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Semina 8

1963
Not on view
The cover image of Semina 8, Wallace Berman’s handmade poetry and photography journal, was created by Dean Stockwell, an actor-friend of Berman’s who later played Dennis Hopper’s creepy sidekick Ben in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). Stockwell altered a famous press photograph of William Heirens, the so-called Lipstick Killer of 1946 Chicago, by replacing the confession in the original image with a fascistic Iron Cross of the kind that appeared frequently in Berman’s collage work of the same moment, and which the suspect seems to be drawing under duress. In making the young criminal into a persecuted artist, Stockwell summarized the Beat Generation’s valorization of living outside the law in the service of mystic truths.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Semina 8
  • Artist: Wallace Berman (American, Staten Island, New York 1926–1976 Topanga Canyon, California)
  • Date: 1963
  • Medium: Mixed media artist’s publication
  • Dimensions: 7 1/8 × 5 1/2 in. (18.1 × 14 cm)
  • Classification: Periodicals
  • Credit Line: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, and Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library Funds, 2014
  • Object Number: 2014.8.8
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

More Artwork

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Semina VI, Wallace Berman American, Mixed media artist’s publication
Semina VI
Wallace Berman
1960
Semina 4, Wallace Berman American, Mixed media artist’s publication
Semina 4
Wallace Berman
1959
Semina Two, Wallace Berman American, Mixed media artist’s publication
Semina Two
Multiple artists/makers
December 1957
Untitled, Wallace Berman American, Verifax collage
Untitled
Wallace Berman
1967–68
Semina 3, Wallace Berman American, Mixed media artist’s publication
Semina 3
Wallace Berman
Michael McClure
1958

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