Judith Bernstein
1942–

While Judith Bernstein was an art student at Yale University during the Vietnam War, she adopted the image of the phallus as a central motif in her work, based in part on graffiti she found in men’s bathrooms on campus. She was attracted to the bold defiance of graffiti and to the masculine pompousness of tagging property with images of genitalia. In her drawings she transformed penises into guns, caped superheroes, giant screws, and flagpoles. In an era when many feminist artists were looking at their own bodies for subject matter, Bernstein’s virile, in-your-face phallus drawings were shocking. By forcing the male administration to address and accredit these works, Bernstein challenged the masculine culture that dominated Yale.

Vietnam Garden is one of a series of antiwar drawings that attacked the macho militarism of US foreign policy during the war. A group of erect phalluses capped with American flags rises up from the crest of a hill; a cross on one and a Star of David on another suggest that they are stand-ins for tombstones, with the steel-wool pubic hair covering their bases recalling flowers or plants left by mourners. This oil-stick-and-charcoal drawing retains the informal style and belligerence of the bathroom graffiti. Describing the use of humor in her work to address political issues, Bernstein has said: “When something is funny, you laugh. . . . It’s almost like an ejaculation, so you get a release by laughing at it, by laughing with the viewer when you see it; but it’s dead serious.”

Introduction

Judith Bernstein (born October 14, 1942) is a New York artist best known for her phallic drawings and paintings. Bernstein uses her art as a vehicle for her outspoken feminist and anti-war activism, provocatively drawing psychological 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. During the beginning of the Feminist Art Movement, Bernstein was a founding member of the all-women's cooperative A.I.R. Gallery in New York.

Bernstein spent many years teaching in the School of Art+Design at SUNY Purchase College, where she is Professor Emerita. Her classes there focused on "outrageous, outscale" drawing, as well as drawing the figure. After retiring from SUNY Purchase, she experienced a rediscovery late in her career, as highlighted in her New York Magazine's 2015 profile titled “Judith Bernstein, an art star at last at 72.” She has addressed the topic of her rediscovery in an interview with The New York Times, stating “I call it a rebirth."

Throughout her life, Bernstein has also been involved in the Guerilla Girls, Art Workers' Coalition, and Fight Censorship Group. Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, Jewish Museum, Carnegie Museum, Neuberger Museum, Migros Museum Zürich, Kunsthaus Zürich, Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Andy Hall Foundation, Alex Katz Foundation, and Verbund Collection.