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8.
Small poster announcment for the Batman Gallery’s inaugural show.
Offset. 43.2x14cm. Illustrated with a b/w photograph of “Black Dhalia”, an assemblage Conner described as a “body full of darkness”, and titled, as Rebecca Solnit has noted, “after one of the most grisly murders ever committed in Los Angeles”.
The Batman Gallery was located at 2222 Fillmore, San Francisco (a former dress shop found by Bruce Conner) and run by Joan and William Jahrmarkt, whose father provided the finance. It was named by Michael McClure, who lived nearby, and William Jahrmarkt (a painter himself) later became known as ‘Billy Batman’ after his look of black hair and black clothes.
The Jahrmarkt’s opening exhibition showcased Conner’s recent work, ninety-nine pieces almost evenly divided between sculptures and assemblages and his “beautiful drawings, very delicate and faint”, as Joan Jahrmarkt later recalled. Bruce Conner designed the gallery space and painted the walls matt black, leading the San Francisco Chronicle to characterise the show as being like “some magic grotto, full of things that have been put under enchantment and left for years to the bats and spiders, but still alive and waiting to be revivified.”
Old central horizontal fold, o/w Fine.
(Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era, p.65/Semina Culture, p.340).