World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
CLOSED FOR SUMMER.
RE-OPENING 01.02.24
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2007, English
Hardcover (pressed cloth w. plastic sleeve), 218 pages, 21 x 26.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst / Zürich
$1000.00 - Out of stock
One of the great artist books of our time, Marc Camille Chaimowicz's The World of Interiors disappeared from existence immediately after its publication, becoming a book of legend.
Awarded "The Most Beautiful Swiss Book" in 2007, The World of Interiors was conceived and realized by Chaimowicz (b. post-war Paris) on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich. In the guise of a perfectly reproduced copy of an issue of the famous World Of Interiors magazine, the artist conceived this publication as a reference monograph and a source catalogue, ranging from his first post-Pop scatter installations to works realized in the 1990s. Looking back over nearly 30 years of work, this issue of World Of Interiors is beautifully détourned by Chaimowicz through inserting and collaging his own work (drawings, designs, paintings, photographs of installations, sculptures, his own domestic interiors, furniture, objects), personal writings, clippings from other magazines, references to Cocteau, Proust, Flaubert, Grey, Genet, Giacometti, and texts by contributing writers throughout its glossy pages. Legend has it (and we have this from the best sources) that the publishers received a 'cease and desist' letter from World Of Interiors' publisher Conde Nast immediately after its release and the majority of the print-run was destroyed, making this a very scarce and sought after book. The perfect follow-up Chaimowicz book to his gorgeous "Café du Reve" from 1985.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present. His works are in the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Victoria and Albert Museum collections.
A fine example of a very collectable and special book, wrapped in original rose cloth hardcover, protected under mylar wrap..
2010, English / German / French
Folio of five looseleaf pattern sheets, a letter in facsimile, and catalogue, colour offset printed, 21.5 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Secession / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - In stock -
Out-of-print and collectible artist’s portfolio by Marc Camille Chaimowicz with five pattern sheets, a letter from Chaimowicz in facsimile, and an illustrated catalogue with essay by Silvia Eiblmayr (German/English and French/English). Produced by the Secession in a limited edition and published in cooperation with Musée La Piscine, Roubaix.
Born in 1947, Paris, Marc Camille Chaimowicz is a London-based artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between fine and applied arts, masculine and feminine, public and private, past and present.
Like New copy.
2022, English
Flexcover (clothbound), 248 pages, 21 x 26 cm
Published by
Les Presses Du Reel / Paris
$72.00 - In stock -
Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Marc Camille Chaimowicz – Zig Zag and Many Ribbons… at MAMC Saint-Etienne in 2022—2023, this reference monograph revisits the conceptual and sensorial developments pursued by the artist since the 1970s.
Includes a ribbon drawn by the artist as an inserted bookmark. Edited by Marc Camille Chaimowicz and Anna Clifford. Text by Marie Canet. Designed by Zak Kyes.
Born in the aftermath of World War II (in 1947 in Paris) of a Polish father and a French mother, Marc Camille Chaimowicz moved as a child to the United Kingdom. He studied at Ealing, Camberwell, and the Slate School of Art in London. In new artistic times, careful to bring art and life closer, often using performance, the life of Marc Camille Chaimowicz has become a great workshop. Living in the exhibition spaces, he sets up hotels entrances, decorates them with his own artefacts, and serves there some tea to visitors with musical background. When it became an official art practice which was no longer subversive, Chaimowicz abandoned performance art. From 1975 to 1979, he designed the interior of his Approach Road flat. Wallpapers, curtains, videos he made while performing in his own decor: everything had been tailored-imagined, drawn, and conceived to turn his interior into a room conducive to reverie. From the 1980s onwards, decors and furniture set like in a theatre scenography took their place in museums. Since then, hundreds of exhibitions have featured the interiors series of this international artist.
Marie Canet is a French art critic, independent curator and professor of aesthetics at the Villa Arson (Nice).
1981, English
Softcover, 48 pages, 40 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Charles E. Tuttle / Tokyo
$170.00 - In stock -
Scarce first Japanese edition (entirely in English language), published in Tokyo by Charles Tuttle, of this beautifully produced over-sized 1981 book by H. R. Giger. Foreword by Timothy Leary.
In 1981, a year after being awarded the Oscar for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for Alien, the book H.R. GIGER N.Y. CITY was published. This series of post Alien works, the result of an intense period of non-stop painting, literally day and night, were inspired by Giger's trip to New York City and a template which his colleague Cornelius de Fries, brought back from one of his excursions into the electronic industry. The stencil was actually a sheet of scrap metal from which electrical components had been punched out. Alongside these incredible works are drawings, articles, press clippings, posters and polaroids from Giger's time in New York City.
Fantastic Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer Hans Rudolf “Ruedi” Giger was born in 1940, the son of a chemist. He spoke of a father who viewed art as a "breadless profession", and strongly encouraged his son to enter into pharmaceutics. Despite this, in 1962, he moved to Zürich, where he studied Architecture and industrial design at the School of Applied Arts until 1970. Giger's style and thematic execution have been hugely influential. His design for the Alien was inspired by his painting Necronom IV and earned him an Oscar in 1980. His books of paintings, particularly Necronomicon and Necronomicon II (1985) and the frequent appearance of his art in Omni magazine continued his rise to international prominence. Giger is also well known for artwork on several music recording albums. His most distinctive stylistic innovation is that of a representation of human bodies and machines in a cold, interconnected relationship, he described as "biomechanical". His paintings often display fetishistic sexual imagery. His main influences were painters Ernst Fuchs and Salvador Dalí. He was also a personal friend of Timothy Leary. Giger suffered from night terrors and his paintings are all to some extent inspired by his experiences with that particular sleep disorder, making his first paintings as a means of art therapy. In 1998 Giger acquired the Château St. Germain in Gruyères, Switzerland, and it now houses the H. R. Giger Museum, a permanent repository of his work.
Good copy, tight binding with some corner cover wear, tanning to page edges and foxing to preliminary pages.
2023, English
Softcover, 189 pages, 28 x 20.5 cm
Ed. of 700,
Published by
The Manhattan Art Journal / New York
$55.00 - In stock -
The long-awaited premiere issue of The Manhattan Art Journal, the printed edition of The Manhattan Art Review. Edited by Sean Tatol and designed by Becca Abbe, Vol. 1, Issue 1 features writings, letters, interviews, reviews, The Melbourne Art Review, comics, and literary quotes, with contributions by Jessica Almereyda, Anthony Atlas, Brian Block, Chris Camperchioli, Noah Dillon, Marguerite Duras, Michael Eby, Andy Giannakakis, Laszlo Horvath, Ella Howells, Cameron Hurst, Domenic Hutchins, Carmen-Sibha Keiso, Bill Kemmler, Eydís Klej, Adam Lehrer, Mathieu Malouf, Marc Matchak, Lucas Matheson, Christian Oldham Tannon Reckling, Libby Rothfeld, Jake S., Audrey Schmidt, Sophy Schulman, Mitzi Sfarzada, Myles Starr, Sean Tatol, Dylan Taylor, Luka Usmiani, Adrian Wilson, and Jarrod Zlatic, interviews by Ryan Cullen, Famous Art Guy, Carmen-Sibha Keiso, and Ross Simonini, and comics by Andrew Newell Walther.
Edition of 700 copies.
2015, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 592 pages, 24 x 18.5 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$89.00 - In stock -
Essays spanning three decades by one of the most rigorous art thinkers of our time grapple with formal and historical paradigms in twentieth century art.
These influential essays by the noted critic and art historian Benjamin Buchloh have had a significant impact on the theory and practice of art history. Written over the course of three decades and now collected in one volume, they trace a history of crucial artistic transitions, iterations, and paradigmatic shifts in the twentieth century, considering both the evolution and emergence of artistic forms and the specific historical moment in which they occurred.
Buchloh's subject matter ranges through various moments in the history of twentieth-century American and European art, from the moment of the retour à l'ordre of 1915 to developments in the Soviet Union in the 1920s to the beginnings of Conceptual art in the late 1960s to the appropriation artists of the 1980s. He discusses conflicts resulting from historical repetitions (such as the monochrome and collage/montage aesthetics in the 1910s, 1950s, and 1980s), the emergence of crucial neo-avantgarde typologies, and the resuscitation of obsolete genres (including the portrait and landscape, revived by 1980s photography). Although these essays are less monographic than those in Buchloh's earlier collection, Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry, two essays in this volume are devoted to Marcel Broodthaers, whose work remains central to Buchloh's theoretical concerns. Engaging with both formal and historical paradigms, Buchloh situates himself productively between the force fields of formal theory and historical narrative, embracing the discrepancies and contradictions between them and within individual artistic trajectories.
