When Judith Bernstein painted “Seal of Disbelief” in 2017, I’d imagine that she envisioned it as a historical painting — a cautionary record of the dangers of would-be oligarchs and their personality cults that reminds us: never again! That the work is still so relevant is chilling, but like the first time around, it remains a source of comfort that we have Bernstein to lead us through.
Long before Donald Trump ran for office, Judith Bernstein used her art to condemn those who abuse power, from the museum to the White House, and to reveal them for who they really are: dickheads, cockmen, schlong faces, and, eventually, what she would call “death heads.”
Public Fears is a mini retrospective of sorts. Filling one large gallery from floor to ceiling, plus a small space near the entrance, it traces Bernstein’s political paintings from the 1960s — when she was taking on Richard Nixon’s lies in works like “First National Dick” (1969), featuring a phallus flying an American flag — to her recent day-glo paintings, such as the searing neon “Death Heads (Four Eyes on Hot Pink Ground)” (2024). It also includes “Three Panel Vertical” (1977), a trio of drawings of giant phallic screws whose well-deserved “fuck you” to the aggressive misogyny underlying patriarchal power got her removed from an ostensibly feminist Philadelphia museum exhibition at the time and sidelined her in the art world for decades. This is what makes Bernstein so important: She’s talked the talk and walked the walk, and suffered the consequences. She knows both the stakes and the urgency of speaking out against injustices, and she continues to do so.
And for anyone who questions the efficacy of Bernstein’s project because it’s being presented in a commercial gallery: Given the opportunity, she’ll gladly take it to the greater public. So, art institutions, the ball’s in your court. For now, though, you can see her work in a space that is open to everyone five days a week, for free.
Judith Bernstein: Public Fears continues at Kasmin Gallery (509 West 27th Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) through February 15. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
