An Interview with Merrill C. Berman
Merrill C. Berman may be the most important collector you never heard of. Over the course of forty years, he has built a collection of twentieth century avant-garde design that is unmatched in its breadth and depth. Long a secret resource for curators, Berman’s loans have facilitated an untold number of museum exhibitions and could potentially spawn dozens more. “Youth Style” focuses on Austrian and German posters created between roughly 1895 and 1918.
Jane Kallir: Tell me about the origins of your collection.
Merrill C. Berman: I started by collecting paintings: Post-Impressionists, Abstract Expressionists, Photo Realists, and Pop Art. But I was unable to collect above a certain price. My taste was ahead of my pocketbook. And also, I realized that I wasn't adding anything to the field.
When I got hit hard in the bear market of ‘73-’74, leading up to Watergate, I was forced to sell.
JK: And that’s when you began collecting posters…
MCB: Right. I had to start over with more affordable objects.
I was always a collector, from the age of 14, when I got interested in collecting political Americana. This material was very graphic and helped hone my graphic sensibility.
I started collecting posters and graphic design with an orientation toward Art Nouveau and Art Deco. In the process, I built up an understanding of the history of the poster and various art movements. I came across a number of Vienna Secession and German “Object Posters,” but I was never successful in building a huge collection of Secession material in that period.
“I was always a collector, from the age of 14, when I got interested in collecting political Americana. This material was very graphic and helped hone my graphic sensibility.”
JK: What about the Germans?
MCB: German material represented an opportunity for me. I was always interested in pre-World War I German graphic design. The “Object Posters”—by artists like Lucian Bernhard, Edmund Edel and the Austrian Julius Klinger, whom you have included in the Galerie St. Etienne exhibition—these were the predecessors of the famous Swiss object designers like Niklaus Stoecklin, Peter Birkhäuser, and others.
JK: How did you educate yourself? I imagine that most of the literature, particularly in the early days, was in German. Where did you get the background knowledge on the different movements, and the artists? From the dealers?
MCB: Some of the dealers were quite knowledgeable and helped, but in the process of collecting I also built a serious research library.
JK: I’m trying to understand the interplay between the intellectual and the visual. How much of your approach was driven strictly by a visual feeling for great design?
MCB: It was a process of self-learning, of getting away from the decorative repetition of Art Nouveau and separating out the great avant-garde pieces. The great Russians, the great Bauhaus and Dutch avant-garde. My interest in Russian posters, in particular, was closely tied to my study of the broader history of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution, the two World Wars, and the rapid acceleration of modernism. The Secession material was often scarce, and I never saw any of it on the market until I came across the restituted Albertina collection.
Lucian Bernhard (German-American, 1883-1972): Poster for Vertex Light Bulbs. 1909. Color lithograph on paper. 37" x 24 3/4" (94 x 62.9 cm). Printed by Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin.
Hans Rudi Erdt (German, 1883-1918): Poster for Opel Automobile. 1911. Color lithograph on paper. 27 1/2" x 37 7/8" (69.9 x 96.2 cm). Printed by Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin.
Lucian Bernhard (German-American, 1883-1972): Poster for Manoli Cigarettes. 1910. Color lithograph on paper. 27 3/4" x 37 3/4" (70.5 x 95.9 cm). Printed by Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin.
JK: Let’s talk about the Albertina material, which is at the heart of our “Youth Style” exhibition.
MCB: Well, about ten years ago my friends, the dealers Robert Brown and Susan Reinhold of the Reinhold-Brown Gallery, became aware of an important poster collection that was being restituted from the Albertina Museum to the heirs of Julius Paul. This collection had been formed by Paul, a man in the cigarette paper business (which explains his interest in the tobacco-related material in the collection). Paul’s nephew Gaston Belf inherited the collection when Paul died in early 1938. After the Anschluss, Belf abandoned the collection when he fled Austria. The collection was confiscated by the Nazis and ended up in the hands of the bookseller V. A. Heck who then sold it to the Albertina in 1939 where it remained until 2008. So, Robert and Susan located the heirs of Gaston Belf, and agreed to represent the sale of the collection.
JK: How did you process the Albertina collection? You had a lot of material to go through. What was your first response? You picked what you liked and then you started reading about the artists?
MCB: The posters were stored in large, well-constructed folios, containing anywhere from thirty to sixty posters. It was impossible to look at all the folios at once. The collection at that time must have comprised approximately 3,000 posters. When one opened the folios, the material was shockingly fresh, like it had been printed yesterday. The artists’ names had been written on the backs of each poster and each had the Albertina stamp. They were carefully protected. I think they might have been organized in alphabetical order, by artist’s name. The material included some artists who I knew about like Klinger and Bernhard, the Czech Otakar Stafl, and Hungarians like Alexander Bortnyik and Mihály Biró. It included great Vienna Secession, Wiener Werkstätte material and cabaret posters. There were also many artists who were unfamiliar or anonymous—from Eastern Europe and, occasionally, from Russia—and categories of works, such as war posters, that I just had to thread my way through visually.
“It was a process of self-learning, of getting away from the decorative repetition…and separating out the great avant-garde pieces.”
JK: You found out more about these people after you bought the Albertina collection?
