy with light edge wear to stiff boards.
2019, English / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Ed. of 600,
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
LE BAL Books / Paris
$240.00 - Out of stock
"A picture is and is not a key, a key is chemistry, no key is chemistry, chemistry is poison, poison is risk, risk is poison, risk is painting, painting is hiding, in hiding new colors emerge, new colors are new dangers, dangers are desires, desires are keys"—Extract from Malva Alcea (Sigmar's Mallow) by Harald Szeemann
Published by LE BAL on the occasion of the exhibition and now out-of-print, this publication displays a collection of never-seen-before photographs which all belong to the artist's son, Georg Polke. Designed by Roger Willems, the book highlights the jubilant and almost cheeky relationship that the artist had with the photographic medium during a key creative period : 1970-1986. Page by page, the many photographic genres and experiments usual to Polke's practice reveal themselves, creating a body of work partly family album, partly road movie. The book also insists on the important place the chemical and photographic experiments held in the painter's practice.
Produced in a small edition of 600 copies, the book also contains a rare 1985 interview of the artist by Bice Curiger as well as texts by Bernard Marcadé, Bice Curiger, Fritz Emslander and Harald Szeemann. A key publication on the photographic practice of Polke and a treasure trove archive of rare images!
As New copy.
1969, French
Softcover w. card pages, unpaginated, 20 x 12 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Editions Agentzia / Paris
$200.00 - In stock -
Extremely rare copy of Artificiata I, Manfred Mohr's first artist book, published in 1969 by Editions Agentzia, Paris. The drawings Mohr made for the book in 1968/1969 were his last drawings before he started using the computer in his work in 1969. With letterpress printed wrappers and beautiful thick card stock pages printed in black and white, Artificiata I features Mohr’s graphic visual poetry based on mathematical equations and algorithmic geometry. Includes an introduction by Algerian computer music composer Pierre Barbaud.
Published as no. 22 in the Editions Agentzia series, founded and directed by Jochen Gerz and Jean-François Bory, who also published individual artists’ books by Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Annalies Klophaus, Carlos A. Sitta, Sarenco, Jean-Claude Moineau, and Michele Perfetti among others.
Manfred Mohr (b. 1938) is considered a pioneer of digital art based on algorithms. Starting his career as an action painter and jazz musician, after discovering Prof. Max Bense's information aesthetics in the early 1960's Mohr's artistic thinking was radically changed. Within a few years, his art transformed from abstract expressionism to computer generated algorithmic geometry. Further encouraged by discussions with the computer music composer Pierre Barbaud whom he met in 1967, Mohr programmed his first computer drawings in 1969. Since then all his artwork is produced exclusively with the computer. Mohr develops and writes algorithms for his visual ideas. Since 1973, he generates 2-D semiotic graphic constructs using multidimensional hypercubes.
Very Good, tight copy, with some edge wear to the back cover.
2016, English
Softcover, 600 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$85.00 - Out of stock
Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) is best known for his decisive role in the emergence and establishment of Conceptual Art in the late 1960s.
This extensively researched publication documents the first exhibition about his life and work, which reassess his role as one of the distinctive characters in twentieth-century exhibition-making, while recognizing his atypical, inquisitive, and free-spirited genius.
Siegelaub was also a gallerist, independent curator, publisher, researcher, archivist, collector, and bibliographer. Often credited as the ‘Father of Conceptual Art’, he was (and remains) a seminal influence on curators, artists, and cultural thinkers, internationally and in Amsterdam, where he settled in the 1990s.
With revolutionary projects such as the Xerox Book, he set the blueprint for the presentation and dissemination of conceptual practices. In the process, he redefined the exhibition space, which could now be a book, a poster, an announcement, or reality at large.
Siegelaub’s radical reassessment of the conditions of art resonated deeply with the iconoclastic views of his contemporaries Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Daniel Buren, Jan Dibbets, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, among others, with whom he developed close working relationships.
