Edited with text by Michael Duncan, Kristine McKenna. Text by Stephen Fredman.
The pioneering account of West Coast assemblage art, featuring Bruce Conner, Jess, Jay DeFeo, Robert Duncan, Cameron and a cast of postwar countercultural icons
Hbk, 9 x 11 in. / 384 pgs / 242 color / 250 bw. | 2/24/2015 | In stock $24.95
Published by Totah. Edited by Sophia McKinnon. Text by Tosh Berman, Andrew Lampert, Saul Ostrow, David Totah, Anne Waldman.
Wallace Berman (1926–76) was a notorious guru of the 1960s art pantheon. Often cited as a West Coast Beat Generation artist who rubbed elbows with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Dennis Hopper and the Rolling Stones, his contributions transcend the comparisons of his aesthetic and the associations that he kept. A self-taught artist, Berman was influenced by Surrealism, Dadaism and the Kabbalah, as well as jazz music and the mystical symbols and popular imagery of his time. Berman is best known for his signature motif, which comes from a reappropriated Sony advertisement picturing a hand holding a transistor radio, which he found in 1964. By removing the speaker grill and inserting random appropriated images, the hand shuffles up messages that appear to spring out of the ether. His early use of the gridding technique creates a visual cacophony that barrages the senses. Off the Grid follows the eponymous 2021 show at TOTAH, a rare East Coast exhibition of Berman’s work, which included a screening of his rare short film Aleph (1956-66), followed by a discussion between Tosh Berman (Wallace Berman’s son) and Andrew Lampert, moderated by poet Anne Waldman. A partial transcript of this conversation is included in the publication.
PUBLISHER Totah
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 152 pgs / 58 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/29/2024 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: MID WINTER 2024 p. 19
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781734304565TRADE List Price: $65.00 CAD $97.50 GBP £55.00
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Published by Michael Kohn Gallery. Introduction by Tosh Berman. Text by Claudia Bohn-Spector, Sam Mellon, Ken Allan.
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the artist’s accidental death at age 50, this volume offers the first substantial survey of the entire oeuvre of Wallace Berman (1926–76) from the late 1940s until 1976.
Berman has been long heralded as one of the most significant and influential artists to emerge in Southern California. Spiritually inclined yet steeped in popular culture and the political events of the day, he conducted reconnaissance far beyond the borders of California, mining the American psyche and broadcasting his ideas through mail art, publications, photographs and multilayered art works.
Berman intersected with several intriguing cultural moments, starting with his first Los Angeles solo show in 1957 at Ed Kienholz and Walter Hopps’ Ferus Gallery. He also participated in an important 1966 group exhibition in London at the legendary Robert Fraser Gallery, whose other artists included Richard Hamilton, Bruce Conner and Peter Blake--who put Berman’s face among the notable crowd in his cover for the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As interest in West Coast art has increased over the past 40 years, scholars have viewed Berman as a quintessentially Californian artist whose entourage of likeminded friends was essential to the formation of his creative vision. This volume takes a broader view, reassessing Berman’s significant contributions to the history of 20th-century American art.
PUBLISHER Michael Kohn Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 11 x 9.5 in. / 120 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 7/26/2016 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2016 p. 89
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781880086216TRADE List Price: $59.95 CAD $79.00 GBP £52.99
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Published by D.A.P./Santa Monica Museum of Art. Edited with text by Michael Duncan, Kristine McKenna. Text by Stephen Fredman.
This reprint of the now classic and much sought-after 2005 volume celebrates the circle of the quintessential visual artist of the Beat era, Wallace Berman (1926–76), who remains one of the best-kept secrets of the postwar era. A crucial figure in California's underground culture, Berman was a catalyst who traversed many different worlds, transferring ideas and dreams from one circle to the next. His larger community is the subject of Semina Culture, which includes previously unseen works by 52 artists. Anchoring this publication is Semina, a loose-leaf art and poetry journal that Berman published in nine issues between 1955 and 1964. Although printed in extremely short runs and distributed to only a handful of friends and sympathizers, Semina is a brilliant and beautifully made compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time, and is today a very rare collector's item. Showcasing the individuals that defined a still-potent strand of postwar counterculture, Semina Culture outlines the energies and values of this fascinating circle. Also reproduced here are works by those who appear in Berman's own photographs, approximately 100 of which were recently developed from vintage negatives, and which are seen here for the first time. These artists, actors, poets, curators, musicians and filmmakers include Robert Alexander, John Altoon, Toni Basil, Wallace Berman, Ray Bremser, Bonnie Bremser, Charles Britten, Joan Brown, Cameron, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, Diane DiPrima, Kirby Doyle, Bobby Driscoll, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Llyn Foulkes, Ralph Gibson, Allen Ginsberg, George Herms, Jack Hirschman, Walter Hopps, Dennis Hopper, Billy Jahrmarkt, Jess, Lawrence Jordan, Patricia Jordan, Bob Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, William Margolis, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Taylor Mead, Henry Miller, Stuart Perkoff, Jack Smith, Dean Stockwell, Ben Talbert, Russ Tamblyn, Aya (Tarlow), Alexander Trocchi, Edmund Teske, Zack Walsh, Lew Welch and John Wieners.
