Tuesday, February 28, 2012

New Arrivals: Philip Guston


Philip Guston
Marlborough, 1970
Paperback in clear printed mylar dust jacket

A beautiful copy of the catalog for the 1970 show at the Marlborough Gallery, which heralded Guston's return to figurative painting. The new work was savaged by the critics and ended his affiliation with Marlborough but pointed to a possible exit from the various cul-de-sacs created by modernism over the 20th century.




This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

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Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Featured: Rockwell Kent's Wilderness


A 1930 Modern Library edition of Rockwell Kent's illustrated memoir, Wilderness. In a state of extreme disrepair, but filled with stunning illustrations.



















This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Friday, February 24, 2012

Featured: Vintage Art Annuals


Art In America, No. Two 1964
wrap around cover by Roy Lichtenstein
Hardcover, illustrated boards




Art News Annual XXXVI: Narrative Art, edited by Thomas Hess & John Ashbery
cover by Saul Steinberg
Hardcover with dust jacket




Art In America, No. Two 1961
wrap around cover by Saul Steinberg
Hardcover, illustrated boards




Art In America, No. Four 1964
wrap around cover by David Smith
Hardcover, illustrated boards

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Featured: History Of Coca, Divine Plant Of The Incas



Peru: History Of Coca, Divine Plant Of The Incas
W. Golden Mortimer, M.D.
J.H. Vail & Company, 1901
576 pp. 178 illustrations






This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

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Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Featured: Three Pamphlets


Asger Jorn, Open Creation And Its Enemies
Pamphlet

"Three texts from one of the founders of the Lettrists and the Situationist International, all translated from Internationale Situationniste. Open Creation establishes how Jorn used developments in mathematics to underscore the situationist project. Also included are his "Manifesto" and his critique of Isidore Isou—"Originality And Magnitude."






Thomas De Quincy, The Peasant Of Portugal
Pamphlet

"A curious Gothic revenge tale in which the events narrated gradually unwind to be revealed as problems of text and writing: plot as a means of generating a text. Empty and unnerving."




Among the Cannibal Christians
Pamphlet

"Did the early Christians take the command "eat of my body," a bit too literally? And just what did "the Body and Blood of Christ" really consist of? A fascinating study into the use of hallucinogens and ritual cannibalism amongst the early Christians..."




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Featured: Two Art Books


Mythologie du Sein
Bibliotheque Internationale D'Erotologie, 1966
Hardcover




Charles Bouleau, The Painter's Secret Geometry
Hacker,1980
Hardcover, illustrated boards




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

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215 592 1207

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Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Monday, February 20, 2012

Featured: Dada & Surrealism



Louis Aragon, Treatise on Style
Hardcover with dust jacket

"Written in 1927, this work is a part of a moment of transition between Aragon's surrealist period and his movement toward "socialist realism."
His last contribution to the Surrealist movement,Treatise on Style is a stinging criticism of the great novelists of the past and an elevation of Surrealist "heroes" such as Rimbaud, the Marquis de Sade, Freud, and Einstein. The violence of his attack illuminates his claim that Surrealism does not represent an organized aesthetic as much as it presents a particular invitation to revolt, and that in this revolt are contained new insights that the artist can use. "




Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism, Franklin Rosemont
Paperback

"Conscripted into the French Army during World War One,
Vaché soon became not only the unsurpassed champion of "Desertion from Within," but also the master of "Disservice with Diligence." His posthumous book, War Letters (included in this volume,) is a classic of surrealist anti-militarism and subversion. Vaché, along with Isidore Ducasse (the Comte de Lautréamont,) was one of the great inspirations of André Breton and the surrealist revolution.




Hans Richter, Dada: Art & Anti-Art
Paperback (out of print)

‘Where and how Dada began is almost as difficult to determine as Homer’s birthplace’, writes Hans Richter, the artist and film-maker closely associated with this radical and transforming movement from its earliest days. Here he records and traces Dada’s history, from its inception in about 1916 in wartime Zurich, to its collapse in Paris in 1922 when many of its members were to join the Surrealist movement, down to the present day when its spirit re-emerged first in the 1960s with, for example, Pop Art.

This absorbing eye witness narrative is greatly enlivened by extensive use of Dada documents, illustrations and a variety of texts by fellow Dadaists. It is a unique document of the movement, whether in Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Paris or New York. The complex relationships and contributions of, among others, Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Picabia, Arp, Schwitters, Hausmann, Duchamp, Ernst and Man Ray, are vividly brought to life.




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

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215 592 1207

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Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
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Sunday, February 19, 2012

Featured: Four Tales For Hard Times


Sister of the Road: the Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha
Paperback

Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks. It's a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books—a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those other great American traditions of Puritanism and hypocrisy, let on.
Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago's Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid rows, and open freight cars—these were the haunts of the free thinking and free loving Bertha Thompson. This vivid autobiography recounts one hell of a rugged woman's hard-living depression-era saga of misadventures with pimps, hopheads, murderers, yeggs, wobblies, and anarchists.