Texts by Beatrix Ruf, Leontine Coelewij , Sara Martinetti and more.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 12 December 2015 – 17 April 2016.
1977, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 308 pages, 24 x 16 cm
1st UK Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$80.00 - In stock -
First 1977 hardcover edition of Passages in Modern Sculpture, Rosalind E. Krauss classic study of major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.
"...Krauss's book is undoubtedly the best treatment of its subject yet written. As a textbook, it ought to raise the level of discourse in art history classes, for it is the meaning, not the chronology, of sculpture since Rodin that is the book's central concern. Krauss avoids the conventional plodding survey and divides the book into a sequence of 'case studies' that permit sustained attention to specific works and artists. In so doing, she attempts to trace a 'tradition' to stand behind that portion of American sculpture of the past 15 years which she espouses critically."—Art in America
"Distinguished art historian and critic Rosalind Krauss analyzes with exceptional clarity and insight the major works that have led 20th century sculpture from the traditional and figurative to the revolutionary conceptual art of the 1970s—an art which has developed a new 'syntax' that discards 'narrative' for instantaneous impact and boldly breaks new ground. Beginning with a penetrating study of Rodin's modernity in rejecting 'narrative' in his 'The Gates of Hell,' she moves successively through detailed examinations of futurism, constructivism, Duchamps' 'readymades,' Brancusi, David Smith's 'Tanktotem,' sculptural realism, and the introduction of light, motion, and theatrical elements into sculpture by Picabia, Calder, Oldenburg, and others right up to younger sculptors like Carl Andre, Blochner, and others [including Robert Morris, Don Judd, Richard Serra, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, and Michael Heizer]. As critic and theorist, Krauss makes demands that will challenge even the most sophisticated."—Publishers Weekly
Rosalind E. Krauss, editor and cofounder of October magazine, is University Professor at Columbia University. She is the author of The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, The Optical Unconscious, Bachelors, and Perpetual Inventory, all published by the MIT Press.
Very Good in VG dust jacket designed by Krauss with interior architect Alan Buchsbaum!
2023, English
Softcover, 24 x 17cm
Ed. of 300,
Published by
Negative Press / Melbourne
$50.00 - In stock -
From 1982–2020, Nixon produced over 500 printed images in relief, intaglio, stencil and planographic processes. While many of the works in his print oeuvre are unique, Nixon also produced works in small editions. From 2015 till his passing in 2020, Nixon worked with printer and publisher Negative Press.
Known predominantly as a painter, John Nixon was also an inventive and prolific printmaker. This new book documents two exhibitions of Nixon’s editions at Negative Press, featuring works made from across the artist's career, alongside personal responses to the prints by curator Sue Cramer, archivist & designer Elizabeth Boon and artist & publisher Trent Walter.
Published in an edition of 300 copies.
1999, English
Softcover, 218 pages, 30.5 x 23 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Fine Arts Gallery - University of Maryland / Baltimore
$150.00 - In stock -
Scarce first extensive monographic catalogue published in conjunction with Adrian Piper's major survey exhibition held at the Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore, October 14, 1999 - January 15, 2000. Traveled to the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, October 4, 2001 - January 13, 2002. Profusely illustrated in black-and-white and colour, alongside accompanying texts by Piper, Maurice Berger, Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer, Laura Cottingham, and Dara Meyers-Kingsley. With illustrated checklist and bibliography. Cover features her "Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features" (1981) work.
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper (b. 1948) is an American conceptual artist and philosopher. Her work addresses ostracism, otherness, racial passing and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media. The only African American in the early conceptual art movement of the 1960s, she has profoundly influenced the language and form of Conceptual art in America and is widely recognised today through her equally important writings.
Very Good-Fine first edition. Light tanning to edges and light bump to top-right corner.
English / German
Softcover (+ CD), 188 pages, 18 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Errant Bodies / Berlin
Smart Art Press / Michigan
$70.00 - Out of stock
First English edition, long out-of-print. CD included.
