Judith Bernstein 2017 by M. Parsekian
The Drawing Center
Judith Bernstein: Cabinet of Horrors
'Judith Bernstein: Cabinet of Horrors' included a new body of work by the artist, specifically commissioned by The Drawing Center.
NEW YORK — Bernstein began engaging with social issues in her work during the 1960s, creating anti-Vietnam drawings, monumental phalluses, and pieces consisting entirely of her own signature. The present series of drawings uses Trump’s own insult-driven, childlike syntax and language to distill Bernstein’s anger, disgust, and disapproval of the administration and its policies. Through her new series of drawings, Bernstein transforms her critique into powerful graphic and text-based works.
Judith Bernstein, Dick in a Head, 2015
Kunsthalle Stavanger
Judith Bernstein
Kunsthall Stavanger presented the first exhibition in Norway by the prolific New York-based feminist artist Judith Bernstein.
NORWAY — Since the 1960s, Bernstein has brazenly provoked audiences and institutions alike with her furious visceral paintings and drawings addressing themes of warfare, sexual aggression, and gender politics – often under the guise of outrageous humor.
Bernstein’s work has been called unrepentant, defined as obscene, and has been the subject of numerous controversies and debates including censorship from the exhibition FOCUS: Women’s Work— American Art in 1974. Often described by the artist herself as “a sledgehammer” and simultaneously “funny and dead-serious,” the artworks are psychologically overpowering and undeniably in your face.
The exhibition at Kunsthall Stavanger combines a selection of iconic works from Bernstein’s early career with many newer, never-before seen paintings and drawings.
'Judith Bernstein: Hard' at the New Museum, 2011
New Museum
Judith Bernstein: Hard
"For over forty years, New York-based artist Judith Bernstein has created expressive drawings and paintings that boldly critique militarism and machismo in a manner that is at once humorous and threatening."
NEW YORK — The exhibition at the New Museum will include a selection of works ranging from the ’60s through the present, including a new site-specific rendition of Bernstein’s SIGNATURE PIECE (1986/2012), painted in explosive gestural strokes directly onto the Lobby Gallery windows. For Bernstein, this piece, presented in counterpoint to her large-scale images within the gallery, proclaims her presence and confronts egotistical posturing of artists within the art world and society.
Judith Bernstein, In Evil We Trust, 2017. Acrylic and oil on canvas; 105 x 240 in (266.7 x 609.6 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Vertical #1, 2014. Charcoal on linen; 180 x 84 in (457.2 x 213.4 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Vertical #2, 2014. Charcoal on linen; 180 x 84 in (457.2 x 213.4 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Birth of the Universe/Cuntface, 2015. Oil on canvas; 84 x 108 in (213.4 x 274.3 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Cuntface Red, 2015. Oil on canvas; 84 x 84 in (213.4 x 213.4 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Cockman #5, 2016. Acrylic on canvas; 72 x 72 in (182.9 x 182.9 cm)
Judith Bernstein, Horizontal for L.A., 2017. Enamel on wall; 270 x 1380 in (685.8 x 3505.2 cm)
Portrait of Judith Bernstein
Judith Bernstein (b. 1942, Newark, NJ) lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from Yale University, and her MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1967, and her painting practice has been marked by an engagement with sexual and political activism. Bernstein was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the first gallery in the United States to be cooperatively owned and operated by women, and has been involved with the Guerilla Girls, a group of radical feminist artists dedicated to fighting sexism and racism in the art world, since the group’s founding in 1985. Bernstein’s work is held in the collections of numerous public institutions around the world, including the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase; the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; and the Alex Katz Foundation, New York
Judith Bernstein importantly uses humour in her work. It is a salvation, it is a life force. In the 1970s, being called a feminist was challenging. We were supposed to be humourless.
The best thing about the Art Show, the annual fair sponsored by the Art Dealers Association of America in the Park Avenue Armory, is that ticket sales benefit the Henry Street Settlement, which has been bringing art and culture to the Lower East Side since 1893.
For those versed in feminist art history, Venus Over Los Angeles’s show CUNT, is an intimate art collection from six key players of the feminist art movement.
When Venus Over Los Angeles titled its summer show of six female artists “CUNT,” a sort of low buzz began among female art worlders in L.A.
Artist Valie Export held a watch when she performed Touch Cinema in the late 1960s.
Venus is pleased to present Cunt, an exhibition featuring work by Judith Bernstein, Valie Export, Dorothy Iannone, Marilyn Minter, Carolee Schneemann, and Betty Tompkins.
The history of women in art has been largely the story of women as subjects or as muse. A reality that seeks to put in check CUNT , the collective that opens this July 15 at the Venus Los Angeles gallery.