Contents
Formalism and Historicity (1977) • Marcel Broodthaers: Allegories of the Avant-Garde (1980) • Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression: Notes on the Return of Representation in European Painting (1981) • Allegorical Procedures: Appropriations and Montage in Contemporary Art (1982) • The Museum Fictions of Marcel Broodthaers (1983) • From Faktura to Factography (1984) • Readymade, Objet Trouvé, Idée Reçue (1985) • The Primary Colors for the Second Time: A Paradigm Repetition of the Neo-Avantgarde (1986) • Cold War Constructivism (1986) • Conceptual Art 1962–1969: From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of Institutions (1989) • Residual Resemblance: Three Notes on the Ends of Portraiture (1994) • Sculpture: Publicity and the Poverty of Experience (1996)
2014, English
Variable (w. 10 insert colour plates and a thermo printed index)
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Motto / Berlin
Supportico Lopez / Berlin
$80.00 - In stock -
Artist book by sculptor Michael Dean, published in an edition of 500 by Supportico Lopez. Each original edition is bound in a found paperback, each one different, with 10 inserted colour plates of Dean's work, and a thermo printed index.
Out-of-print.
1981, Italian
Softcover, 67 pages, 29.5 × 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Electa / Milan
$290.00 - Out of stock
Here it is - the very rare FIRST ever Memphis book, published by Electa in Italy in 1981!
First edition. Wrapped in a fold-out front and back cover design by Marco Zanini, this very early document of Memphis is almost entirely a visual folio of reproductions of the original drawings by Martine Bedin, Andrea Branzi, Aldo Cibic, Michele De Lucchi, Nathalie du Pasquier, Michael Graves, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Shiro Kuramata, Alessandro Mendini, Paola Navone, Peter Shire, Ettore Sottsass, George Sowden, Matteo Thun, Masanori Umeda and Marco Zanini. Along with an early essay by Barbara Radice (in both Italian and English), this catalogue tells the very beginning of the Memphis story through the original drawings of furniture, objects, lighting and patterns compiled from international architects, artists and designers. The story goes that Ettore Sottsass and his core group encouraged international architects and designers to send their concepts and drawings for new designs for domestic furnishings. In viewing their results through this selection of the drawings, it is clear there was a global design revolution happening and Memphis was about to produce prototypes of these designs that would shock and change the world forever.
A rare opportunity to own this important publication of design history.
Note: This book was briefly re-issued in 2009 in a limited edition - this is however the first printing from 1981.
Very Good copy.
1980, Italian
Softcover, 72 pages, 24 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Studio Forma / Turin
Studio Alchymia / Milan
$300.00 - In stock -
Very rare, very early volume published on the occasion of the exhibition "Elogio Del Banale" at the Venice Biennale, 1980, as part of the 1st International Architecture Exhibition. Conceived by Alessandro Mendini, Daniela Puppa, Paola Navone, this collection and book (directed by Andrea Branzi and designed by Michele de Lucchi) is heavily illustrated throughout with the work and studies of radical Italian design group Studio Alchimia, including many rarely seen early exhibition designs, interiors, furniture, objects, even catalogue decor for Fiorucci. Accompanying texts are by founding members Alessandro Mendini and Franco Raggi, and with an introduction by Barbara Radice. Includes patterns by Paola Navone and photographic studies by Ettore Sottsass throughout. An exceptional piece of printed radical design history, featuring many future Memphis members, published by Studio forma in Turin and Studio Alchymia in Milan.
Studio Alchimia was an iconoclastic, radical design group founded in Italy in 1976 by the Italian Architect Alessandro Guerriero. The Studio Alchimia was composed of designers, whose aim was to design and manufacture exhibition pieces, rather than consumer orientated products. Their products were to be regarded as prototypes / one-offs, leading the way from the principles of modernist design to a bold, new, experimental design style. This style would lead to the formation and popularity of Italian design groups in the 1980′s such as the Memphis Group and the new directions taken by the Alessi company.
Very Good copy.
1972, German / English / French
Vinyl ring-binder (screen printed w. design by E. Ruscha), 650 pages +, 32 x 27 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
documenta / Kassel
$500.00 - Out of stock
Scarce copy of the only edition of the most elaborately designed, and lowest circulated Documenta catalogue, conceived by curator Harald Szeemann to accompany the fifth edition of Documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany.