Site of Sound is an anthology focusing on current trends in experimental music, sound art and audio theories, featuring writings, visual works, interviews and artist projects by leading experimental composers, sound-artists, and architects whose work concerns itself with architectural and acoustic space, sound sculpture, field/environmental investigation and recording, and site-specificity. Complementing this are theoretical, fictional and diaristic writings by contemporary authors, cartographers and ecologists."—publisher's statement.
Edited by Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden. Artists and contributors include Alison Knowles, Achim Wollscheid, Jalal Toufic, Hildegard Westerkamp, Phillip Corner, Christina Kubisch, Giancarlo Toniutti, Jake Tilson, Brandon LaBelle, Rolf Julius, Leif Elggren, CM von Hausswolff, Steve Peters, Ralf Wehowsky, David Dunn, Christof Migone, Loren Chasse, Moniek Darge, Michael Brewster, Max Eastley, Tim Robinson, Steve Roden, Rupert Loydell, Tom Marioni, Pierre Koenig, the Stalacpipe Organ at Luray Caverns, WrK, Minoru Sato, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Jio Shimizu. Includes audio CD featuring many of the featured works.
As New.
2007, English
Hardcover (clothbound), 58 pages (w. fold-outs), 28 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Hammer / Los Angeles
$40.00 - In stock -
Hardcover artist's book published on the occasion of Mathias Poledna’s Crystal Palace, a travelling exhibition/commission organized by the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Crystal Palace is a 35mm film installation comprised of a small number of long, static shots of the montane rainforest landscape of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Using tightly framed medium-close to medium-wide shots, the film’s carefully selected scenes focus on the complex patterns, textures, and the overall abstract qualities of this environment, seemingly without human presence. Only subtle changes in light and movement in foliage provide visual cues to the passing of time. The film is accompanied by a dense and highly edited soundtrack created from on-location and archival field recordings that oscillate between distinct insect and bird sounds, and drone-like noise.
Poledna’s title, Crystal Palace, evokes the monumental glass-and-steel structure of that name constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, an important precursor of modern architecture and industrialized construction that was built to present the newest products of the capitalist economy, accompanied by exotic displays, fauna and flora. Poledna’s work explores how meaning becomes attached to images and sounds; it creates a complex tension between a specific place, its cinematic appearance, and historical concepts circulating around it. In Crystal Palace, Poledna specifically references Sounds of a Tropical Rainforest, a 1951 album of staged field recordings produced by Folkways Records for the American Museum of Natural History to accompany an exhibition about indigenous Amazonian people.
Poledna’s work is also informed by film history, particularly the interconnections between early film and popular and avant-garde cinema, as well as the history of visual ethnography. Unlike traditional documentary and ethnographic film, Crystal Palace lacks an authoritative voice as it investigates a foreign place through an extremely narrow focus and highly subjective framing. While it presents itself as a fragmentary document of an existing landscape and its history, its images seem to deviate only slightly from our common assumptions of how a tropical rainforest might appear. The images’ virtual motionlessness and extreme depth of field, which paradoxically makes them appear flat, enforces a nonobjective dimension in the work, which, along with the intense soundtrack, suggests the physiological experience of abstract and structural film.
Very Good copy with buckle to boards and wave to inner edge pages.
1974, Italian
Softcover, 198 pages, 27.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Casabella / Milan
$450.00 - Out of stock
The extremely collectable book of the movement, Architettura "Radicale" was published by Casabella Milan in 1974 and collects Navone's thesis with Orlandoni, forming an unsurpassed critical essay on the new avant-garde architecture and radical design of Italy (and further afield) that rose out of the 1960s. With an introduction by the great designer and editor Andrea Branzi, this volume contains over 150 black and white illustrations of projects and works by Archizoom, Superstudio, Alessandro Mendini, Gianni Pettena, UFO Group, Raimund Abraham, Lapo Binazzi, Andrea Branzi, James Gowan, Rem Koolhaas, Ugo La Pietra, Eduardo Paolozzi, Gaetano Pesce, Walter Pichler, Ettore Sottsass and many others. Includes a very important bibliography and profiles on the designers. A stunning piece of printed design history, now very rarely seen.
