Judith Bernstein
JUDITH BERNSTEIN , Dicks of Death
Details
"For over five decades, my most powerful and intense relationship has been with my work. As a graduate student at Yale in the ‘60s, I began to use the phallus as a metaphor for feminism and male posturing. At the time, Yale was an all-male undergraduate program. I became fascinated with explicit graffiti that I discovered in men’s bathrooms, finding inspiration in raw humour and unedited scrawls. Aggression and humour are strongly connected in my work. Graffiti influences can be traced throughout my entire body of work. I confront war with very graphic, in-your-face words and images. Stuffed phalluses, blood and semen juxtapose national imagery and the US flag. It’s funny – but it’s dead serious! There’s a gritty and visceral quality to these political drawings. Beyond these themes, my work delves into the multiple layers of the human psyche. My art confronts the viewer with the urgency and complexity of human relationships - issues that perpetually arise and tension that resonate from our origins to today."
-Judith Bernstein, New York, 2016.
Judith Bernstein
Judith Bernstein’s drawings and paintings are inspired by her early introduction to graffiti during her time at Yale School of Art; as such, her iconic style features expressive line work, graphic images, and a biting sense of humor. Bernstein frequently uses her art as a vehicle for her outspoken feminist and anti-war activism, often provocatively drawing links between the two. Her best-known work features her iconic motif of an anthropomorphized screw, which has become the basis for a number of allegories and visual puns. Bernstein was also a participant in many activist organizations—most famously, the Guerrilla Girls and the Art Workers’ Coalition. In the 1970s she was a founding member of A.I.R. Gallery, the first to be devoted to showing female artists. Recently her work was included in group exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth, London and Zurich, and MoMA PS1.