Subtitled "100 Days of Inquiry into Reality -- Today's Imagery," curated by the team of Harald Szeemann, Jean-Christophe Ammann and Arnold Bode, Documenta 5 followed a lineage of comprehensive shows documenting conceptually and minimally charged artworks curated by Szeemann including Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969), and Happenings and Fluxus (Kunstverein, Köln), 1970. The largest, most expensive and most diverse of any exhibition anywhere, Documenta 5 was criticized in 1972 as being “bizarre…vulgar…sadistic” by art critic and essayist Hilton Kramer and “monstrous… overtly deranged” by art historian and art critic Barbara Rose, yet it still resonates today as one of the most important exhibitions in history. Featuring the works of over 170 artists and an equally expansive variety of materials and subjects drawn from popular cultural materials, architecture, science fiction, kitsch objects, film, advertising, children's art, etc. in addition to the more anticipated international survey of new painting and sculpture - Documenta 5 valiantly attempted to bridge the gap between art, culture, science and the broader society. This massive tome is housed in the iconic orange vinyl-covered, two-ring binder screen printed with the famous ant design by Edward Ruscha. The binder holds a tabbed index of illustrated artist's pages and associated texts and material, largely in German, but also many in English. All registers are present apart from the usual missing 19-25 which were not directly integrated into the catalogue and had to be ordered by the visitor separately to become their own contribution. This very complete copy also includes the additional 80 page, hole-punched Documenta 5 guide book, with floor plans, complete listing of exhibited artworks, list of exhibitions, bibliography, and many gallery, museum and other related advertisements. More than a catalogue, this publication is a piece of art history in itself.
Includes artists: Vito Acconci, Vincenzo Agnetti, Peter Alexander, John de Andrea, Giovanni Anselmo, Arbeitszeit, Archigram, Chuck Arnoldi, Art & Language, Richard Artschwager, Michael Ashkin, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Georg Baselitz, Lothar Baumgarten, Robert Bechtle, Gottfried Bechtold, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Karl Oskar Blase, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, Christian Boltanski, Claudio Bravo, George Brecht, K.P. Brehmer, Marcel Broodthaers, Stanley Brouwn, Günter Brus, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Castelli, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chuck Close, Tony Conrad, Ron Cooper, Bill Copley, Joseph Cornell, Robert Cottingham, Paul Cotton, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, David Deutsch, Jan Dibbets, Herbert Distel, Gino de Dominicis, Marcel Duchamp, John Dugger, Don Eddy, Franz Eggenschwiler, Ger van Elk, Richard Estes, Luciano Fabro, John C. Fernie, Robert Filliou, Jud Fine, Joel Fisher, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Hamish Fulton, Franz Gertsch, Gilbert & George, Ralph Goings, Hubert Gojowczyk, Dan Graham, Walter Grasskamp, Nancy Graves, Hans Haacke, Duane Hanson, Guy Harloff, Michael Harvey, Haus-Rucker-Co, Auguste Herbin, Eva Hesse, Rebecca Horn, Jean Olivier Hucleux, Douglas Huebler, Jörg Immendorff, Will Insley, Rolf Iseli, Ken Jacobs, Neil Jenney, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Joan Jonas, Max G. Kaminski, Howard Kanovitz, Edward Kienholz, Imi Knoebel, Christof Kohlhofer, Jannis Kounellis, Tom Kovachevich, Piotr Kowalski, David Lamelas, Barry Le Va, Jean LeGac, Alfred Leslie, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Ingeborg Luscher, Inge Mahn, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Etienne Martin, Richard McLean, David Medalla, Fernando Melani, Jim Melchert, Mario Merz, Gustav Metzger, Bernd Minnich, Malcolm Morley, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, Hermann Nitsch, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Blinky Palermo, Panamarenko, Giulio Paolini, A.R. Penck, Giuseppe Penone, Vettor Pisani, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Posen, Markus Raetz, Arnulf Rainer, Gerhard Richter, Klaus Rinke, Dorothea Rockburne, Peter Roehr, Allen Ruppersberg, Edward Ruscha, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Ulrich Ruckriem, Robert Ryman, John Salt, Salvo, Lucas Samaras, Paul Sarkisian, Jean-Frederic Schnyder, Ben Schonzeit, Werner Schroeter, HA Schult, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Fritz Schwegler, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Allan Shields, Katharina Sieverding, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Klaus Staeck, Paul Staiger, Jorge Stever, Robert Strubin, Paul Thek, Wayne Thiebaud, Andre Thomkins, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle, Ben Vautier, W + B Hein, Franz Erhard Walther, Robert Watts, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, John Wesley, H.C. Westermann, William Wiley, Rolf Winnewisser, Tom Wudl, Klaus Wyborny, La Monte Young, Peter Young, Gilberto Zorio.
Catalogue also includes Bob Projansky and Seth Siegelaub's "The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement." This "Agreement form has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my [Siegelaub] extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, lawyers, collectors, museum people, critics and other concerned people involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world. The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists' lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it. The Agreement for has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realitites of the art world, particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned. It is expected to be the standard form for the transfer and sale of all contemporary art, and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If the following information does not answer all your questions consult your attorney." -- from Agreement's cover. Copies of the contract are individually included in English, Germany, and French editions.
