Judith Bernstein Conversations Conversations
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CONVERSATIONS JUDITH BERNSTEIN CONVERSATIONS CONVERSATIONS Conversations is an ongoing production from Venus Over Manhattan, where artists, writers, critics, academics, and familiars come together to talk about art. Each conversation is published as an audio recording made accessible the gallery’s website, and accompanied by a PDF that features a transcript of the conversation. Listen along at #ConversationsVOM. On April 23rd, 2020, Judith Bernstein and Alison Gingeras spoke with Anna Furney about Bernstein’s career. They discuss her time at Yale in the 1960s, her first solo-exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery, and what it means to be a Feminist artist. Judith Bernstein is an artist living and work in New York City. She joins the conversation from her loft on the Lower East Side, where she’s lived for more than 50 years. Alison Gingeras is a curator and writer. She has held positions at numerous institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou and the Palazzo Grassi. She joins the conversation from her home in Brooklyn. Anna Christina Furney is partner at Venus Over Manhattan. She moderated this conversation 2. 3. CONVERSATIONS CONVERSATIONS ACF: Hi everybody. I wanted to introduced Judith accepted canon of a lot of the women artists Bernstein and Alison Gingeras, two very dear that were celebrated, and sort of the mainstream parts of the VOM family. Judith Bernstein is of cornerstones of this period of time. I hesitate course the legendary artist living and working to call it a movement, because Judith is among here in New York City, and Alison is a world- the artists who, in my opinion, is part, and was famous curator and art-historian of all things, and part of this sort of radical fringe that questioned in particular, has had a longstanding relationship from the very beginning what feminist art should with Judith and her work, and a lot of the subject look like, and what it should be about. So I had matters that she deals with. So welcome, both of put together an exhibition called “Black Sheep you. Feminism: The Art of Sexual Politics,” and the followed it up with another project called “Sex JB: Thank you. It’s great to be on this call. Work,” and Judith was part of that project, which was at Frieze London some years ago. And I’m AG: Thank you so much for having us. also still, and actually now, at the height of this shut down due to the pandemic, I am going ACF: Yeah. So I guess I wanted to get started. Alison, back to this manuscript that I’ve been writing I was curious to know how you were introduced about these fringe histories, and about artists to Judith’s work, and then, if you could give a who were not part of the Feminist mainstream, little background on your work with her, and who by many accounts were actively excluded then I would love to dive in with Judith, her early by other Feminists because of the iconography biography, and how she came to be the superstar or the subject matter that they were confronting, that she is today. specifically subject matter that was seen as, like, sexually incorrect. So that brought us to Judith, JB + and I was very interested in her beginnings and AG: [Laughing] her involvement with a group of artists that were brought together by Anita Steckel and the AG: Well, I have had the pleasure of working with FIGHT CENSORSHIP group. And Judith, maybe Judith and also doing a couple of art-historical, you could talk to us about that group and the sort of oral history interviews with her in the course fact that you were all sort of brought together of my research about the beginnings of Feminist into this loose collective, because you’d all Art and Second Wave Feminism. And, of course, experienced censorship in one form or another, I came to this history sort of through the back and because of the [breaks up...] door. I was actually interested in interrogating this category of Feminism, not through the ACF: Oh, Alison, there’s a little break up, but just, 4. 5. CONVERSATIONS CONVERSATIONS sounds like you’re back, sorry. In my situation, I was observing men, and then I was making work in terms of my observations. AG: Oh, okay. Well I was just saying maybe Judith So I was actually calling out the male patriarchy. could talk to us about the FIGHT CENSORSHIP Since that time, I was also thinking, when you group, and how she wound up getting involved talk about the penis, the penis represents power. with that group of women artists. My own work, by the way, has these very large penises, and they were a combination of penis JB: Oh, you know, it’s interesting, because Anita and screws. And when I started out, I did these Steckel was certainly part of that group, and a “Fuck Vietnam” paintings, when I was a graduate very big part of that group. So was Joan Semmel, student at Yale. And then I went into doing these and there were a few artists that were doing work very large drawings that were nine by thirty feet, that was out of the mainstream, so to speak, approximately, and they were a combination mainstream Feminism; not considered part of it. of a screw and a phallus. And I felt that—the And also it was a very interesting time, and Anita penis represents power, and every woman has Steckel was very bawdy, and she had a quote a penis. Now, not literally, but figuratively. And that she always said, which is actually right on men literally have a penis, but they do not have a target, but it’s a little bit unusual. She said: “If a copyright on it. And women have a metaphorical penis is wholesome enough to go into a woman, penis, and it is a source of women’s power. So it should be wholesome enough to go into a that’s what I came to believe, and still do. So that museum.” was part of that timeframe. But we got together, we had a lot of fun, but we also were on a lot of ACF: [Laughing] radio shows, and it was quite a time frame. And Louise Bourgeois was also part of that group. AG: I love that. AG: Yes, and wasn’t Hannah Wilke. ACF: That’s fantastic. JB: Yes, Hannah Wilke was part of it, too. And there JB: It’s a great quote, and she used to—every time were a few others, a few others in it, too. she would bring that up, and it was very funny. She had also worked as a croupier, by the way, in AG: And, interms of this central question, I mean you Las Vegas, so she had a whole range of things. were all, sort of, I would term you all “Phallic But I know that with my own work, that many Feminists.” times, the Feminists considered—when you were a Feminist, it somehow had to be self-referential. JB: Yes. 6. 7. CONVERSATIONS CONVERSATIONS AG: And the phallic=ness in both in the iconography, AG: ...it was misunderstood that a Feminist artist and what you depict, as well as in this kind of could appropriate something from patriarchy, use of power. And I wonder, why do you think— and change it’s meaning. on one hand, it wasn’t like sex was completely forbidden in that time, because a lot of Second JB: Yes, that’s right. Wave Feminism dealt with, like, the myth of the vaginal orgasm, and... AG: So, your appropriation of the phallus as screw. And that actually kind of brings me to a really JB: Yes, that’s correct. simple question: When did that conflation of the screw and the penis come to you? How does that AG: ...there was a lot of vulva imagery in Feminist come to be such a signature? art. But what was it, in your recollection, that made phallic imagery—that made Feminists so JB: Well you know, it’s funny, because when I—I’m nervous? seventy-seven years old. And when I went to—I went to Penn State as an undergraduate. When JB: Well I think that, as I said, they seem to have a very I was there—you have to realize this was in rigid attitude about what Feminism was about. 1960—there were three men to every woman. And it was self-referential. And that took many And then when I went to Yale, it was an all-male many many years to change that opinion. So, any undergraduate program. It was an all male school. time you had a penis, that was obviously using In the graduate department they had women. male imagery, and it was not really Feminist. As But I saw the hierarchy that was involved, and, opposed to—so, as a result, if it was not a cunt, of course, after I graduated, I realized that I hit it was not Feminist. So, it was, uh, it shut me out, a wall, and that’s why, myself, and twenty artists by the way. Although some Feminists let me in; I started A.I.R. Gallery. So that’s how that worked. had my foot in the door, but not the whole body. But I would say I did these “Fuck Vietnam” drawings, and the “Fuck Vietnam” drawings AG: [Laughing] Well, and in many ways, you’re and paintings were because I had read an article lucky, because you were, you know, you had in the New York Times that said “Who’s Afraid this camaraderie.