Remarkable painter too long pushed onto back shelf of art history Making up for a classic case of prejudice against female artists CUNY show will follow this introduction of new book from scholarly project Preceding the publication of a new book, and a show at the James gallery of the CUNY Graduate Center at 34th St and Fifth, a revelatory talk at Molly Barnes' Roger Smith art salon on Friday (Sep 20, 2013) reintroduced one of the most talented painters of the last century, whose art has receded in the minds of historians and scholars only because of her sex, it seems. Now the reputation of the outstanding 20 Century artist Theresa Bernstein is being reinvigorated by activist collectors and admirers including a CUNY scholar, Gail Levin, who has led her students in a book project which will also be partnered by a show in the CUNY gallery showing the brilliant accomplishment of her early career recording scenes of life in New York City in the teens and twenties. The proofs of the book were available for a glimpse before her talk, and showed that Professor Levin has won some fine pieces on different aspects of Bernstein's art by her students in the class she is teaching. Among the many quotes relevant to the key underlying theme of this celebration of first class talent overlooked by scholars, the long time habit of the American art world to discount female artists as irrelevant to art history and the art market simply because of their sex, are these: On the advantages of a provincial city: "Unlike the more restrictive artistic milieus of Boston and New York, in Gloucester women artists were not marginalized in exhibition, art associations, or critical review and they did not form separate groups; there, Bernstein could assume her position as an American artist, unfettered by her sex." As an experimental artist she faced an uphill battle for acceptance from the critics and academics of the current system, as expressed by a satirical publication The Paint Rag which decried the favoritism that ruled awards and called for nonjuried shows: " The prize system is absolutely a menace to all exhibitions. Prizes are like kisses - they are given by favor - as far as it can be discovered, usually the prize winners have a relative on the jury, or are in need of money, or the fellows give it to the artist out of charity - or it is 'his' or 'her' turn, usually being fixed in a mysterious way like horse racing or stock speculation." The 1925 four page manifesto had a cover illustration of juries as a collection of blind fools inmcapable of evaluating modern art and only able to applaud the midless repetition of academicism. Bernstein said "Stuart depicted the average art jury as deaf, dumb and blind, holding their ears and shading their eyes as those who hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil." Bernstein's art quickly emerged from Ms Levin's slides as a kind of forceful realism with depth, accomplishing her purpose which she once stated as "the artist tries to extract the truth below the surface and make it cohesive in his work." Tellingly, she was actually describing her own work, Cosmic Harbor, now lost, but she used the male pronoun, thus cooperating with the secondary status accorded to her by the attitudes of her time, an attitude she carried with her throughout her long life (she died at the extraordinary age of 111, and worked till a few years before her end.) A lady in the audience after Ms Levin's presentation was over would volunteer the information that she had asked Bernstein to let her do a biography and the artist had firmly refused: "Oh no no no you should do one on Bill", referring to her husband, also an artist but by general agreement not one with the same order of talent. In fact, Bernstein's marriage was very long and loving and very supportive and symbiotic, and in the parade of astonishingly good slides Ms Levin included a charming scene Bernstein painted of both of them as a young attractive couple picnicking, echoing a more famous version of the scene, but with Bill more undressed than Theresa, for a change. The couple met when Theresa was in a studio above a stable in horse powered New York City Bernstein's output must have been prodigious if only because she was so long lived and kept working, but for some reason Ms Levin's slides were confined to the first two decades of her career. She wrote five books, the first started in her nineties. the last past 100. ======================================================================================== Scholar and CUNY professor Gail Levin will present the work of Theresa Bernstein, who died at the age of 111 after producing very distinguished paintings from the 1920s on, yet who has been largely forgotten since, until activists recently campaigned for new attention to her distinction. [caption id="attachment_484" align="alignnone" width="300"] Gail Levin has finished her revelatory book on the neglected painter Theresa Bernstein[/caption] "In fall 2010, I and five other art history doctoral students