You've Gotta See This!

Artists are luring their peers and predecessors out of obscurity and back into the spotlight–discovering, rediscovering, and even mentoring them.

- Barbara Pollack

In 2008 New York feminist artist Judith Bernstein was having her first show in decades at Mitchell Algus Gallery, presenting her iconoclastic “Horizontal” series, large-scale drawings of phallus-like screws dating back to 1966. By coincidence, Los Angeles art provocateur Paul McCarthy had come to the gallery to meet with Algus about another under known artist, the late Robert Mallary. McCarthy instantly remembered Bernstein’s work, her scatological humor and in-your-face courage; he brought word of her show back to his daughter, Mara McCarthy, with whom he had recently opened the Box LA, a gallery devoted to showing historic work by artists who may not have received the sustained attention they deserved.

“That transformed my life,” said Bernstein, 74, speaking from the Chinatown loft where she has lived for 40 years, making—but rarely showing—her groundbreaking drawings and canvases. That is, until now. Since that first introduction, she has had four solo shows at the Box, the most recent opening in February 2017. In the past six years, her star has risen, with exhibitions at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Mary Boone Gallery, and the New Museum in New York, Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway, and the ICA in London, among many other venues. Having faced derision and censorship early in her career and endured obscurity and cold shoulders for far too long, Bernstein is deeply grateful to McCarthy, who has since collected her work in-depth and enthusiastically spread the word. “I was thrilled. It was wonderful,” she said. “It is very unusual for an older person to have a mentor. Mentors are usually for people much younger. So to have a mentor at my age was an extraordinary thing.”