Wallace Berman
Encyclopedia
Wallace Berman was an American visual and assemblage
artist. He has been called the "father" of assemblage art and a "crucial figure in the history of postwar California art".
for gambling
in the early 1940s and became involved in the West Coast jazz
scene. Berman wrote a song with Jimmy Witherspoon
. He attended classes at Jepson Art Institute
and Chouinard Art Institute
in the 1940's. For a few years from 1949 he worked in a factory
finished
furniture. It was at the factory where he began creating sculptures from wood scraps. This led to him becoming a full-time artist by the early 1950s, and an involvement in the Beat Movement. He moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in late 1957 where he mostly focused on his magazine Semina, which consisted of poetry
, photographs, texts, drawings and images assembled by Berman. In 1961 he came back to L.A., then moved to Topanga Canyon in 1965. He started creating his series of Verifax Collages in 1963 or 1964. He produced work until his sudden death in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, in 1976.
Berman has been called the "father" of assemblage art. He created "Verifax collages", which consist of photocopies of images from magazines and newspapers, mounted onto a flat surface in a collage
fashion, mixed with occasional solid areas of acrylic paint
. Berman would use a Verifax photocopy machine (Kodak) to make copies of the images which he would often juxtapose in a grid format. Berman sought influence in not only those of his Beat circle, but in Surrealism and Dada as well as the Kabbalah
. The influence of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism is seen in his collages and other works such as his later inscriptions in-situ in Hebrew letters, and his only film, Aleph, a silent film
that explores life
, death
, politics
, and pop culture. His involvement with the jazz scene allowed him opportunities to work with jazz musicians, creating bebop
album covers for Charlie Parker
.
His mail art publication, Semina, was a series of folio packages that were limited edition and sent or given to his friends. Semina consisted of collages mixed with poetry by writers Michael McClure
, Philip Lamantia
, David Meltzer
, Charles Bukowski
, William S. Burroughs
, Allen Ginsberg
, Jean Cocteau
, and by Berman himself, which he published under the pseudonym
Pantale Xantos.. Semina was published from 1955 to 1964.
album cover. The portrait is from a photograph taken by Dean Stockwell
. It is directly above John Lennon, two rows up, next to Tony Curtis
. In 1992 Berman's papers were donated to the Archives of American Art
by his son, Tosh Berman.
Assemblage (art)
Assemblage is an artistic process. In the visual arts, it consists of making three-dimensional or two-dimensional artistic compositions by putting together found objects...
artist. He has been called the "father" of assemblage art and a "crucial figure in the history of postwar California art".
Personal life and education
Wallace Berman was born in Staten Island, New York in 1926. In the 1930s his family moved to Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.. Berman was discharged from high schoolHigh school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
for gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
in the early 1940s and became involved in the West Coast jazz
West coast jazz
West Coast jazz refers to various styles of jazz music that developed around Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a sub-genre of cool jazz, which featured a less frenetic, calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music tended to be more heavily arranged,...
scene. Berman wrote a song with Jimmy Witherspoon
Jimmy Witherspoon
Jimmy Witherspoon was an American jump blues singer.-Early life and career:James Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas. He first attracted attention singing with Teddy Weatherford's band in Calcutta, India, which made regular radio broadcasts over the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service during...
. He attended classes at Jepson Art Institute
Jepson Art Institute
Jepson Art Institute, founded in Los Angeles in 1945 by artist Herbert Jepson, was an art school located at 2861 West 7th Street that flourished from 1947 to 1953 - becoming an important center for experimental figure drawing, art theory and printmaking. Prior to this, Jepson served as an...
and Chouinard Art Institute
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
in the 1940's. For a few years from 1949 he worked in a factory
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
finished
Wood finishing
Wood finishing refers to the process of embellishing and/or protecting the surface of a wooden material. The process starts with surface preparation, either by sanding by hand , scraping, or planing. Imperfections or nail holes on the surface may be filled using wood putty or pores may be filled...
furniture. It was at the factory where he began creating sculptures from wood scraps. This led to him becoming a full-time artist by the early 1950s, and an involvement in the Beat Movement. He moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in late 1957 where he mostly focused on his magazine Semina, which consisted of poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, photographs, texts, drawings and images assembled by Berman. In 1961 he came back to L.A., then moved to Topanga Canyon in 1965. He started creating his series of Verifax Collages in 1963 or 1964. He produced work until his sudden death in a car accident caused by a drunk driver, in 1976.
