Dicks of Death

Artist book by Judith Bernstein

"For over five decades, my most powerful and intense relationship has been with my work. As a graduate student at Yale in the ‘60s, I began to use the phallus as a metaphor for feminism and male posturing. At the time, Yale was an all-male undergraduate program. I became fascinated with explicit graffiti that I discovered in men’s bathrooms, finding inspiration in raw humour and unedited scrawls. Aggression and humour are strongly connected in my work. Graffiti influences can be traced throughout my entire body of work. I confront war with very graphic, in-your-face words and images. Stuffed phalluses, blood and semen juxtapose national imagery and the US flag. It’s funny – but it’s dead serious! There’s a gritty and visceral quality to these political drawings.  Beyond these themes, my work delves into the multiple layers of the human psyche. My art confronts the viewer with the urgency and complexity of human relationships - issues that perpetually arise and tension that resonate from our origins to today. "-Judith Bernstein, New York, 2016.