Opening Saturday, July 9th, 2022 5 - 7pm
Exhibition on view through September 10, 2022
“Shirley’s Left Bank extreme kohl eye shadow and lyrical cool defined and challenged any suburban tendency to be nice or safe.” – David Meltzer
In the Spring of 1951, Shirley Morand famously entered the annals of American art history. Standing in line at the art house Coronet Theater to see Jean Cocteau’s surrealist classic The Blood of a Poet, she was approached by then-unknown artist Wallace Berman. Their chance encounter would put the couple at the forefront of the counterculture movement, with Wallace as the hipster-mystic artist and Shirley as the soft-spoken, steadfast first lady of California cool.
Like Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas before them, the Bermans cultivated a social sphere unbeholden to the commercial art world. With friends like Dennis Hopper, George Herms, and Bruce Conner, the couple acted as a locus of the West Cost film, dance, and literature scenes. Shirley’s presence helped to facilitate these environments, allowing the opportunity for creative collaboration.
Not a practicing artist herself, Shirley occupied the dual roles of observer and subject, at once a center of the orbit and a cause of its fascination. With her elfin beauty and preternatural poise, Shirley Berman embodied a type of ethereal femininity that encompassed the evolution of postwar American womanhood. As captured by the likes of Charles Brittin, Patricia Jordan, and Edmund Teske, Shirley conveys glamorous, yet unpretentious sophistication, whether superimposed onto double exposure of ruinous landscapes or floating supine on water like an Egyptian goddess.
Kohn Gallery’s “Lyrical Cool: A Tribute to Shirley Berman,” celebrates the unique legacy of this inspirational but lesser-known woman, who passed away in early 2022 at the age of 88. Curated by Karl Puchlik, the exhibition will present never-before-shown portraits of Berman, as well as original works drawn from her private collection, including Wallace Berman, Charles Brittin, Bruce Conner, George Herms, Lun*na Menoh, Dean Stockwell, Edmund Teske, and others. An accompanying catalog will feature an extended interview with Berman by Claudia Bohn-Spector, illuminating the underappreciated role of women in the Beat Generation as well as an essay by Bohn-Spector and Tosh Berman, son of Shirley and Wallace Berman.
In the 1980s I did 22 episodes of "Tea With Tosh." I imagine myself being a combination of William F. Buckley and Dick Cavett. But geared for housewives in the afternoon. That was my mind set at the time. I interviewed everyone from Philip Glass to Bruce Conner to Russ Tamblyn, people from Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center to Tom Recchion and beyond. I also interviewed my future wife Lun*na Menoh. Basically this is how we met.
You can see all 22 episodes of "Tea With Tosh" here:
Theme music: “Behind Our Efforts, Let There Be Found Our Efforts” by LG17
This reprint of the now classic and much sought-after 2005 volume celebrates the circle of the quintessential visual artist of the Beat era, Wallace Berman (1926–76), who remains one of the best-kept secrets of the postwar era. A crucial figure in California's underground culture, Berman was a catalyst who traversed many different worlds, transferring ideas and dreams from one circle to the next. His larger community is the subject of Semina Culture, which includes previously unseen works by 52 artists. Anchoring this publication is Semina, a loose-leaf art and poetry journal that Berman published in nine issues between 1955 and 1964. Although printed in extremely short runs and distributed to only a handful of friends and sympathizers, Semina is a brilliant and beautifully made compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time, and is today a very rare collector's item. Showcasing the individuals that defined a still-potent strand of postwar counterculture, Semina Culture outlines the energies and values of this fascinating circle. Also reproduced here are works by those who appear in Berman's own photographs, approximately 100 of which were recently developed from vintage negatives, and which are seen here for the first time. These artists, actors, poets, curators, musicians and filmmakers include Robert Alexander, John Altoon, Toni Basil, Wallace Berman, Ray Bremser, Bonnie Bremser, Charles Britten, Joan Brown, Cameron, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo, Diane DiPrima, Kirby Doyle, Bobby Driscoll, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Llyn Foulkes, Ralph Gibson, Allen Ginsberg, George Herms, Jack Hirschman, Walter Hopps, Dennis Hopper, Billy Jahrmarkt, Jess, Lawrence Jordan, Patricia Jordan, Bob Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, William Margolis, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Taylor Mead, Henry Miller, Stuart Perkoff, Jack Smith, Dean Stockwell, Ben Talbert, Russ Tamblyn, Aya (Tarlow), Alexander Trocchi, Edmund Teske, Zack Walsh, Lew Welch and John Wieners.
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