The Devil's Son-In-Law: The Story Of Peetie Wheatstraw & His Songs
Paperback

"Blues-singer, songwriter, piano and guitar player, William Bunch (1902–1941) was well-known as Peetie Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law and the High Sheriff from Hell. Long recognized by connoisseurs as one of the most influential blues people of all time, his life and work are little known to the broad public. Blues scholar Paul Garon's important and abundantly illustrated study—drawing on his own extensive interviews with Wheatstraw's relatives, and fellow musicians—brings the exciting Wheatstraw saga to life at last. With insight and imagination, Garon explores Peetie Wheatstraw's crucial role not only in blues history, but also in African American urban mythology, and—via a penetrating analysis of song lyrics—his appreciable contributions to blues poetry and to vernacular surrealism. Originally published in the UK in 1971, this substantially revised and expanded edition includes a mass of new information and images, as well as an updated bibliography, discography, and index. Also includes a 24-track CD portraying Peetie at his best, with a bonus track by Harmon Ray, the previously unreleased "Xmas Blues."




Malcolm Braly, On The Yard
Paperback

"A major American novel, and arguably the finest work of literature ever to emerge from a US prison, On the Yard is a book of penetrating psychological realism in which Malcolm Braly paints an unforgettable picture of the complex and frightening world of the penitentiary. At its center are the violently intertwined stories of Chilly Willy, in trouble with the law from his earliest years and now the head of the prison’s flourishing black market in drugs and sex, and of Paul, wracked with guilt for the murder of his wife and desperate for some kind of redemption. At once brutal and tender, clear-eyed and rueful, On the Yard presents the penitentiary not as an exotic location, an exception to everyday reality, but as an ordinary place, one every reader will recognize, American to the core."

"Surely the great American prison novel" — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.





Jack Black, You Can't Win
Paperback

"A legendary book, bestseller in 1926, and hovering at the edge of our memory since; the favorite book of William Burroughs. A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail, or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived. Includes a new afterword by Bruno Ruhland, who tells what became of Jack after the book was written (he gave up the outlaw life and moved to San Francisco), and an essay by Jack Black called "What's Wrong with the Right People," which was originally published in Harper's. With an introduction by William Burroughs."




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Saturday, February 18, 2012

New Arrivals: Art


The Russian Avant-Garde: 1908-1922
Paperback





The Expressionists
George Braziller, 1957
Hardcover with dust jacket




Gauguin Woodcuts
Paul Hamlyn, 1963
Hardcover with dust jacket
SOLD!





Milton Avery
The Brooklyn Museum, 1966
Hardcover






Wassily Kandinsky, The Spiritual In Art
Guggenheim Museum, 1956
Hardcover




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
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215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Friday, February 17, 2012

Featured: Two by Bruce Haack


Bruce Haack & Miss Nelson, The Way Out Record For Children

"Recorded in 1968, a true psychedelic masterpiece for the kids. Ms. Nelson (a child educator) and Bruce Haack (an early electronic music pioneer) designed this record to open the minds and hearts of children to deeper levels of insight and culture. Not condescending in the least and with a childlike sense of wonder, Bruce and Ms. Nelson lay into some heavy songs about everything from Robots to Indian Mysticism to Motorcycle riding fantasies. It's all in here. The music is all generated by Bruces' homemade electronic instruments which churn out proto hip hop beats and straight up avante garde moments left and right. The kids in Ms. Nelson's community chime in with their voices here and there and the record ends with a haunting existential twist that'll leave you screamin' for more. A great record for children and adults of all ages. Old school tip on cover."





Bruce Haack & Miss Nelson, The Electronic Record For Children
LP

"Recorded in 1969 , early electronic music pioneer Bruce Haack and child educator Ms. Nelson go bravely and deeply into psychedelic music compositions designed to open the minds and hearts of the young. Truly far out electronic music that evokes a space age alternate universe. Bruce and Ms. Nelson are joined by pianist Praxietellis Pandit and their relaxed sounding friend Chris to bring you songs about everything from ancient folk tales to outerspace to what the world sounds like when you listen with your inner self. Real great stuff, not for the faint of heart. Avante garde music by and for the people. Old school tip on cover."





These LPs and many more can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
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215 592 1207

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Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Featured: Two Classics From Moma


Constructivism: The Art Of Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner
Museum of Modern Art, 1948
Paperback with die-cut front end paper





Abstract Painting And Sculpture In America
Museum of Modern Art, 1951
Hardcover with dust jacket




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Featured: Four Paperback Covers





The Gothic Cathedral
cover by Paul Rand




Modern French Painters Volumes 1 & 2
covers by Arthur Hawkins





The Hidden Dimension
cover by George Giusti




Vision And Design
cover by Alvin Lustig




These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Featured: The Machine


THE MACHINE : As Seen at the End of the Machanical Age
218 pp. between printed steel covers, bound with metal rivets

Text by K.G. Pontus Hultén, MOMA, 1968
SOLD!




