Wallace Berman, Signed (10 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. Ix, 370 Pp. Hardcover, First Printing Indicated. Near Fine In Near Fine Jacket, Not Price-Clipped, Wear Along Top Of Rear Panel Of Dj. Inscribed By Aleta Wallach. Inscribed by Author(s).

Hand Bound in Boards. Condition: As New. WALLACE BERMAN (illustrator). First Edition. signed & numbered limited edition handbound hard back bound in boards by graham macintosh 1 OUT OF ONLY 200 COPIES. Signed by Author(s).

Condition: Good. 4to. 108 pp. Portfolio. First Edition. Very Good. Mostly Black and White Plates, 364 total, 20 in color. Signed. In Hardcover White Plastic Box, with Jasper Johns 'Target 1970' inside covers, with Johns offset-litho-facsimile signature, watercolor pads, paintbrush & catalogue. Includes exhibition checklist and bibliography. Prospectus loosely laid in. Catalogue Raisonne of Gemini's complete publications.Provenance: From the estate of Gerald Nordland (1927-2019). Nordland was a museum director, art critic, educator and author. Dean of the Chouinard Art Institute (1960-64), Director of the San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMoMA (1966-73), Milwaukee Art Museum (1977-85), and the UCLA Wight Art Gallery (1973-77). He is the author of over 60 publications, including books on Lachaise, Nakian, Diebenkorn and Frank Lloyd Wright.

First edition. 8vo. 24 leaves, each with a mounted letterpress text and illustration, entirely printed by hand. Original wrappers with a photographic illustration by C. BRITTIN mounted on front cover, with "coverphoto: Chas. Brittin" written in red ballpoint on inner rear wrapper. Wallace Berman's legendary artist's magazine: "Although printed on a handpress in editions of only a few hundred, Wallace Berman's 'Semina', a journal of poems and artworks published in nine issued from 1955 to 1964, is one of the determining works of its time, staking out a new cultural perimeter for an underground eager for change" (Duncan & McKenna, p. 21). This issue with contributions by Hermann Hesse, Paul Eluard, Jack Anderson, Michael McClure, Eric Cashen, Charles Bukowski, Paul Valery, David Meltzer, John Altoon (signed print) etc. Semina was published for nine issues, between 1955 to 1964. Exceedingly rare. Clay and Phillips, p.78f: "Its circulation never exceeded a few hundred copies. You could not buy Semina; it was sent to you. Consequently, some claim it as the precursor to 'mail art.'" See Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna, Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, pp. 52-54. Light handling wear and toning, generally a very good copy of this fugitive publication.

Paperbacks. Condition: Very Good. First Facsimile Edition. First Facsimile Edition (1992.) Nine facsimile booklets housed in a box with signed limitation leaf by George Herms this copy being #259 of 300 copies.The booklets are in very good condition. The box is in good condtion with one 2" crease to top left on front panel. Wallace Berman (1926-1976) was an American experimental filmmaker, assemblage, and collage artist and a crucial figure in the history of post-war California art. Berman originally published Semina between 1955 and 1964 in editions ranging from 150 to 350 copies and they were sent to contributors and friends. Brown box W/ Dark Brown Text. #032573 Size: Folio. Signed. Art / Beat Generation.

First Edition. Signed by Piero Heliczer on the verso of the front flyleaf and inscribed, "ah & have we sucked the chewing gum nipples of reality love Piero Heliczer." First edition. One of only five hundred copies, unnumbered. 36, [3] pp. Original purple and blue cloth lettered in silver. Near Fine with slight toning to endpapers, in Very Good dust jacket, which is toned, a little stained, and lightly worn; back panel a little worn. Heliczer was a poet and New Wave filmmaker who also appeared in films by Andy Warhol. This volume is illustrated by Wallace Berman, filmmaker Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol among others.

First edition, limited issue, number 35 of 50 copies signed by the artist; there were also 10 artist's proofs issued. Berman's Radio/Aether series is one of his most important works, comprised of Verifax collages of his hand holding an AM/FM transistor radio. The space where the speaker should be is filled with a panoply of visuals, including angels, skeletons, sex, flowers, guns, and planes. In 1964, Berman was given a Verifax machine, an early and sophisticated form of photocopier developed by Kodak in the 1940s as a cross between a printing press and a camera. The wet print process used disposable negatives and treated paper, and Berman's subsequent Radio/Aether series occupied him until the end of his life. When Berman realized he could print the Verifax negatives, it "opened a whole new field" (Katz) for the artist. He considered each lithograph panel in this portfolio as "a new adventure in universal connections" (Berman, quoted by Katz). With this parade of images, largely taken from magazines and newspaper, and incorporating letters and correspondences from the Kabbala, "it's as if Berman's radios were transmitting the images as something like a musical accompaniment to life, made visual" (Brooks). Rosetta Brooks, "Wallace Berman", ArtForum, available online; Vincent Katz, "Wallace Berman", Print Collector's Newsletter, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, May-June 1993. Thirteen offset lithographs and title leaf (330 x 336 mm) printed on Starwhite cover and mounted on Gemini ragboard, each with publisher's rubber-stamped name, embossed logo, and "WB 74-683" pencilled on lower right verso, housed in original black cloth-covered wooden slipcase, lettered in white in English and Hebrew alphabet. A few marks to title leaf and versos of prints, slipcase a little rubbed, lower corners of entry just worn: in near-fine condition, prints bright.

First Edition. Slim octavo (21.5cm); brown sheets with variously-sized handset plates tipped in, saddle-stapled into cardboard covers, with Charles Brittin photograph of Suzi Hicks mounted to front wrapper; Berman's "Art Is Love Is God" label mounted to lower rear endpaper, with a thin strip of paper printing "handset with miscellaneous available type & papers" mounted to inner rear wrapper; [28]pp; illus. While not called for, this copy has been signed by contributor John Altoon ("J. Altoon") in pencil, on the verso of his tipped-in folding illustration, and has additionally been signed in pencil by Charles Brittin along the upper edge of the inner rear wrapper ("Cover Photo: Chas Brittin"). Mild offsetting to mounted plates in-text (as is common with this issue), light wear to extremities, with some faint creasing to corners, three small splash marks to lower front cover, with a faint, shallow stain at upper spine-fold, encroaching slightly onto upper covers (though contents are unaffected); Very Good+. Housed in a custom slipcase and chemise. Second issue of Berman's iconic assemblage zine, with the limitation unspecified, but likely produced in numbers between 150-200 copies. Includes contributions by Berman, Hermann Hesse, Paul Eluard, Jack Anderson, Charles Bukowski, Cameron, Jean Cocteau, Zack Walsh, Eric Cashen, Lynn Trocchi, Idell T. Romero, J.B. May, Charles Baudelaire, Peder Carr, Judson Crews, John Reed, Lewis Carroll, David Meltzer, Michael McClure, Alexander Trocchi, Paul Valery, Rabindranath Tagore, and others. In keeping with Berman's ethos, each issue of Semina we've handled is just slighty different than the others; this is the first copy of issue no.2 we've encountered signed by any of the contributors. Semina Culture, p.52-54; Dorbin C20.

Vibrant color lithograph showing nine variants of Berman's signature motif of a hand holding a transistor radio. The bottom features a nonsense text: "OPT. 82. BOOSTER BNG. ANGUINEA/Y." One of 100 numbered copies signed by Berman. Printed in black and red against an orange background creating a very dynamic image (Support the Revolution, p. 173). Very slight waviness to part of top edge on the back, *not* visible from the front, minute edge tear, thus very near fine, though it presents as fine. The signed limited edition of this vibrant and iconic poster is scarce.

First Edition. One of 50 copies numbered and signed by Berman on the title leaf (with 10 additional artist's proofs), this being copy no.43. Thirteen offset lithographs from Berman's verifax series, printed on Starwhite cover and mounted on Gemini ragboard, measuring 13.25" x 12.25"; each lithograph bearing publisher's rubber-stamped name, embossed logo, and "WB 74-683" penciled to lower right corner on verso; housed in a black cloth-covered wood slipcase (measuring 13.5" x 12.75"), with titles, Hebrew alphabet, and numerical correspondences of each letter stamped in white on spine and front cover.Berman's last major work, a Verifax series of Kabbalistic collage-facsimiles dominated by multiple iterations of a hand holding a transistor radio, with each version containing a different erotic, occult, or mundane image. According to Shirley Berman, "Wallace got the idea of his Verifax series.from reading Radio-Mastery of the Aether, a small science book from the 1930's".The images inside the face of the radio change with each image, and are flanked by Hebrew lettering. The Cabala is circumscribed as the running current, the most foundational transmission of the series.a clear indicator of Berman's serious yet "intuitive" study and exploration of the Cabala as a system for understanding and utlizing Hebrew letters" (Behle, Chelsea Ryanne. "Art is Love is God": Wallace Berman and the Transmission of Aleph, 1956-66." 2006. pp.25-26). A scarce and significant work by this important post-War California artist, seldom found complete. OCLC notes an identically-titled card for an exhbition held at Gemini G.E.L. (Los Angeles), at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and one holding for the portfolio (Northwestern). We note copies held at the Getty, Williams College Museum of Art, Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum, and the National Gallery of Australia, with a single lithograph from a broken set held at Minneapolis Institute of Art.