Very Good, complete (as issued) copy. Very minor wear.
2017—2018, English
Softcover (staple-bound) pamphlets, various pagination, 42 x 20.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Comme des Garçons / Tokyo
$320.00 - Out of stock
Large lot of the printed collaboration between Rei Kawakubo's Comme des Garçons and the estate of American artist Paul Thek. Issued as mail-outs privately by Comme to announce the arrival of each of their 2017—18 collections, and not commercially available, these gorgeous, over-sized, elaborate fold-out leaflets designed by CDG showcase Thek's artworks (paintings, installations, drawings, sculptures, photography, etc) in a series of graphic collaged publications, made possible by Robert Wilson's Watermill Centre and Alexander and Bonin. Very Good, preserved copies, issued and collected individually, now very scarce. A couple with original b/w CDG mailers/envelopes included (not pictured). Included are the publications/posters numbered #1, #2, #5, #9, #10, #12, #16, #21, #23.
American artist Paul Thek (1933-1988) was an elusive sculptor, painter, and one of the first artists to create environments or installations, who came to recognition showing his sculpture in New York galleries in the 1960s. The first works exhibited, which he began making in 1964 and called “meat pieces” as they were meant to resemble flesh, were encased in Plexiglas boxes that recall Minimal sculptures. At the end of the sixties, Thek left for Europe, where he created extraordinary environments, incorporating elements from art, literature, theater, and religion, often employing fragile and ephemeral substances, including wax and latex. His work was presented at documenta 4 and 5 in Kassel (1968, 1972), the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1969), the Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1971), and the Kunstmuseum in Lucerne (1973). He was supported in particular by Harald Szeemann and Jean-Christophe Ammann. In 1977, Suzanne Delehanty curated Processions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, marking the first solo exhibition of Paul Thek's work in an American institution. At the close of the 1970's Thek changed direction, moved back to New York, and turned to the making of small, sketch-like paintings on canvas, although he continued to create environments in key international exhibitions. With his frequent use of highly perishable materials, Thek accepted the ephemeral nature of his art works—and was aware, as writer Gary Indiana has noted, of “a sense of our own transience and that of everything around us.” Following his death in 1988, his work was mainly shown in Europe (Castello di Rivara, Witte de With, etc). In 2008, the ZKM in Karlsruhe programmed Paul Thek Artist's Artist, which also explored how Thek's work has resonated in the contemporary scene. On the other side of the Atlantic, it wasn't until 2010 that the Whitney Museum in New York dedicated a remarkable retrospective to Thek, whose title, Paul Thek: Diver, emphasized the artist's passion for the sea.
Very Good copies each.
2021, English
Hardcover, 148 pages, 16.5 x 23.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$180.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of the immediately out-of-print monograph on American sculptor Michael E. Smith.
“Smith is the sound music makes as it collapses.”—Anthony Huberman
A fishing hat, caked with red, heat-resistant rubber, nailed crown-flush to a wall; a pair of gnarled black safety goggles, melted into unrecognizability; a thin, boomerang-shaped piece of translucent yellow plastic in which two animal snouts have been imbedded; the seat of a prisoner transport van; birdhouses; boilers; children’s clothes; diving accessories; old doors; animal scrotums; artificial hearts; grill covers; forklifts. Michael E. Smith’s (b. 1977, Detroit) works are not found or lost objects but sculptural collages originating from a strategy of emptying, “a reduction until arriving at a semantic point zero,” writes Martin Germann. Spare gestures in the exhibition spaces emerge out of the dimness thanks to the absence of artificial light. Accumulated traces of human experience conjure up a brink beyond which things and their attributes disintegrate and form a new constellation that seems to “betoken a funeral solemnity, as if [it] were the result of some kind of vigil or ritual,” as Chris Sharp states.
Initially conceived to document three solo shows at de Appel in Amsterdam (2015), Kunstverein Hannover (2015), and S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2017), this major publication also gathers new commissioned texts and a reprint that shed light on the artist’s decade-plus practice. Martin Germann’s text centers on the phenomenology of Smith’s installation process, revealing the role of context, craftsmanship, and improvisation for his creative act. Chris Sharp attends to the artist’s work from the early days, tackling core concepts of horror, postapocalyptic sublime, and non-signification, and how his installations are to be read as attempts to deepen loss and exhaustion by way of working through them, thereby “disarm[ing] the trauma.” Anthony Huberman captures the struggle of translating Smith’s work into language by reading it through the lens of music. As the artist himself states, his art may be “like listening to a cheap cassette player running low on batteries slugging along ‘T.B. Sheets’ by Van Morrison while working as a dishwasher.”
Highly recommended.
1984, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon from 1984. Beginning with a hommage from Salvador Dali and introduction by Clive Baker, the first in this series of oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed volumes takes us through the early history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. From his "Passegen" series, his work for theatre, posters, album artwork, environments, personal works, is designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's DUNE, and much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries of the macabre. This is volume 1 of 2 of "HR Giger's Necronomicon" where Al Azred's legendary magical book of the most wonderful abominations and perversions, "Necronomicon" (made infamous in the pages of HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology), becomes a visual reality!
With an introduction by Clive Baker and numerous texts by HR Giger as well as texts by Fritz Billeter and Simon Vinkenoog and a tribute from Salvador Dali. Note: Japanese language edition.
First Japanese edition, published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1984. Very good copy throughout with Very Good dust jacket. Almost As New copies. Some storage common with fragile, oversized edition.
1987, Japanese
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 98 pages (w. fold-outs), 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$190.00 - Out of stock
First Japanese edition of H.R. Giger's Necronomicon II, the second oversized and visually overwhelming Giger-designed collection that takes us further through the incredible history of one of the most brilliant fantasy artists of the century. Reproducing Giger's award-winning work for the film ALIEN, his paintings, environments, sculptural works, his work for never shot film "The Tourist", collaborations with Blondie's Debbie Harry, his "New York City" series from the late 1970's and much more, all beautifully reproduced in full-colour and black and white, full-bleed spreads, including fold-out pages. Also includes interviews, texts, biography. These Giger folio books have become very desirable, collectable editions in their various printings around the world, the series encompassing the work of one of the world's most unique and influential visionaries of the macabre. This is volume 2 of 2 of "HR Giger's Necronomicon" where Al Azred's legendary magical book of the most wonderful abominations and perversions, "Necronomicon" (made infamous in the pages of HP Lovecraft's "Cthulhu" mythology), becomes a visual reality!
First Japanese edition, published by Treville, Tokyo, in 1987. Very good copy throughout with Very Good dust jacket. Almost As New copies. Some storage common with fragile, oversized edition.
2023, English / Dutch
Softcover, 512 pages, 21 × 29.7 cm
Published by
Nai010 Publishers / Rotterdam
$160.00 - In stock -
A comprehensive volume on the influential Dutch gallery that united American and European conceptualism For more than 33 years, the Amsterdam gallery Art & Project (1968-2001) played a pivotal role in the development of contemporary art within the Netherlands and beyond. Founders Adriaan van Ravesteijn (1938-2015) and Geert van Beijeren (1933-2005) presented a pioneering program of work by both national and international artists, including Marinus Boezem, Stanley Brouwn, Jan Dibbets, Charlotte Posenenske, Gilbert & George, Lawrence Weiner and Sol LeWitt, among many others. The cofounders published a total of 156 bulletins to draw attention to their exhibitions, and the bulletins quickly evolved into an experimental medium—from carriers of conceptual artists' ideas to conceptual artworks themselves.
Art & Project: A History examines the gallery's exhibitions, bulletins, social networks and international legacy. Replete with extensive research and previously unpublished visual material, this massive book provides an indispensable overview of the history of conceptual art in the Netherlands.
Text by Jip Hinten, Isabelle Bisseling, Ton Geerts, Regine Ehleither.
Already out-of-print at source.
2023, English / Spanish
Softcover, 164 pages, 215 x 27.5 cm
Published by
Bom Dia Boa Tarde Boa Noite / Berlin
$59.00 - In stock -
An indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice.
Through an unconventional use of casting and molding techniques, June Crespo has developed a sculptural language that questions the attributes, narratives and genealogies associated to materials such as concrete, steel or bronze. In her recent works, the references to the human body and the presence of architectural and botanical motifs respond to a precise mandate: to put into question the distinction between the structural elements and the ornament.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Vieron su casa hacerse campo at the Museo CA2M – Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo in 2023, this publication presents an indepth survey to June Crespo's artistic practice and unravels the particular spatial and material relationships that her work brings into play. In addition to graphic documentation of the exhibition, the publication includes documentation of other recent projects, graphic materials specifically produced for this book, and a series of essays written by Aimar Arriola, Sylvia Lavin, Julia Spínola and Marc Navarro, curator of the exhibition.