This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
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215 592 1207

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Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Featured: Marcel Dzama's Berlin Years


Marcel Dzama, the Berlin Years
32 loosely bound plates housed in an illustrated paper folder, with a 32 page pamphlet
Published by McSweeney's Books, 2003
First edition (out of print)

"Marcel Dzama‘s work is inhabited by an expansive cast of recurring human, animal, and hybrid characters. Typically manipulating a distinctive palette of muted browns, grays, greens, and reds, the artist has developed an immediately recognizable visual language that penetratingly explores human action and motivation, often by means of the violent, erotic, grotesque, and absurd. His practice unleashes a universe of childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairytales, drawing equally from folk vernacular as from artistic influences that include Dada and Marcel Duchamp. Widely known for his works on paper, Dzama has in recent years expanded his practice to include sculpture, painting, film, and dioramas. In the latter, he constructs intricate, complex, three-dimensional scenes using his signature drawings, collage elements, cardboard, and occasionally ceramics." -David Zwirner Gallery




This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Friday, February 10, 2012

Featured: Maladjusted Valentine's Day Gifts

The origin of Valentine's Day is shrouded in mystery...much like the filling in that last odd-looking piece of chocolate. At least three different St. Valentines were recorded in Catholic church history, who were maimed and martyred anywhere from Rome to Africa. The romantic bent of the holiday probably stems from ancient Greco-Roman rituals of love and fertility, such as Lupercalia, where celebrators wrapped themselves in the skins of just-sacrificed goats. This year, forgo the sweetly repressed Victorian Valentine's tradition, and instead go for something a little wilder, a little darker--in other words, let's go back to Valentine's Day's roots.


The Poetry of Petrarch, hardcover
"I feed on pain, I laugh while shedding tears/both death and life displease me equally;/and this state, Lady, is because of you." Petrarch was not only the brilliant inventor of beautiful, moving, witty sonnets--he was also the original emo dude.




the Marquis de Sade, Letters from Prison, hardcover
Includes dozens of letters between the Marquis and his wife, Madame de Sade (a former strict Catholic, passionately in love with her libertine husband), discussing everything from clean shirts to writing to the morals charges that landed him in prison.




don't kiss me: the art of claude cahun & marcel moore, hardcover
Subversive, queer step-sisters and lovers, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore also carried on a fascinating, intimate artistic relationship, which is given expert treatment here.




Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, paperback
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." And so begins Nabokov's brutally funny, uncomfortably erotic, and ultimately damning portrayal of one man's sexual obsessions and his doomed relationship with teenager Dolores Haze.



These books, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday

Thursday, February 9, 2012

EVENT: ixnay press Reading



Saturday, February 11th at 7 pm
at
Brickbat Books

ixnay press authors
Jamie Townsend & Laura Spagnoli



Announcing a reading to celebrate the publication of two chapbooks from ixnay press: Jamie Townsend’s THE DOME & Laura Spagnoli’s My Dazzledent Days. Your hosts will be ixnay co-editors Chris McCreary & Jenn McCreary.





Jamie Townsend is the co-founder of con/crescent, a chapbook publisher & annual magazine focused on discursive essay & creative non-fiction. In addition to THE DOME, he is author of the chapbooks STRAP/HALO (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs; 2011) and Matryoshka (LRL Textile Editions; 2011). His poetry and critical work has appeared in various places, most recently in Wheelhouse, Volt, Jacket2, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Eccolinguistics & TRY.






Laura Spagnoli’s poems have appeared in various publications, including Jupiter 88, ONandOnScreen, and The Apiary, and her story “A Cut Above” was published in the collection Philadelphia Noir. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches French at Temple University.





Founded in 1998, ixnay press is a Philadelphia-based publisher of new and experimental writing. Publishing projects have included ixnay, a twice-yearly journal, and the ixnay reader, a periodic mini-anthology of sorts, as well as a chapbook series and poppycock, an occasional newsletter. Check out ixnay’s complete archives at www.ixnaypress.com or email ixnaypress@gmail.com for additional information.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Featured: Corbusier


Le Corbusier: Oeuvre Complète, 1952-1957
Hardcover, with dust jacket
published by W. Boesiger at Editions Girsberger, Zurich, 1957
(Text in English, French and German)




This book, and thousands of others, can be purchased from:

Brickbat Books
709 South Fourth Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

215 592 1207

Open:
Tuesday: thru Saturday, 11am to 7pm
Sunday: 11am to 6pm
Closed Monday