Please don’t think, dear readers, that the editors of your graciously favored organ of online cultural commentary are wishing you anything less than a very happy new year with this first cover image of the year, a phallic, graphic rendering of big fat screw. Far from imparting the idiomatic invectives or injunctions relating to this device, we are simply alerting readers to the fact that a remarkable and ridiculously overdue institutional career acknowledgement is to be enjoyed for a couple more weeks in Judith Bernstein’s compact lobby show, HARD, through January 20 at the New Museum.

Then again, this potent and, despite coming from the hand of a feminist, protean symbol does indeed communicate sensations and skills that we value, both in the art of our time and in what we attempt at artcritical. Multiple in its associations of status and meaning, Bernstein’s screw commands immediate attention while demanding a slow weighing of possibilities. It is as once an ideogram, a still life, and an abstract expression. It has raw graphic punch but is achieved through meditative skill. Literal and metaphorical, subtle as it is crude, Bernstein’s screw is personal and political in equal measure. And above all, because of – as much as despite – its ambivalences, this screw conveys exuberance. DAVID COHEN

Judith Bernstein, Horizontal,1973. Charcoal on paper, 108 x 150 inches. Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth

The New Museum, 235 Bowery, between Rivington and Stanton streets, New York City, (212) 219-1222, October 10, 2012 to January 20, 2013