June Crespo (born 1982 in Pamplona, lives and works in Bilbao) understands sculpture as an exercise that enables her to bring together seemingly opposed qualities. Her works partake equally of the petrean and the perishable, the mechanised and the manual, the abject and the sensuous. The convergence between materials and motifs creates a vocabulary that seems interpretable as a contradiction. On the one hand, certain motifs are taken from industrially produced objects, bearing in mind aspects like ergonomics and formal organicity. On the other, plant and organic motifs appear as the result of highly technical systems of production and representation. Both respond to the exploration of a transitional body-object that, having been fragmented and recomposed, forsakes its original form and meanings. Thus, stalks, busts and conduits are abstracted into channels and carcases that trace a network of connections ranging from the tectonic to the physiological and associated with the domestic sphere and its design as an extension of the body. In this way, notions like human scale, void and gravity are used to establish analogies with the body and to influence the intrinsically spatial, that is, physical, nature of sculpture.
Edited by Marc Navarro.
Texts by Aimar Arriola, Sylvia Lavin, Marc Navarro, Julia Spínola.
Graphic design: Studio Manuel Raeder (Manuel Raeder and Louise Borinski).
2021, Japanese / English
Hardcover (with obi), 368 pages, 20 x 30 cm
Published by
Toyota Municipal Museum of Art / Aichi
$130.00 - Out of stock
Beautiful hardcover catalogue published in Japan to the exhibition Beuys + Palermo touring three venues across Japan in 2021.
Joseph Beuys and Blinky Palermo were from different generations, but both experienced WWII and the postwar reconstruction, as teacher and pupil. One of the most important artists since World War II, Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) asserted that true capital lies in the creativity of human beings, and viewing the whole of society as sculpture, set out to change it. Beuys is also known for his role in nurturing numerous artists in his capacity as an educator. One such pupil was Blinky Palermo (1943–1977). The modest abstract works that form the legacy of this painter active for just a short few years from the mid-1960s up to his early demise, were an attempt to quietly overturn our perceptions, and social systems, via the visceral experience of color and form, all the while reconstructing the compositional elements of painting. The works of these two superficially contrasting German artists were alike in that both Beuys and Palermo endeavored to restore art to the status of a raw, live endeavor, Beuys indeed later acknowledging his former student to be the artist closest to himself. Composed primarily of works from the 1960s and ‘70s, documentation from the period and detailed texts, “Beuys + Palermo” explores the features of each of these two artists, while simultaneously searching for the latent power of their praxis in their involvement and overlap with each other.
2023, England
Softcover, 80 pages, 12 x 17 cm
Published by
Floating Opera Press / Berlin
$38.00 - Out of stock
In Perpetual Slavery, Ciarán Finlayson investigates the relationship of art to freedom in the work of Cameron Rowland and Ralph Lemon, who both utilize imagery of labor haunted and structured by the historical experience of slavery.
Finlayson suggests that these two artists' work overcomes the dichotomy between the recording of history and its interpretation by making both the object of artistic experience, thereby providing a space to grasp the continuing effects of slavery.
Ciarán Finlayson is a writer and editor based in New York City. His essays have appeared in periodicals including Artforum, Bookforum, Papers on Language and Literature, Studio magazine, Kunst und Politik, PARSE, Archives of American Art Journal, and 032C. He is the managing editor of Blank Forms. His primary research is on contemporary art with emphases on Marxism, Black studies, philosophy of history, and conceptual art. He writes with the London-based Black Study Group and is a founding member of the political education collective Hic Rosa.
Graphic design: Daniela Burger.
2006, English / Japanese
Softcover, 146 pages, 24 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Yokohama Museum of Art / Yokohama
$120.00 - In stock -
Wonderful Isamu Noguchi monograph published on the occasion of a major Japanese travelling survey exhibition entitled "Connecting the World Through Sculpture" in 2006. This oversized catalogue is profusely illustrated throughout in colour and black and white with Noguchi's sculptures, reliefs, models, furniture and landscape designs for parks and playgrounds. Includes many pages of his beautiful set designs for Martha Graham's School and Dance Company in New York in the 1940s. Introductory texts in Japanese and English, a chronology, bibliography and list of exhibited artworks.
Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was a Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. He was one of the twentieth century’s most important and critically acclaimed sculptors. His varied work was informed by his extensive travels over his lifetime. He worked across many different mediums, including sculptural gardening, set designs and architecture.
Very Good copy with some cover/spine wear.
2021, English
Softcover (w. plastic dust jacket), 72 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Published by
Drill Hall Gallery / Canberra
$35.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Un-titled: Elizabeth Newman at Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, 20 November, 2021—23 January, 2022. The exhibition surveyed Newman’s body of work, ranging from collage, installation, text-based, textile or found object, and all infused with painterly notions of re-presentation. Hovering around the edges of signification, embracing affect and the act of becoming, her work pivots around reversals of positive and negative, challenging the limitations of language while paradoxically affirming the plasticity of our systems of understanding. Profusely illustrated throughout with essays by Tony Oates and Frances Plagne. Designed by Small Tasks.