MCB: Absolutely. I researched the collection over a number of years. There was great Hungarian material, in particular, which I had never seen before. Great material of all kinds. Robert and Susan were learning alongside me. But once I got into this process, I learned quickly.
Take the Hagenbund posters, for example—I didn’t know anything about the lesser-known, Vienna-based Hagenbund artists’ group in the shadow of the Secession, but I was able to find a lot of material to educate myself. I wasn't that focused on these areas until I came face-to-face with it in the Albertina group. I’d been collecting early German and Austrian design since the 1970s, but this material was significantly broadened with the Albertina collection.
JK: How much of the collection did you end up buying?
MCB: A significant portion. Over eight hundred pieces, perhaps. It was a complicated transaction. There was such a massive amount of material. I think I got more than the lion’s share of the great posters and quite a lot of material that was under the radar to others, but appealed to me because of the knowledge I had built and the “native” sensibility I had developed.
Heinrich Lefler (Austrian, 1863-1919): Poster for the Opening Exhibition of the Hagenbund, Vienna. 1902. Color lithograph on paper. 44 1/2" x 33 1/8" (113 x 84.1 cm). Printed by Christoph Reisser's Söhne, Vienna.
“I’m…interested in building a collection that breaks down distinctions between art and design, and the hierarchy between unique and multiple….[There’s] a lot of serendipity in what I do.”
Alfred Roller (Austrian, 1864-1935): Poster for the Sixteenth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession. 1902. Color lithograph on paper. 36 1/2" x 12 5/8" (92.7 x 32.1 cm). Printed by Albert Berger, Vienna.
JK: Do you ever go out looking for specific images or to complete a collection of a certain artist, or you do you just kind of buy things because you have an opportunity and you see something great?
MCB: There’s an overarching plan, for sure, which has to do with deepening the representation of certain artists and tracing connections between them. I’m also interested in building a collection that breaks down distinctions between art and design, and the hierarchy between unique and multiple. These things have more to do with the discipline of art history than with the reality of how artists and designers worked in the early twentieth century. But there’s also a lot of serendipity in what I do. I have a robust network of colleagues across many countries that show me relevant material. They’ll point my nose in a direction or let me know, for example, of something that’s coming up for sale at a remote auction.
JK: What are some of the themes that interest you?
MCB: I have wide-reaching interests. In the early twentieth century: Jewish artists, Hungarians, complicated national identities—like that of the Belgian/Flemish—in the shadow of dominant neighbors such as France and Germany, film posters, the history of photography, war posters. Some of the themes developed there, like left-wing causes, extend into my post-World War II collection—Black Panther material, for example. I also have a major collection of Japanese graphic design by Tadanori Yokoo, Shigeo Fukuda, and others. Much of the Japanese material came from the collection of Professor Richard Thornton, author of The Graphic Spirit of Japan (1991). These are areas that other people have overlooked. One has to have his tentacles spread in a lot of places. Sometimes I’ll launch into new areas because I know they’re important and the materials magically appear on the market.
Adolf Boehm (Austrian, 1861-1927): Poster for the Fifteenth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession. 1902. Color lithograph on paper. 38" x 12 1/2" (96.5 x 31.8 cm). Printed by Albert Berger, Vienna.
Thomas Theodor Heine (German, 1867-1936): Poster for the Elf Scharfrichter, Munich. 1901. Color lithograph on paper. 44 7/8" x 27 7/8" (114 x 70.8 cm). Printed by the Vereinigte Druckereien & Kunstanstalten, Munich.
“One has to have his tentacles spread in a lot of places. Sometimes I’ll launch into new areas because I know they’re important and the materials magically appear on the market.”
JK: You just sold MoMA over 300 European and Russian avant-garde works. How did that happen?
MCB: Well, I had been developing good relations with MoMA over many years. I was a lender to numerous shows since the 1980s. We started talking about a possible sale eight or nine years ago, but it didn’t pick up steam until the last three years, when the MoMA began the process of planning their major expansion. They are now committed to hanging and viewing their collection in a more integrated way, which is not as painting-oriented; they recognize the important role that photomontage, collage, maquettes for printing, and printed matter plays in the broader history of modern art. Through the efforts of Christophe Cherix, Jodi Hauptman, Leah Dickerman, Ann Temkin, and the whole team, we worked on the project of having my collection join MoMA’s. The Director, Glenn Lowry, was key to realizing this transaction, which was so important for all of us. In the process, I have been able to contribute to the curators’ knowledge in areas such as typography and maquettes for printed matter, and to supplement areas of their collection that were weak, such as collage and photomontage.
“According to my thought process, some of the tiniest, most unassuming things can actually be the most remarkable.”
JK: Do you think there’s still a divide between high art and low art, printed matter and unique works? Do you see any distinction at all? Or is it all the same for you?
MCB: They are certainly not the same. According to my thought process, some of the tiniest, most unassuming things can actually be the most remarkable. They are incredibly informative about their times. I am glad if I have contributed to curators taking diverse materials, such as collages, maquettes, posters, and other printed matter (so-called “ephemera”), more seriously in their exhibitions.
Peter Behrens (German, 1868-1940): Poster for AEG's Metal Filament Bulb. Circa 1907. Color lithograph on paper. 22 3/4" x 19 1/8" (57.8 x 48.6 cm).