Wallace "Wally" Berman (February 18, 1926 – February 18, 1976) was an American

experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...

maker, assemblage, and

collage Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...

artist and a crucial figure in the history of

post-war In Western usage, the phrase post-war era (or postwar era) usually refers to the time since the end of World War II. More broadly, a post-war period (or postwar period) is the interval immediately following the end of a war. A post-war period ...

California art.

Personal life and education

Wallace Berman was born in

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey b ...

, New York in 1926. In the 1930s his family moved to

Boyle Heights, Los Angeles Boyle Heights, historically known as Paredón Blanco, is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, located east of the Los Angeles River. It is one of the city's most notable and historic Chicano/Mexican-American communities and is known as a ...

. Berman was discharged from high school for gambling in the early 1940s and became involved in the

West Coast jazz West Coast jazz refers to styles of jazz that developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of cool jazz, which consisted of a calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music relied re ...

scene. Berman wrote a song with

Jimmy Witherspoon James Witherspoon (August 8, 1920 – September 18, 1997) was an American jump blues singer. Early life, family and education Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas. His father was a railroad worker who sang in local choirs, and his mot ...

. He attended classes at

Jepson Art Institute Jepson Art Institute, founded in 1945 by artist Herbert Jepson, was an art school located at 2861 West 7th Street in the Westlake district of central Los Angeles, California. It flourished from 1947 to 1953 — becoming an important center for ...

and

Chouinard Art Institute The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879–1969) in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1961, Walt and Roy Disney guided the merger of the Chouinard Art I ...

in the 1940s. For a few years from 1949 he worked in a factory finishing

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating ( tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks) ...

. 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 to an involvement in the

Beat Movement The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generat ...

. He married Shirley Morand (aka Shirley Berman) and together they had a son

Tosh Tosh may refer to: People * Tosh (surname) * Tosh (nickname) * Tosh Townend (born 1985), professional skateboarder * Tosh Van der Sande (born 1990), Belgian professional cyclist Places * Tosh, Himachal Pradesh, India; a village * Kiryas ...

in 1954. 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 Topanga () (Tongva: ''Topaa'nga'') is a census-designated place (CDP) in western Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located in the Santa Monica Mountains, the community exists in Topanga Canyon and the surrounding hills. The narrow s ...

in 1965. He started creating his series of '' Verifax Collages'' in 1963 or 1964. Director

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in '' Giant'' (1956). In the next ten year ...

, a collector of Berman's work, gave Berman a small role in his 1969 film ''

Easy Rider ''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American independent drug culture road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda, and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American So ...

''. He produced work until his sudden death in 1976, in a car accident caused by a

drunk driver Drunk driving (or drink-driving in British English) is the act of driving under the influence of alcohol. A small increase in the blood alcohol content increases the relative risk of a motor vehicle crash. In the United States, alcohol is in ...

. Berman had said to his mother as a child he would die on his 50th birthday, and indeed he died February 18, 1976, his fiftieth birthday.

Artistic career

Berman created ''Verifax collages'', which consist of photocopies of images from magazines and newspapers, mounted onto a flat surface in

fashion, mixed with occasional solid areas of acrylic paint. To make them, Berman used a

Verifax copier The Kodak verifax is a photo copying approach that uses a wet colloidal diffusion transfer technique patented by Yutzy, H.C. and Yackel, E.C. (1947) The light source is projected to the top crossing the negative being reflected -more or less, accord ...

(

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

) machine to copy images which he often juxtaposed in a grid format, creating what the critic Will Fenstermaker called "psychedelic typologies." Berman was influenced by

jazz music Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a maj ...

rock music Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States a ...

, poetry of his Beat circle,

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

, as well as the

Kabbalah Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...

. Though he was not religious, the influence of the Kabbalah and

Jewish mysticism Academic study of Jewish mysticism, especially since Gershom Scholem's ''Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism'' (1941), distinguishes between different forms of mysticism across different eras of Jewish history. Of these, Kabbalah, which emerged in ...

is seen in his collages that included Hebrew letters. These letters also appear in his only film, ''Aleph''. His involvement with the jazz scene allowed him opportunities to work with jazz musicians, creating

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

album covers for

Charlie Parker Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form ...

