Preview our FALL 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
MICHAEL KOHN GALLERY
Wallace Berman: American Aleph
Introduction by Tosh Berman. Text by Claudia Bohn-Spector, Sam Mellon, Ken Allan.
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the artists accidental death at age 50, this volume offers the first substantial survey of the entire oeuvre of Wallace Berman (192676) 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 Bermans face among the notable crowd in his cover for the Beatles Sgt Peppers 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 Bermans significant contributions to the history of 20th-century American art.
Featured images are reproduced from Wallace Berman: American Aleph.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Art in America
Rebekah Weikel
Berman's striking Verifax works reveal an eerily prescient vision for a future hooked to the World Wide Web.
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Influential force-of-nature Beat generation Renaissance man Wallace Berman was one of America's first assemblage artists as well as a trailblazing photographer, writer, filmmaker, actor, proto-zine publisher, and designer of jazz album covers. While his indelibility was secured when his face appeared next to Tony Curtis on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, it's his art that endures. With a focus on his Verifax collages (my favorite of his work), this opulently printed book is the perfect take-home on an American visionary who was as deeply religious as he was unorthodox. Featured image is "Untitled (Sound Series #3)", c. 1967-68. continue to blog
Made in 1960, this untitled photograph of Shirley Berman, wife of Wallace and mother of Tosh, is reproduced from Wallace Berman: American Aleph, Michael Kohn Gallery's new collection of Berman's photographs, Verifax collages, sculpture, posters and other ephemera. "To this day, I have never known any other person who was as perceptive as my dad," Tosh writes. "He lived on the West Coast all his life, but his art and his aesthetic weren't always tied to home. Like the radio, he broadcast wide and far. To say he had taste is like saying it is dark at night and the daytime is bright." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 11 x 9.5 in. / 120 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $59.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 GBP £52.99 ISBN: 9781880086216 PUBLISHER: Michael Kohn Gallery AVAILABLE: 7/26/2016 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by Michael Kohn Gallery. Introduction by Tosh Berman. Text by Claudia Bohn-Spector, Sam Mellon, Ken Allan.
Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the artists accidental death at age 50, this volume offers the first substantial survey of the entire oeuvre of Wallace Berman (192676) 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 Bermans face among the notable crowd in his cover for the Beatles Sgt Peppers 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 Bermans significant contributions to the history of 20th-century American art.
