Wallace Berman

Wallace "Wally" Berman (February 18, 1926 – February 18, 1976) was an American experimental filmmaker, assemblage, and collage artist and a crucial figure in 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 school for gambling in the early 1940s and became involved in the West Coast jazz scene. Berman wrote a song with Jimmy Witherspoon. (aka Shirley Berman) and they had a son, Tosh, in 1954.

In 1957, Berman moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where he mostly focused on his magazine Semina, which consisted of poetry, photographs, texts, drawings and images he assembled. In 1961, he returned to L.A., then moved to Topanga Canyon in 1965. He started his series of Verifax Collages in 1963 or 1964. Director Dennis Hopper, a collector of Berman's work, gave Berman a small role in his 1969 film Easy Rider. He produced work until his death in 1976 in a car accident caused by a drunk driver.

Artistic career Semina 4, ca. 1959 . Wallace Berman papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Berman created Verifax collages, which consist of photocopies of images from magazines and newspapers mounted onto a flat surface in collage fashion and mixed with occasional solid areas of acrylic paint.

Berman was influenced by jazz music, rock music, poetry of his Beat circle, Surrealism, Dada, and the Kabbalah. His involvement with the jazz scene allowed him opportunities to work with jazz musicians, creating bebop album covers for Charlie Parker.

Wallace Berman and other artists with 2 undercover Vice Squad officers, looking at Wally Hedrick's sculpture Sunflower (1952), during the now-famous LAPD obscenity arrest at Ferus Gallery in 1957.In 1957 Berman had his first exhibition of his artworks at the newly opened Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles. His friends were the curators/owners of the gallery, Ed Kienholz, Robert Alexander, and Walter Hopps. After the opening, the L.A. vice squad got a telephone tip from an anonymous caller and during the raid they found what was deemed a pornographic image by Cameron Parsons titled Peyote Vision at the bottom of Berman's assemblage work Temple. He was convicted of displaying lewd and obscene materials. At the summation in the courtroom, Berman wrote on the blackboard "There is no justice, only revenge". His actor-friend Dean Stockwell paid the $150 fine to release Berman. Ferus was the last showing in a public gallery for Berman during his life.

Semina 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, John Kelly Reed, and Berman, under the pseudonym Pantale Xantos. In 1992 Berman's papers were donated to the Archives of American Art by his son Tosh Berman. Trace du Sacre, 2008; Centre Pompidou di Rosa Collection Richard Prince private collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles