| During the period when he made Silence Series
#7, Wallace Berman’s reputation
as an artist and poet was so significant that he was incorporated into two touchstones
of the era: his face appeared in a group portrait on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967
album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and he made a brief appearance
in the 1969 film Easy Rider. Despite this recognition, his wide range of accomplishments
occurred, by choice, out of the public eye. Today Berman is best known for his
1955–1964 serial Semina, a handmade, slipcovered collection of art and
writing that was an early outlet for Beat generation writers, such as William
S. Burroughs, Michael McClure, and Charles Bukowski; and a notorious 1957 exhibition
at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles, which led to his wrongful arrest and conviction
on obscenity charges. Both cemented Berman’s credibility as an uncompromising. . . .
:: Paul Roth, Curator of Photography and Media Arts
Corcoran Gallery of Art |
Text excerpted from A Capital Collection: Masterworks from
the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
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:: The Curator's Journals Project
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