Good-Very Good copy with light general cover and corner wear, tanning to edges.
1999, German
Softcover + CD, 230 pages, 20.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Wien / Vienna
$30.00 - In stock -
First edition w. CD, published in 1998 to accompany the exhibition Crossings – Art to Hear and See, Kunsthalle Wien, curated by Cathrin Pichler and Edek Bartz. "CROSSINGS" is about the meeting of music and visual arts. An encounter that was expressed in many facets and forms in the 20th century, featuring works by: Mario Airò, Richard Artschwager, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Angela Bulloch, John Cage, Henning Christiansen, Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, Stan Douglas, Daniel Egg, Angus Fairhurst, Jochen Gerz, Douglas Gordon, Franz Graf, Dan Graham, Henrik Hakansson, Russel Haswell, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Dick Higgins, Gary Hill, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Arto Lindsay, Stephan von Huene, Lee Jaffe, Mike Kelley, Jon Kessler, Milan Knízák, Bernhard Leitner, Hans-Peter Litscher, Christian Marclay, Charles Long, Alvin Lucier, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, Flora Neuwirth with Olga Neuwirth & NICJOB, Yoko Ono, Albert Oehlen, Nam June Paik, Paul Panhuysen, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stephen Prina, Alan Rath, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Sarkís, Christoph Steinbrener, Wolfgang Stengel, Ned Sublette, Lawrence Weiner, Peter Weibel.
Very Good with audio CD featuring many of the artists above.
1970/1971, French
Softcover, 2 volumes, unpaginated, 28.5 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Marie Concorde / Paris
$400.00 - Out of stock
Both of the only volumes ever produced of this wonderful French avant-garde journal, published in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s. A visual manifesto against the prudishness of the times, KITSCH presented hundreds of illustrations of mostly erotic, fetish and fantastic/grotesque artwork by artists from all over the world, and spanning generations, with both issues wrapped in the most striking Tom Wesselmann covers. KITSCH 1 includes Toshio Saeki, Guido Crepax, Richard Linder, Robert Crumb, Guy Bourdin, Petr Herel, Hannes Jahn, Roman Cieślewicz, Ben Vautier, Christian Bour, Jacques Sternberg, Roland Topor, Jim, Allen Jones, Thomas Weir, alongside photo essays on upskirt polaroids, Satanik, Diabolik, fashion and more. KITSCH 2 includes Aslan, Roy Lichtenstein, Virgil Finlay, Jim Osborne, Ronald Lipking, Greg Irons, George Grosz, Egon Schiele, Mel Ramos, alongside photo essays on subjects such as "Pop Art", "Human Concern" and Paris' "Pigalle" district, further featuring work by H.C.Westermann, Paul Thek, Edward Keinholz, William Tunberg, Christian Schad, William Weegee, James Rosenquist, Frank Gallo, Tom Wesselmann, and many more.
Very good copies both, light wear.
2009, English / Spanish
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 199 pages, 31 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
MoMA / New York
Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia / Madrid
$65.00 - In stock -
First edition hardcover comprehensive catalogue on the avant-garde Latin American artists León Ferrari and Mira Schendel, published on the occasion of the major travelling exhibition organised by Luis Pérez-Oramas at MoMA, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the Fundação Iberê Camargo, Porto Alegre, 2009—2010. Profusely illustrated with essays by Luis Perez-Oramas, Andrea Giunta, and Rodrigo Naves.