Published by Michael Kohn Gallery. Edited by Kristine McKenna.
The use of heterosexual pornography or soft erotica in collage and assemblage is often all too uncritical, but for a few of the California artists who came of age in the early 1950s, its applications were much more nuanced. For example, Wallace Berman's 1957 "Cross" assemblage features a close-up photograph of heterosexual penetration that affirms sex as a "factum fidei" ("true fact," as Berman's inscription went)--its explicitness serving simply as realism. This approach to "girlie magazine" imagery and its polar opposite--the impulse to decommodify sexuality--can both be found in the photographs, paintings and books of Richard Prince, an artist whose fondness for the era of Berman is well known. She traces these overlaps and sympathies with reproductions of previously unseen works by Berman and new images from Prince's Girlfriends and de Kooning series. Also including an interview with Prince, She is edited by Kristine McKenna, whose ongoing work on Wallace Berman and his contemporaries continues to yield exciting discoveries.
PUBLISHER Michael Kohn Gallery
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 10.5 x 9.75 in. / 110 pgs / 60 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/16/2009 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 72
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781880086209TRADE List Price: $48.00 CAD $65.00 GBP £43.00
Published by RoseGallery, Los Angeles. Edited and introduction by Kristine McKenna, Lorraine Wild.
The quintessential visual artist of the Beat generation, Wallace Berman's influence has continued to radiate throughout the American art scene and in our popular culture since the 1950s. As an artist, Berman worked in relative obscurity up until his premature death, at the age of 50, in 1976. Since then, however, interest in his work, and recognition of its importance, have steadily increased. The subject of the recent--and highly lauded--traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, he was the central and binding figure in a diverse community of artists, poets, actors and musicians, and was revered for his wisdom as well as his achievements as an artist, publisher and filmmaker. However, until the 1999 discovery of an archive of his photographic negatives, very few people have known that Berman was also an extremely accomplished photographer. He documented the West Coast Beat culture of the 1950s, the first stirrings of the hippie culture that took root in the canyons of Southern California in the 60s and the diverse cast of characters who passed through his famously creative world with amazing intimacy and candor. Berman's photographs are gathered here for the first time ever.
PUBLISHER RoseGallery, Los Angeles
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 160 pgs / 140 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/1/2007 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 8
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781933045610TRADE List Price: $50.00 CAD $60.00
Published by D.A.P./Santa Monica Museum of Art. Edited by Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna. Essays by Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna and Stephen Fredman.
The quintessential visual artist of the Beat era, Wallace Berman (1926-1976) remains one of the best kept secrets of the late twentieth century. A crucial figure in California's postwar underground, Berman was a catalyst who traveled through many different worlds, transferring ideas and dreams from one circle to the next. His larger community is the subject of Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, a catalogue to the exhibition organized by the Santa Monica Muesum of Art including previously unexhibited works by 52 artists. Anchoring this publication is Semina, a loose-leaf art and poetry journal that Berman published in nine issues between 1955 and 1964. Although privately made and distributed to a mere handful of friends and sympathizers, Semina is a brilliant compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time. Showcasing the individuals who came to define a still potent strand of post-war beat counterculture, Semina Culture subtly outlines the energies, values, and foibles of this fascinating circle. Also reprduced here are works by various artists and writers who appear in Berman's own photographs--approximately 100 of which were recently developed from vintage negatives, and will be seen here for the first time.
Wallace Berman: American Aleph
Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle
She: Images of Women by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince
Wallace Berman: Photographs
Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle