Blood and Guts in High School
Kathy Acker
Published by Grove Press, New York, 2017, 176 pages, 12.9 × 19.8 cm, English
Price: €14 (Out of stock)

A masterpiece of surrealist fiction, steeped in controversy upon its first publication in 1984, Blood and Guts in High School is the book that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism. With 2017 marking the 70th anniversary of her birth, as well as the 10th year since her death this transgressive work of philosophical, political, and sexual insight—with a new introduction by Chris Kraus—continues to become more relevant than ever before.

In the Mexican city of Merida, ten-year-old Janey lives with Johnny—her “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father”—until he leaves her for another woman. Bereft, Janey travels to New York City, plunging into an underworld of gangs and prostitution. After escaping imprisonment, she flees to Tangiers where she meets Jean Genet, and they begin a torrid affair that will lead Janey to her demise. Fantastical, sensual, and fearlessly radical, this hallucinatory collage is both a comic and tragic portrait of erotic awakening.

#2017 #kathyacker
Beggars
Andrea Büttner
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2018, 308 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 17 × 24 cm, English
Price: €39

German artist and 2017 Turner Prize nominee Andrea Büttner examines depictions of beggars in visual culture in an artist’s book about poverty, art history, theology, and the politics of social benefits. Büttner, whose work addresses notions of shame, vulnerability, and dignity, presents a recent series of woodcuts, as well research conducted at the Warburg Institute in London, including sixteenth-century vignettes from the “Liber Vagatorum” and a visual essay on the iconography of shepherds and kings in nativity scenes.

With contributions by Andrea Büttner, Anne Carson, Christopher P. Heuer and Linda Nochlin.

#2018 #andreabuttner #annecarson #lindanochlin #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
Inklusive: Franz Xaver Kroetz 1971
Christopher Williams
Published by Haubrok Foundation, Berlin, 2021, card (colour ill.), 21 × 14.7 cm, English
Price: €1

Card produced on the occasion of the publication and book launch for Christopher Williams publication Inklusive: Franz Xaver Kroetz 1971.

#2021 #christopherwilliams #ephemera
Endnote, tooth
Ian Kiaer
Published by Archive Books, Berlin, 2020, 320 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 25 × 30 cm, English
Price: €38

Ian Kiaer’s monograph is based on a project that the artist began several years ago and whose configuration changes with the circumstances. Drawing on the notion of marginal endnotes in books, it references the utopian concepts of the Austrian American architect Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965).

In the late 1940s, Kiesler—an atypical figure whose writings were a significant influence on postwar art, architecture and design—came up with the (unrealised) Tooth House, a residence modelled on the human tooth and integrated into its environment.

Published as part of the the eponymous exhibition at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2017.

#2020 #archivebooks #frederickkiesler #iankiaer
La Belle Versaillaise
Pierre Klossowski
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 1982, card (colour ill.), 10.5 × 14.7 cm, English
Price: €8 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of documenta 7, 19 June–28 September, 1982.

Pierre Klossowski was a French writer, translator and artist. A prolific late in life artist who was internationally acclaimed for his writings and translations on Sadeian erotic expression, Klossowski is a pivotal yet underrepresented figure in the history of 20th-century art, often overshadowed by his earlier literary work and his younger brother, Balthus. Primarily working with pencil and charcoal, the laborious drawings he produced reference a variety of subjects, including Greek mythology, Sadean decadence, medieval fantasy and sexualized scenarios involving a recurring female figure, Roberte. These imagined scenes depict a perplexing and intriguing array of mature, familiar and fantastical situations involving cartoonish human figures set in fictitious landscapes that uniquely relate back to the dystopic realities he creates.

#1982 #ephemera #pierreklossowski
B78 La Biennale di Venezia
Published by Electa, Milan, 1978, 250 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 22 × 24 cm, Italian
Price: €18 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of B78 La Biennale di Venezia: From Nature to Art From Art to Nature, 1978. Includes artists such as John Davis, Robert Owen, Ketty la Rocca, Domenico Gnoli, Giorgio Griffa, Alberto Burri, Giorgio de Chirico, Kishio Suga, Ulrich Rückriem, Lucian Fabro and more.

#1978 #albertoburri #domenicognoli #giorgiodechirico #johndavis #kettylarocca #kishiosuga