SEMINA VI

Larkspur, CA: Wallace Berman, 1960. First edition. Very good plus.. Sixth issue of Berman's legendary artist's magazine, containing the complete text of David Meltzer's poem "The Clown." Privately distributed and "handset on a beat 5 x 8 Excelsior hand-press" by Berman, SEMINA combines the early DIY-ethos of the Mimeo Revolution with the aesthetics of the burgeoning mail art movement. From the beginning, the magazine was an innovation, "not a choice of poems and art works to exercise the editor's discrimination and aesthetic judgment, but the fashioning of a context," as Robert Duncan described it. In other words, an artwork in and of itself: "Taking a dose of inspiration from Dadaist and Surrealist periodicals [...] SEMINA was heterogeneous in content and physical materials. The magazine manifested in equal measure Berman's passion for the crafted object and his love of poetry, but issues also encompassed photography, collage, and drawings [...] hand-printed on a variety of papers [...] [m]ost issues were looseleaf and unsequenced, the order left for the reader to determine" (Aarons & Roth, 340). Given their rather fugitive nature and with editions rarely exceeding 300 copies, all of the issues of SEMINA are uncommon. 8.5'' x 6'' (folder); 5.75'' x 4.75'' (cards). Original printed folder featuring five photos in vignette by Berman, containing in a mounted interior manila pocket holding 13 letterpress cards printed in red, plus Berman-illustrated title card printed in black and red. 14 card total, complete. One of 335 unnumbered copies printed by Berman. Light wear to folder, bottom edge pocket split about 1.5''. Minor toning overall. Else sound and clean. (Inventory #: 53602)