Wallace Berman

Wallace Berman was born on this day in 1926, and died on this day in 1976. He reportedly told his mother as a child that he would die on his 50th birthday. On the day he turned fifty a drunk driver crashed into his car, killing him instantly. 

Wallace Berman and Robert Watts | Arranged Marriage

Wallace Berman and Robert Watts
Arranged Marriage
New York City, USA: Roth Horowitz, 1999
40 pp., 19.2 x 26 cm., spiral bound
Edition of 500

Often referred to as an artists' book, despite the fact that the artists - Watts and Berman - had been dead for 11 and 23 years, respectively. Arranged Marriage, which includes an essay by Fluxus historian Simon Anderson, was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name that ran from 28 October to 18 December, 1999. The inventive catalogue format includes 2 tipped-in fold-outs and an invitation card bound-in at the front.

Both artists participated in Pop Art exhibitions, but produced work that fell outside the genre's purview.

Critic Kim Levin called Watts "the invisible man of Fluxus and Pop". He was also an active participant in 'Happenings' with Allan Kaprow, George Brecht and others.

Berman has been called the "father" of assemblage art and is known for creating the artists' periodical Semina. He had a small role in Dennis Hopper's film Easy Rider, and appears in the Peter Blake collage for the cover of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He died in 1976, on his fiftieth birthday.