She: Works by Wallace Berman & Richard Prince

by Wallace Berman (Artist), Richard Prince, Kristine McKenna (Editor)

The use of heterosexual pornography or soft erotica in collage and assemblage is often all too uncritical, but for a few of the California artists who came of age in the early 1950s, its applications were much more nuanced. For example, Wallace Berman's 1957 "Cross" assemblage features a close-up photograph of heterosexual penetration that affirms sex as a " factum fidei" ("true fact," as Berman's inscription went)--its explicitness serving simply as realism. This approach to "girlie magazine" imagery and its polar opposite--the impulse to decommodify sexuality--can both be found in the photographs, paintings and books of Richard Prince, an artist whose fondness for the era of Berman is well known. She traces these overlaps and sympathies with reproductions of previously unseen works by Berman and new images from Prince's Girlfriends and de Kooning series. Also including an interview with Prince, She is edited by Kristine McKenna, whose ongoing work on Wallace Berman and his contemporaries continues to yield exciting discoveries.

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2009

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, yes Wallace Berman is my father. So of course this book gets the five star treatment for that alone. But also this is a rather unusual book in that it compares and contrasts with works by Richard Prince as well. The book, like the exhibition at the Michael Kohn Gallery (in Los Angeles) is actually two shows in one. The connection between the two artists is that they use a similar techniques to do their art and the subject matter for the book and show is on one topic - Girls.

But beyond that how Prince tackles the subject matter is totally different than my Dad. Richard has a critical eye towards gender, while my father is more of a sensual aesthetic. There is sort of a dandy meets practical in this show - and how one meets up is really up to the viewer. Kristine McKenna did a really provocative editing on this subject with the two artists, and Lorraine Wild's design of the book is superb.

[Ruth B · Rating 5 out of 5]

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