The Seriously Comedic World of Ricky Bernstein
By Bruce W. Pepich
While literature and drama may have long-standing traditions of mixing high art with humor, the visual arts have only recently become comfortable with amusement. The traditions of drama and literature include many examples of levity, from William Shakespeare’s comedies to the satire and social criticism of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Historic examples of wit and satirical imagery in art can be found in Honore Daumier’s caustic portraits of 19th century government officials, the “in” jokes of Marcel Duchamp and the scathing views of the Weimar Republic created by George Grosz. However, until the second half of the 20th century, high spirits were more frequently found in satirical cartoons than in formal artworks.
Pop Art, with its deadpan presentation of consumer goods, opened the door for the large-scale use of irony and social commentary. Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes and Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book-inspired compositions brought common household objects, advertising and pulp imagery into the art museum for serious contemplation and examination. By bringing scenes of lower and middle class life into the museum setting, Pop Art recalled 17th century genre painting. In genre work, artists depicted the lower classes engaged in the more irreverent aspects of human conduct, in contrast to artworks in the Renaissance, in which the human form was idealized and the subjects were heroic or biblical. Pop Art brought consumer products and newspaper imagery from non-art sources into the high art environment as readily recognizable topics.
Ricky Bernstein combines the satiric sensibility of Pop Art with the examination of common human activities found in historic genre painting. Bernstein establishes a sense of play through cartoon-like depiction of form. He uses broad areas of color and playful compositions that circle and spill, echoing scenes from comic books and animated films. His smiling figures enjoy themselves and control their situations. However, Bernstein creates nervousness through the use of an exaggerated contour line that defines the edges of his figures, their clothing and props, suggesting agitation. The movement implies the inherent stress that lies just under the surface of these seemingly cheerful characters. There is an awkward undercurrent in Bernstein’s works. One senses that something serious is lurking just beneath the happy surface, waiting to make itself apparent upon closer inspection.
This discomfort is buoyed by a sense of playfulness in the toy-like rendering of the clothes and accouterments in these compositions. The depiction of the figure is flattened; skin tones are fairly even and consistent overall, suggesting the stylized characters found in comics. Bernstein’s narrative vignettes can include either dialogue bubbles emerging from the subject’s mouth or signs that clarify the action similar to the pop-up format in contemporary videos.
Bernstein’s Zippity-Do-Dah, 2003, portrays a man encircled by the tools of household chores. He irons, washes, bakes and sweeps, clad in his office attire and a kitchen apron. Labels attached to the perimeter of the work acclaim that this is men’s work, as if we are seeing some identified diagram from an encyclopedia or sociological textbook. The irony in the work emanates from the businessman executing household chores traditionally associated with women. It is precisely this parody of roles that provides this work’s bite. Although men help around the house more than ever before, a disproportionate number of household chores are still undertaken by women. Simultaneously, this work also addresses the repercussions of single parenting and working wives, which is that more men are responsible for household cleaning than ever before. By acknowledging current behavior, while hinting at future developments, Bernstein creates a work that is a humorous examination of today’s family life.
Another glimpse of the American kitchen can be found in Voila, 2005. Two women visit at a kitchen sink. The main character, Gladys, is surrounded by a swirling array of the remnants of household chores—laundry, dishes, mops and brooms. The text at the edge of the composition states that while she smoked a cigarette, her dirty dishes were cleaned immediately and with little effort—voila. Like much of American consumer advertising of the 1950s, this work implies that many laborious jobs can be quickly dispatched with little effort. Upon closer viewing, one detects that the quick solution to Gladys’ chore is to deposit her dirty dishes in the garbage can. It is so effortless she can enjoy a cigarette and conversation with her guest while “cleaning up”. Bernstein combines a sense of nostalgia for a simpler time with the knowledge that real life was never as we remember it. Household labor for women of the era was just that—hard work. The humor in this work stems from the honest realization that the only quick way to handle some duties is to dispose of the job as well as the evidence.
In A Girl Can Dream, 2007, Bernstein comments on the dreams and frailties of us all. His subject is a woman who, past her prime, still has hopes of squeezing into a diminutive polka-dot bikini. Oblivious to her age and true physical characteristics, Lois grasps at images of youthful fitness while the clock on the wall reminds her that time continues to advance and with it her age. Bernstein’s subject retains her sense of reality in the long run. He notes at the edge of the work, “panic would soon cause doubt” that she has either the time or ability to fit into the tiny two-piece suit, which she proudly waives, as if it were a pennant. Bernstein’s wiggly sense of line in the figure’s blouse sleeves and the edges of her hair suggests a playful sense of tension, as if this woman is aquiver at the prospect of wearing the daring bathing suit, while also trembling at the realization it is physically impossible. She is a funny character, rendered in a knowing, sympathetic way.
These sculptures are assembled, collage-like, in layers. Each Bernstein work is made up of sections of painted glass planes, which are mounted on metal armatures and assembled on the wall. One segment overlaps another, as sections appear in front of each other, creating an illusion of three-dimensional space. An arm rests atop a torso, which is built out from the background imagery and so forth. Bernstein’s visual collaging and references to two-dimensional wall relief shares commonality with both painting and sculpture. While these works could be executed in a variety of media from oil on canvas to painted wood, glass provides Bernstein with intense color in a medium that absorbs and refracts light as no other. His dramatic use of color is also responsible for the vitality of these compositions.
In many ways, these pieces read as short stories or one-act plays. Bernstein is adept in the use of details. In a sense, the objects selected by the artist for inclusion in each work function in ways similar to that of props in stage plays. Each appliance and every article of clothing reveals a great deal of information about the character, location and background of Bernstein’s subjects.
Bernstein uses humor to communicate his social observations to the viewer. He makes us comfortable with the amusing characters, while simultaneously posing serious questions in these satirical comments on modern life. Just as Daumier’s portraits depicted personalities of a particular time, Bernstein’s meticulous attention to each individual subject clearly establishes a time and place for these works. They take place today and in the recent past. We are the people they depict. Whether we view his work as parody, narrative or farce, the issues Bernstein poses are well worth our serious consideration.
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Text prepared for a catalog produced by the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Ebeltoft, Denmark – September 2008
Bruce W. Pepich is the Executive Director and Curator of Collections, Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin, USA
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