2024, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. printed acetate jacket), 168 pages, 30.48 x 22.86 cm
Published by
D.A.P. / New York
DelMonico Books / US
$99.00 - Out of stock
Edited with text by Catherine Craft. Foreword by Jeremy Strick. Text by Julie Mehretu, Kate Nesin, Paulina Pobocha.
New sculptures and installations that critically examine the formal, social and linguistic roles of live models
Over the past three decades, Iranian-born, German-based artist Nairy Baghramian (born 1971) has created sculptures and installations that upend expected modes of presentation and challenge the architectural, social, political and historical contexts that inform them.
The new works featured in this publication explore the provisional body as the site of trauma—drawing inspiration from the tradition of the “modèle vivant,” the French term for a live model in an art class. In her "ambivalently abstract" works, the artist takes unconventional approaches to materials associated with sculptural traditions of casting, including aluminum, lead, steel and wax. In conversation with sculptures from the Nasher’s permanent collection by Louise Bourgeois, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and others, Baghramian’s works offer new ways to think about representations of bodies and the unseen labor of models, as well as the linguistic play afforded by different meanings of the word “model” and its linguistic relatives, such as “modulate” and “modify.”
1974, English
Softcover, 216 pages, 21 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Thames and Hudson / London
$30.00 - In stock -
Environments and Happenings by painter and poet Adrian Henri, published by Thames & Hudson in 1974, forms one of the first mainstream book surveys to trace the phenomenon of environmental/performative/total living artworks that became prevalent in the 1960s/70s. This historical study is profusely illustrated in colour and b/w with many international works from Fluxus to Zero to Dolle Mina to Nouveau Réalisme to Provo to Gutai to The Situationists and much more. Includes the works of Joseph Beuys, Clarence Schmidt, Ray Johnson, Öyvind Fahlström, Paul Thek, Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow, Hans Haacke, Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp, Guerllia Art Action Group, Daniel Spoerri, Wolf Vostell, Gustav Metzger, Peter Kuttner, Jackson Pollock, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Robert Morris, Situationist International, Ferdinand Kriwet, Klaus Rinke, Duane Hanson, A-Yo, Meret Oppenheim, Space Structure Workshop, Ferdinand Cheval, Dolle Mina (Mad Mina), Robert Smithson, Jeff Nuttall, Stefan Wewerka, Christo, Dennis Oppenheim, Vladimir Tatlin, Provo, Barry Flanagan, Andy Warhol, Meredith Monk, Atsuko Tanaka, Kazuo Shiraga, Ed Keinholz, Yayoi Kusama, Piero Gilardi, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenburg, Les Levine, James Rosenquist, Red Grooms, Tom Wesselmann, George Segal, Eduardo Paolozzi, and many many more. Includes reproductions of performance scripts, partial chronology, etc.
Very Good copy, previous owner name to front endpaper.
2022, English / German
Hardcover, 176 pages, 27.5 x 22.4 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Établissement d'en face / Brussels
$70.00 - In stock -
Since the artist’s comprehensive monograph was published in 2017, many new paintings and sculptures have been created. They address emotional and also psychoanalytical issues. At the core of the interest lies the relationship between autonomy and heritage, the unconscious and the conscious, the carrying along of trauma or guilt, as well as hidden longings, fantasies, or the disclosure of shame.
This book documents Amelie von Wulffen’s exhibitions at Reena Spaulings Fine Art, New York / Gió Marconi, Milan / KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin / Établissement d’en face, Brussels / Galerie Meyer Kainer, Wien between 2018 and 2022.
Texts by Helmut Draxler, Valérie Knoll, Tonio Kröner.
English and German text.
1979, English
Softcover, 288 pages, 23.5 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$20.00 - In stock -
1979 edition of Rudolf Wittkower's Sculpture : Processes and Principles — with the aid of over 180 photographs, this book studies what unites and separates sculptors across the centuries. It looks at the masters of Archaic Greece, the Middle Ages, through the great names of Michelangelo, Cellini and Bernini to Rodin, Brancusi and Henry Moore. By studying their working methods and techniques, the author discloses their artistic ideas and convictions, thereby opening up new avenues of approach for the spectator.
Rudolf Wittkower (1901—1971) was a British art historian specializing in Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture.
Good copy with wear to covers, internally VG.