Current Events
Toni's experimental films were screened to sold out audiences at three of the 2012 Pacific Standard Time events. Sponsored by the Getty Center Museum with the Andy Warhol Foundation, these events chronicled the work of Southern California artists. Alongside Toni’s films were works by George Lucas, Frank Zappa, Wallace Berman and Bruce Conner.
Toni's films will show in conjuntion with the Pacific Standard Time Celebrates LA Artists,
at the Armory Center for the Arts,
145 North Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91103
December 3, 2011, 8:00pm.
This show will repeat at Cinefamily on Saturday January 7, 2012.
These are 16 and 8mm films shot and edited by Toni Basil in the late 60's.
For More Information, Click Here
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Past Events
SEMINA CULTURE: WALLACE BERMAN & HIS CIRCLE
AT
September 17-
Guest
curators Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna
Opening
Reception Friday, September 16,
Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna. An
important artist of the post World War II generation,
Wallace Berman was a catalyst and
inspirational mentor—“Mr. Really Cool,” in the words of the late curatorial
giant Walter Hopps—carrying the ideas and ideals of one group of people to
another as he moved through a wide spectrum of creative, social, and political
circles during the fifties and sixties
in Southern California. This is the first major museum examination of
the significance of the charismatic Berman—his eclectic worldview and
non-nine-to-five lifestyle. It includes the complete loose-leaf run of Semina—a
hand-printed, free form art and poetry journal that Berman published and
personally distributed—and artworks by contributors to Semina, as
well as by those who were part of the close-knit “Semina Culture”
community—largely people from the West Coast. The exhibition and accompanying
catalog offer breakthrough insights and rigorous scholarship about an emerging counterculture whose rich array
of innovative artistic voices contrasted with the cultural conformity of
In addition to the complete Semina publication—an
iconic document of Berman’s idiosyncratic artistic point-of-view—the exhibition
includes over fifty of Berman’s own photographs, recently printed from
vintage negatives and shown for the first time; a compelling selection of
publications and documents integral to the world of “Semina Culture;”
and never before seen works in a variety of mediums by forty-eight artists,
friends, and collaborators in Wallace Berman’s artistic projects: Robert
Alexander, John Altoon, Toni Basil, Paul Beattie, Ray and Bonnie Bremser,
Charles Brittin, Joan Brown, Cameron, Bruce Conner, Jean Conner, Jay DeFeo,
Diane DiPrima, Kirby Doyle, Bobby Driscoll, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Llyn
Foulkes, Loree Foxx, Ralph Gibson, Allen Ginsberg; Billy Gray; George Herms;
Jack Hirschman; Dennis Hopper; Billy Jahrmarkt; Jess; Lawrence Jordan; Patricia
Jordan; Bob Kaufman. Philip Lamantia; William Margolis; Michael McClure; Taylor
Mead; David Meltzer; Henry Miller; Stuart Perkoff; John Reed; Arthur Richer;
Rachel Rosenthal; Jack Smith; Dean Stockwell; Ben Talbert; Russel Tamblyn;
Aya (Tarlow); Edmund Teske; Zack Walsh; Lew
Welch; and John Wieners. These artists of the “beat” generation created works
infused with memory, lyricism, and a sense of the ephemeral. Art was a joyful
and creative expression for these iconoclasts, not a means to an art world
career. Their approach to the purpose and formal nature of art and culture
existed on a vastly different track from the canonical traditions of abstract
expressionism, minimalism, and postmodernism. The exhibition also features a continuously running group of short
films by Berman, Paul Beattie, Russel Tamblyn, and Toni Basil, including
footage of Berman and his artist friends.
The
comprehensive catalog that documents the exhibition is published and
distributed by SMMoA and DAP. Semina Culture will
travel to the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art,
Utah State
University, Logan, Utah (January 10–March 15, 2006); the Ulrich
Museum of Art, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas (April 21–July 9,
2006); the University of California, Berkeley Art
Museum & Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California (October 17–December 10, 2006); and
The