León Ferrari (Argentine, b. 1920) and Mira Schendel (Brazilian, b. Switzerland, 1919–1988) are considered among the most significant artists working in Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century. Their works address language as a major visual subject matter: the visual body of language, the embodiment of voices as words and gestures, and language as a metaphor of the worldly aspect of human existence through the eloquence of naming and writing. They produced their works in the neighboring countries of Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1960s and 1980s, when the question of language was particularly central to Western culture due to the central role taken by post-structuralism, semiotics, and the philosophy of language. Although their drawings, sculptures, and paintings are contemporary with the birth of Conceptualism, they are distinctively different, and have not yet been exhibited in their entirety in the United States.
As New.
1973 / 1997, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 173 x 213 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
University of Chicago Press / Chicago
$70.00 - Out of stock
“Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or 'dematerialized.'”—Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years
In 1973 the critic and curator Lucy R. Lippard published Six Years, a book with possibly the longest subtitle in the bibliography of art: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference book of information on some esthetic boundaries: consisting of a bibliography into which are inserted a fragmented text, art works, documents, interviews, and symposia, arranged chronologically and focused on so-called conceptual or information or idea art with mentions of such vaguely designated areas as minimal, anti-form, systems, earth, or process art, occurring now in the Americas, Europe, England, Australia, and Asia (with occasional political overtones) edited and annotated by Lucy R. Lippard. Six Years, sometimes referred to as a conceptual art object itself, not only described and embodied the new type of art-making that Lippard was intent on identifying and cataloging, it also exemplified a new way of criticizing and curating art. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that offers an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists—a historical survey and essential reference book for the period. Lippard provides a new preface to this 1997 reprint edition.
Includes: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young
"Essential source book of documentation of the Conceptual Art, Land Art, Earth Art, Arte Povera, Minimal Art, Performance Art, Video Art movements. Documents the activities, day by day, month by month, year by year of artists including Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Dennis Adrian, Carl Andre, Eleanor Antin, Keith Arnatt, Art-Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Asher, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Frederick Barthelme, N.E. Thing Co., Josef Beuys, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Stanley Brouwn, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Donald Burgy, Ian Burn, Jack Burnham, James Lee Byars, Hanne Darboven, Agnes Denes, Jan Dibbets, Peter Downsbrough, Gerald Ferguson, Rafael Ferrer, Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Dan Graham, Guerrilla Art Action Group, Hans Haacke, Charles Harrison, Michael Heizer, Douglas Huebler, Peter Hutchinson, Stephen Kaltenbach, Allan Kaprow, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, John Latham, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Bruce McLean, Walter de Maria, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Sigmar Polke, Mel Ramsden, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Robert Ryman, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Seth Siegelaub, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Athena Tacha Spear, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Franz Erhard Walther, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, William Wiley, Ian Wilson, La Monte Young and others. "The unusual form of this provocative book intentionally reflects the chaotic network of ideas connected with so-called conceptual art or information art or idea art, in America and abroad, from 1966 to 1972. Arranged as a continuous bibliographical chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents - including texts by, and taped discussions with and among, the artists involved - and annotations by Lucy R. Lippard, the book has the informal quality of a lively contemporary forum. Only a minimum of order is imposed; for the most part the reader is left to confront the curious compendium of information on his or her own, to follow changing ideas and artistic developments over the six-year period, to witness the gradual (and controversial) "dematerialization" of the art object." -- publisher's statement."
Good—Very Good copy with general light shelf wear and tanning to spine.
2023, English
Softcover, 384 pages, 13.5 x 20 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$58.00 - In stock -
A collection of Dan Graham's interviews and conversations with a wide array of individuals from various backgrounds and disciplines.
Dan Graham- Some Rockin' is a compilation of fifteen interviews (two of them previously unpublished) between Dan Graham and artist friends, architects, musicians, art critics, and curators from various parts of our world. In these interviews Graham's intense interest in and observation of cultural phenomena such as rock music, urbanism, architecture, corporate culture, and art world politics and their historical development overlaps and interferes with the articulated interest of the interviewers in Graham's art, sense of humour, attitude, and point of view in regard of a huge variety of topics. Two essays, besides the "Introduction," are added to this compilation- the essay "The Museum in Evolution" by Dan Graham, and an essay by the editor, Gregor Stemmrich, on the development and far reaching implications of Graham's art.
