Scope and Contents

Kristine McKenna and Lorraine Wild edited this book and contributed an introduction and afterword. The photographs in this book depict self-portraits of Wallace Berman and portaits of his family and friends. As the editors indicate, whether the photographs were casual or staged are not clear. None of Berman's photographs were used in his Verifex collages. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The Sackners are mentioned in the chapter on Jack Hirschman stating that "his visual work has been extemsively collected by the Marvin and Ruth Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami Beach." Michael Duncan describes Wallace Berman as "a key under-recognized artist of his generation...an enigmatic, underground figure whose colllages and assemblages articulate an important strand of dark spirituality in postwar American culture." Descriptions and illustrated works and a biography of each member of the circle contribute an important body of work to the understanding of this group. the book also includes an in depth analysis of Semina, Wallace's journal that is "a fragmentary guidebook to alternative modes of thinking, living, and art making...based on a romantic embrace of mysticism, individualism, and domesticity." The catalogue also includes an illustrated chronology from...