About

“Shirley’s Left Bank extreme kohl eye shadow and lyrical cool defined and challenged any suburban tendency to be nice or safe.” – David Meltzer

In the Spring of 1951, Shirley Morand famously entered the annals of American art history. Standing in line at the art house Coronet Theater to see Jean Cocteau’s surrealist classic The Blood of a Poet, she was approached by then-unknown artist Wallace Berman. Their chance encounter would put the couple at the forefront of the counterculture movement, with Wallace as the hipster-mystic artist and Shirley as the soft-spoken, steadfast first lady of …