“My career has been an extraordinary journey,” asserts Judith Bernstein, the artist and activist behind “Liberty” and “Equality”, recently on display at the Kasmin Gallery. “For the last 50-plus years, I’ve focused on the connection of the political and the sexual. That’s the core of what I’m about. It’s about my rage at injustice!”
When Bernstein was a graduate student in 1966 (a time when Yale undergrad was still all-male), she began sourcing imagery from graffiti in men’s bathrooms for a series of works confronting the Vietnam War. One can trace the energy of those early works through Bernstein’s career to this series from the 1990s, which – in addition to “Liberty” and “Equality” – features words such as “Justice,” “Truth” and “Freedom” in similarly strong charcoal strokes.
Bernstein had previously made memorable use of charcoal in projects such as her depictions of screw-phallus hybrids. No discussion of the artist’s work would be complete without mentioning her confrontational incorporation of the male member. “The penis is a symbol of power,” she states. “In 1969 I began making monumental drawings – 9 ’x 30 ’ – of hairy, large screws, using them as a metaphor for the power of the penis,” says Bernstein. “My work uses the phallus as a combination of sexuality, feminism, and antiwar sentiment. Men have the organ, but they don’t have a copyright on the image. Mine is bigger than yours!”
But whether Bernstein is exhibiting her own signature writ large (14 ’x 45 ’), exploring the connection between the Big Bang and human procreation, facing censorship for her 2016 anti-Trump series or displaying her recent Money Shot series of vivid, fluorescent paintings meant to be shown under black light, one thing has remained consistent: “I don’t find a distinction between myself as an artist and as an activist,” concludes Bernstein. “It’s one package.”
Imagery courtesy of Judith Bernstein.
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