participated in Distinguished Professor Gail Levin’s seminar, “Theresa Bernstein and American Realism.” Our ultimate goal was to mount an exhibition of Bernstein’s work at the Graduate Center’s James Gallery. Along with a published catalogue, this exhibition would make visible an important artist who has been erased from the history of American art. This project has since become much larger in scope and ambition, and after the New York showing, will travel to four other museums. “Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art,” will open at the James Gallery on November 12, 2013, with a related exhibition of works drawn from the Collection of Martin and Edith Stein opening at Baruch College’s Sidney Mishkin Gallery on November 13, 2013. Our catalogue, Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art, edited by Gail Levin, is published by the University of Nebraska Press and will be available November 1, 2013. It includes essays by Sarah Archino, Patricia M. Burnham, Michele Cohen, Stephanie Hackett, Elsie Heung, and Gail Levin. It features more than two hundred images, including full-color reproductions of Bernstein’s art, and rare documentary photographs, many published here for the first time. [caption id="attachment_485" align="alignnone" width="800"] Theresa Bernstein's 1919 work The-Milliners shows the extraordinary power of her talent and raises the question how on earth the American art world can have neglected her work for so long[/caption]As part of this overall project, I have created a website dedicated to the life and career of Bernstein with the hope that it will serve as a useful and enduring resource for scholars and the general public, and that it will encourage further research into this remarkable and prolific artist. I have been working at the CUNY New Media Lab since February 2011 and have accomplished much over this period of time. The site (created through WordPress) includes video footage and audio clips, which I digitized in the NML; paintings, prints and drawings spanning from the early 1900s to the 1980s; Bernstein’s personal documents and scrapbook; an interactive timeline created with TimelineJS; short memoirs of those who knew Bernstein; and other useful resources. To learn more about the artist and to keep up-to-date on events and tour dates, please check out the website and follow us on Twitter." [caption id="attachment_486" align="alignnone" width="800"] Theresa Bernstein 1916 In the Elevated[/caption] Media contact: Tanya Domi, tdomi@gc.cuny.edu, 212-817-7283 Theresa Bernstein’s ‘Ash Can’ Realist Works Recovered with Two Exhibits Opening in NYC Curator Gail Levin believes Bernstein maybe the only American artist to have made and exhibited work in every decade of the twentieth century Theresa Bernstein; In the ElevatedTheresa Bernstein; The MillinerTheresa Bernstein; The Immigrants WHAT: Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art, Theresa Bernstein, an artist, a celebrated raconteur and “art activist,” whose early works were compared to that of Robert Henri and his circle, for her forceful brushwork and realist approach. Bernstein disappeared like many women artists of her generation, although her work made its way into important museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. WHO: Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies and Women’s Studies, The Graduate Center and Baruch College, is the organizer and curator of Theresa Bernstein: A Century in Art. Levin is an authority on American realist painter Edward Hopper and specializes in the art of the twentieth century and contemporary art. In the Bernstein exhibits, Levin and her graduate students seek to make visible the work of an erased woman artist and show how her art reveals some of the major issues of her time, including scenes from New York City. WHEN: November 12, 2013, Opening Night, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. WHERE: James Gallery, The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, Manhattan WHEN: November 13, 2013, Opening Night, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. WHERE: The Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, (Selections from the Martin & Edith Stein Collection) 135 East 22nd Street, Manhattan MEDIA: Media must rsvp to Tanya Domi, Director of Media Relations at the Graduate Center, tdomi@gc.cuny.edu, 212-817-7283. For information about the exhibit at Baruch College, contact Manuel Romero, Manuel.Romero@baruch.cuny.edu, 646-660-6141. Images: 1. In the Elevated, 1916. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. De Young, Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco; 2. The Milliners, 1919. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches. Private Collection; and 3. The Immigrants, 1923. Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 inches. Collection of Thomas and Karen Buckley. Submitted on: SEP 5, 2013 - See more at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/Press-Room/Detail?id=20777#sthash.yPdIqdI1.dpuf