. 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 Edward Ralph Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American Installation art, installation artist and assemblage (art), assemblage sculpture, sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he ...

, Robert Alexander and

Walter Hopps Walter "Chico" Hopps (May 3, 1932 – March 20, 2005) was an American museum director, gallerist, and curator of contemporary art. Hopps helped bring Los Angeles post-war artists to prominence during the 1960s, and later went on to redefine pract ...

. 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 to be a pornographic image by Cameron Parsons titled ''Peyote Vision'' at the bottom of one of Berman's assemblage works called ''Temple''. He later 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 Robert Dean Stockwell (March 5, 1936 – November 7, 2021) was an American actor with a career spanning seven decades. As a child actor under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he first came to the public's attention in films including ''Anchors A ...

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 Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence Scho ...

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 Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 – March 7, 2005) was an American poet and lecturer. His poems were often visionary, ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic, exploring the subconscious world of dreams and linking it to daily experiences, while s ...

, David Meltzer,

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

, William S. Burroughs,

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Jean Cocteau Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (, , ; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the s ...

, John Kelly Reed and Berman, which he published under the pseudonym Pantale Xantos. ''Semina'' was published from 1955 to 1964. The cover of the first issue of ''Semina'' featured a photograph of artist and occultist Marjorie Cameron. The volume also included Cameron's drawing, ''Peyote Vision.'' This artwork was featured in Berman's 1957 exhibition at Los Angeles' Feris Gallery, which was raided and shut down by police. Investigating officers claimed that ''Peyote Vision'', which featured two copulating figures, was pornographic and indecent, thus legitimizing their actions.

''Aleph''

Berman created a 6 minute 8mm silent

entitled ''Aleph'' that he worked on from 1958 to 1976. Berman began work on ''Aleph'' soon after the release of the first issues of ''Semina'', and the film incorporated techniques carried over from collage and painting. The film includes hand coloring, Letraset symbols, and collage portraits of pop-culture icons, which Berman superimposed on images of a Sony transistor radio. After Berman's death, filmmaker

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage created a larg ...

salvaged the film and enlarged it to 16mm for public screening. The film was named ''Aleph'' by Berman’s son Tosh, after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet which had been adopted by his father as a monogram.

Legacy

Berman's likeness appears on the album cover of the Beatles' 1967 ''

Sgt. 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 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept album that advanced the roles of sound composi ...

''. The portrait is from a photograph taken by

. It is directly above

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

, two rows up, next to Tony Curtis. In 1992 Berman's papers were donated to the

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 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

by his son Tosh Berman.

Notable exhibitions

*''Wallace Berman - Visual Music'', 2018, galerie frank elbaz, Paris *''Looking for Mushrooms'', 2008, Ludwig Museum *''Trace du Sacre'', 2008;

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

*''Los Angeles 1955-1985'' 2006; Centre Pompidou *''California Modern'', 2006;

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...

*''Subway Series: The New York Yankees and the American Dream'', 2004;

Bronx Museum of the Arts The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA), also called the Bronx Museum of Art or simply the Bronx Museum, is an American cultural institution located in Concourse, Bronx, New York. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th-century works created by ...

*''Evidence of Impact: Art and Photography 1963-1978'', 2004;

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

*Solo exhibition: Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1957

Notable collections

*''Untitled'', 1967;

Norton Simon Museum The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California, United States. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds. Overview The Norton Si ...

* di Rosa Collection *

Richard Prince Richard Prince (born 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image, ''Untitled (Cowboy)'', a rephotographing of a photograph by Sam Abell and ...

private collection *

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ...

References

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 estateWallace Berman
at

Kadist Art Foundation Kadist is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts organization with an international contemporary art collection. In addition to being a collecting body, Kadist hosts artists residencies and produces exhibitions, publications, and public events. ...

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archive page {{DEFAULTSORT:Berman, Wallace 1926 births 1976 deaths People from Staten Island People from Boyle Heights, Los Angeles Beat Generation people Jewish American artists Assemblage artists People from Topanga, California Collage filmmakers Road incident deaths in California 20th-century American Jews