2023, English
Softcover, 416 pages
Published by
Primary Information / New York
$84.00 - Out of stock
Published by Steve Lawrence and edited with Peter Hujar and Andrew Ullrick, Newspaper was published in New York City between 1968 and 1971.
Newspaper was a wordless, picture-only periodical that ran for fourteen issues and featured the disparate practices of over forty artists. With an editorial focus on placing appropriated material alongside new works, the periodical sought to codify a visual language of high and low culture that represented contemporary society in the late 1960s. While largely overlooked in art-historical discourse, Newspaper showcased many of the most revered artists working in the United States at the time, as well as an emerging coterie of queer artists.
The mid to late sixties was a flourishing period for artists experimenting with new media formats such as books, records, and magazines to create or distribute their work. Newspaper was one of the first artist-published tabloids of its era, preceding Andy Warhol’s Interview and Les Levine’s Culture Hero, both of which debuted in 1969. However, in contrast to other tabloids, Newspaper focused strictly on images.
At a time when photography was not being exhibited regularly in galleries, Newspaper provided an alternative exhibition space for the medium and some of the era’s greatest photographers. The publication’s large size and unbound format encouraged readers to take it apart and hang its pages, which was how Newspaper was installed at the Museum of Modern Art’s influential Information show in 1970.
This is not to say that Newspaper only existed within the narrow confines of the art world, far from it. It lived within (and shared contributors with) a robust network of underground and queer periodicals like The New York Review of Sex, Rags, and Gay Power, among others. Yet, unlike many of these tabloids, Newspaper has largely disappeared from the discourse around underground magazines, queer publishing, and artists’ periodicals.
All fourteen issues of Newspaper are compiled in this volume for the first time.
Featured artists include: Diane Arbus, Art Workers Coalition, Richard Avedon, Clyde Baines, Sheyla Baykal, Peter Beard, Brigid Berlin, Richard Bernstein, Ann Douglas, Paul Fisher, Maurice Hogenboom, Peter Hujar, Scott Hyde, Christo and Jeanne-Claude Javacheff, Ray Johnson, Edwin Klein, Yayoi Kusama, Gerald Laing, Dorothea Lange, Steve Lawrence, Jeff Lew, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Mercado, Duane Michals, Jack Mitchell, Forrest “Frosty” Myers, Billy Name, Stephen Paley, Warner Pearson, Jurgen Warner Piepke, Charles Pratt, Joseph Raffael, Mel Ramos, Lilo Raymond, Ruspoli-Rodriguez, Lucas Samaras, Alan Saret, Bill Schwedler, Leni Sinclair, Norman Snyder, Elizabeth Staal, Stanley Stellar, Terry Stevenson, Paul Thek, Andrew Ullrick, Andy Warhol, William T. Wiley, and May Wilson.
Editor: Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez
Managing Editor: James Hoff
Designer: Rick Myers
Copy editor: Allison Dubinsky
2023, English
Softcover, 686 pages, 21.6 x 17 cm
Published by
Spector Books / Leipzig
$82.00 - In stock -
Subversion does not belong to anyone. It can come from artists who outwit the state or from intelligence agencies who infiltrate the art scene on behalf of the state. But what happens when the two sides meet? After the old state security archives in many Eastern European countries were opened, it became possible for this interaction to be studied in detail. Drawing on scientific essays and artistic contributions, the book shows how the secret police monitored happenings, performance art, and action art and looks at the debates they had about the new art form; it also demonstrates not only how the police documented artistic actions in detail using forensic techniques but also how they manipulated them and sought to thwart them with counter-actions. In addition to this, the book also reveals how artists dealt with the possibility that they were being observed by the secret police and how they now work with the material stored in the archives maintained by the intelligence services.
2023, English / French
Softcover, 40 pages, 20 x 20 cm
Published by
Triangle Books / Brussels
$60.00 - In stock -
This book brings together a series of 30 photographs by André Cadere (Warsaw, 1934 — Paris, 1978). The photographs, which have never before been published in their entirety, capture the artist’s wanderings through New York City during his first trip in November, 1975. He took with him several round bars of wood, including one of his size, which appears in all the photographs. These images imply the idea of walking and displacement that is always associated with Cadere, who is often considered as a sort of itinerant artist or a parasitic figure who inserted himself into places to which he had not been invited. They also capture the very spirit of New York, a city that is always changing, but that nevertheless always manages to retain its uniqueness.
2023, English / French
Hardcover, 224 pages, 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$96.00 - In stock -
Yves Klein may be one of the first European artists to have taken an explicit interest in Aboriginal visual art. This catalog offers a poetic and completely new approach to his work, placed in perspective with the works of twelve Aboriginal artists.
Published on the occasion of the homonymous exhibition held at the Opale Foundation (in Lens, Switzerland), the book Rêver dans le rêve des autres (Dreaming in the dream of others) presents the work of Yves Klein alongside with works by twelve Aboriginal artists (Angkaliya Curtis, Bardayal "Lofty" Nadjamerrek, Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri, Danie Mellor, Dhambit Munungurr, Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Ignatia Djanghara, Paddy Bedford, Waigan Djanghara, Wattie Karruwara, Judy Watson, and Paji Honeychild Yankarr), showing how the link between the French artist and the world of the Australian Aborigines is anything but arbitrary. Klein was very interested in the non-Western: works from his youth have been discovered in his archives that were later identified as copies of Aboriginal motifs, and his writings confirm that he was familiar with the cave paintings of north-western Australia. In the '50s, Aboriginal art, which was little known, was seen not as the expression of a different spirit, but rather as the survival of a vanished spirit, in short, that of the Neolithic: Yves Klein, like his parents, was fascinated by prehistory.
Yves Klein, born in 1928 in Nice, had as a first vocation to be a judoka. It was only back in Paris, in 1954, that he dedicated himself fully to art, setting out on his "adventure into monochrome".
Animated by a quest to "liberate colour from the prison that is the line", Yves Klein directed his attention to the monochrome which, to him, was the only form of painting that allowed to "make visible the absolute".
By choosing to express feeling rather than figurative form, Yves Klein moved beyond ideas of artistic representation, conceiving the work of art instead as a trace of communication between the artist and the world; invisible truth made visible. His works, he said, were to be "the ashes of his art", traces of that which the eye could not see.
Yves Klein's practice revealed of new way of conceptualising the role of the artist, conceiving his whole life as an artwork. "Art is everywhere that the artist goes", he once declared. According to him, beauty existed everywhere, but in a state of invisibility. His task was to to capture beauty wherever it might be found, in matter as in air.
The artist used blue as the vehicle for his quest to capture immateriality and the infinite. His celebrated bluer-than-blue hue, soon to be named "IKB" (International Klein Blue), radiates colourful waves, engaging not only the eyes of the viewer, but in fact allowing us see with our souls, to read with our imaginations.
From monochromes, to the void, to his "technique of living brushes" or "Anthropometry"; by way of his deployment of nature's elements in order to manifest their creative life-force; and his use of gold as a portal to the absolute; Yves Klein developed a ground-breaking practice that broke down boundaries between conceptual art, sculpture, painting, and performance.
Just before dying, Yves Klein told a friend, "I am going to go into the biggest studio in the world, and I will only do immaterial works."
Between May 1954 and June 6, 1962, the date of his death, Yves Klein burned his life to make a flamboyant work that marked his era and still shines today.
Texts by Georges Petitjean, Wally Caruana, Didier Semin, Kim Akerman.