NYTimes Art in Review: Judith Bernstein

Holland Cotter reports: “This small, punchy overview of Judith Bernstein�s work is set to close a week before ‘WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution’ opens at P.S. 1, which is too bad. Although Ms. Bernstein has been producing a pointedly feminist art since the 1960s, she�s not in the big survey, and she should be. Her art started out political and has stayed that way. One of the earliest pieces at Algus, ‘The Fun-Gun’ (1967), a relief image of a big phallic handgun pieced together from real bullets, made a direct connection between violence, sex and war in the Vietnam era. Then came her monumental charcoal drawings of screw-shape forms, abstract but distinctly penile. One of them, ‘Horizontal'(1973), got her booted out of a show titled ‘Woman�s Work: American Art 1974’ at Philadelphia�s Civic Center. It�s at Algus, and it�s pretty sensational….When she encountered censorship in 1974, the art world protested; the names on a public letter issued in her defense were many and illustrious. Today the equivalent names flock to admire John Currin�s pornography paintings. Mr. Currin�s naughty pictures end up in the swankiest places; Ms. Bernstein can barely get her foot in the art world�s swinging door.” Read more.
“Judith Bernstein: Signature and Phallic Drawings: 1966-2008,” Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY. Through Feb. 9.