Artistic career
"His art embodied the kind of interdisciplinary leanings and interests that, in time, would come to help characterize the Beat movement as a whole."
-Andy Brumer
Berman has been called the "father" of assemblage art. He created "Verifax collages", which consist of photocopies of images from magazines and newspapers, mounted onto a flat surface in a collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
fashion, mixed with occasional solid areas of acrylic paint
Acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...
. Berman would use a Verifax photocopy machine (Kodak) to make copies of the images which he would often juxtapose in a grid format. Berman sought influence in not only those of his Beat circle, but in Surrealism and Dada as well as the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
. The influence of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism is seen in his collages and other works such as his later inscriptions in-situ in Hebrew letters, and his only film, Aleph, a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
that explores life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
, death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, and pop culture. His involvement with the jazz scene allowed him opportunities to work with jazz musicians, creating bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
album covers for Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
.
His mail art publication, Semina, was a series of folio packages that were limited edition and sent or given to his friends. Semina consisted of collages mixed with poetry by writers Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
, Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia was an American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems were ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic which explored the subconscious world of dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life.-Biography:...
, David Meltzer
David Meltzer
David Meltzer is an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians." Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The...
, Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, and by Berman himself, which he published under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Pantale Xantos.. Semina was published from 1955 to 1964.
Legacy
His likeness appears in the second row of the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club BandSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...
album cover. The portrait is from a photograph taken by Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell
Dean Stockwell is an American actor of film and television, with a career spanning over 65 years. As a child actor under contract to MGM he first came to the public's attention in films such as Anchors Aweigh and The Green Years; as a young adult he played a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and...
. It is directly above John Lennon, two rows up, next to Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
. In 1992 Berman's papers were donated to the Archives of American Art
Archives of American Art
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 16 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C...
by his son, Tosh Berman.
Notable exhibitions
- Looking for Mushrooms, 2008; Ludwig Museum
- Trace du Sacre, 2008; Centre Pompidou
- Los Angeles 1955-1985 2006; Centre Pompidou
- California Modern, 2006; Orange County Museum of ArtOrange County Museum of ArtThe Orange County Museum of Art is a museum located in Newport Beach, California.The museum's collection comprises more than 3,000 objects, with a concentration on the art of California from the early 20th century to present...
- Subway Series: The New York Yankees and the American Dream, 2004; Bronx Museum of the ArtsBronx Museum of the ArtsThe Bronx Museum of the Arts is a cultural institution located in the New York City borough of The Bronx. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th century works created by American artists, and it has hosted exhibitions of art and design from Latin America, Africa and Asia...
- Evidence of Impact: Art and Photography 1963-1978, 2004; Whitney Museum of American ArtWhitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
- Solo exhibition: Exodus Gallery, San Pedro, 1957
- Solo exhibition: Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1957
Further reading
- Glicksman et al. Wallace Berman: Retrospective. Otis Art Institute Gallery, Los Angeles. Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporay Art (1978).
- Support the Revolution. Institute of Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. New York: Distributed Art Publishers (1992). ISBN 9080096830
- Sophie Dannenmüller: "In Fac Simile Veritas, les Verifax Collages de Wallace Berman," Les Cahiers du Musée national d'art moderne, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Paris, n° 92, summer 2005, p. 130-143
- Fredman, Stephen and Michael Duncan. Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle. Santa Monica: Santa Monica Museum of Art (2005). ISBN 1933045108
- Dannenmüller, Sophie. Wallace Berman - Verifax Collages. Paris: frank elbaz gallery (2009)
- Dannenmüller, Sophie. Wallace Berman - Be-Bop Kabbalah. Paris: frank elbaz gallery (2010)
External links
- City of Degenerate Angels: Wallace Berman, Jazz and Semina in Postwar Los Angeles by Ken D. Allan in Art Journal
- galerie frank elbaz: Wallace Berman