wallace berman

Berman died in Topanga Canyon in 1976 at the age of fifty. His art embodied the kind of interdisciplinary leanings and interests that, in time, would come to help characterize the Beat movement as a whole. In addition to his art, Berman wrote poetry, composed rhythm and blues tunes, and collaborated, at one time, with legendary bluesman Jimmy Wither-spoon.

People generally associate the Beat Generation more with literature and poetry than with visual art. Last year's exhibition at the Whitney Musuem of American Art did its best to alter that perception, though even much of the work featured there was produced by Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, and other writers with whom the Beat Generation is most widely identified.

What may be perceived as somewhat ironic in this regard is that these same writers, in addition to dabbling in visual art themselves, greatly admired, if not idolized certain painters, perhaps finding in their work a kind of primal and direct sense of self-expression toward which their own writing aspired. Wallace Berman was one of the Beat artists most admired by his peers and, as this show displays, with very good reason.

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