Event overview
The Department of Art Public Talks Programme Autumn 2022 welcomes artist Judith Bernstein.
Judith Bernstein (b. 1942) is an artist from New York best known for her phallic drawings and paintings. Her work, often sexually explicit and unabashedly political, explores a wide range of culturally relevant issues that many of her contemporaries have shied away from depicting. Separating herself from other “Prick Art” artists of the 1970s, Bernstein conveys a defiant political message, employing large-scale phallic imagery, profane writing, and a variety of other crude elements in high-contrast fluorescent colours to her paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Inspiration for such subject matter initially sprung from the graffitied bathroom walls of Bernstein’s alma mater, the Yale School of Art. The scatological dialogue in pictures and words on the walls of the men’s bathrooms divulged a certain aspect of the male psyche that Bernstein saw to be useful to her artwork. Several of Bernstein’s creations echo the raw, graffiti-like aesthetic that she had found so fascinating in the Yale men’s bathrooms. Using similar imagery and language, Bernstein voices explicit anti-war sentiments and offers a feminist critique of masculinity, including the destructive qualities therein.
Since graduating from Yale in 1967, Judith Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique for over 50 years, Bernstein surged into art world prominence in the early 1970’s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids; early incarnations of which were exhibited at Air Gallery, Brooks Jackson Iolas Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA P.S.1, among other institutions. In reviewing Bernstein’s 2012-13 solo exhibition at the New Museum in NY, Ken Johnson, critic at the New York Times, referred to these words as “bravura performances of draftsmanship” and “masterpieces of feminine protest.”
Solo exhibitions include Gaslighting Universe at Karma International, Zurich (2022); Gasligting Forever at Kasmin Gallery, NY (2021); Hot Hands at The Box, LA (2020); Blue Balls at Karma International, Zurich (2019); Money Shot at Kasmin Gallery, NY (2018); Cabinet of Horrors at The Drawing Center, NY (2017); Cock in a Box at The Box, LA (2017); Dicks of Death at Mary Boone Gallery, NY (2016); Voyeur at Mary Boone Gallery, NY (2015); Judith Bernstein: Rising at Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway (2016); Birth of the Universe at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, NY (2014); Rising at Studio Voltaire, London (2014); Judith Bernstein: HARD at the New Museum, NY (2012); and Fuck Vietnam at The Box, LA (2011).
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 26 Oct 2022 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
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