An Artist ‘Against the Grain’ at Jewish Museum Milwaukee

The overlooked artist spanned social realism to magical realism in a remarkable career.

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Bernard Perlin (1918-2014) lived his life as a double minority, Jewish and gay. The exhibition of his work at Jewish Museum Milwaukee, “Against the Grain,” is well titled. Perlin aroused controversy from the get-go with his 1938 mural for the South Orange, NJ post office, breaking the color line by depicting Black and white workers side by side. He was unafraid to represent the less heroic side of World War II as a contributing artist for Life magazine. In ‘50s, New York, his figurative work ran contrary to the prevailing dogma of Abstract Expressionism. And he didn’t much care for the Pop Art that followed.

“His multifaceted identity was behind everything he did,” says the museum’s chief curator, Molly Dubin. “Everything was imbued with empathy and deep emotional connection.”

Included in the exhibit is Perlin’s 1937 self-portrait, painted while studying at New York’s seminal Art Students League. The portrait was modern with its simplified lines, realistic but focused more on the psychology than the physiognomy of his subject. The mock-up on display for his post office mural shows Perlin’s debt to 1930s social realists such as Ben Shahn and Grant Wood. After the U.S. entered World War II, Perlin worked for the Office of War Information executing propaganda posters such as the striking Avenge December 7, featuring a sailor in a battle-tattered jersey with a raised fist and a defiant glare. 

On assignment for Life, he rendered the emaciated survivors and gutted buildings of the Nazi Holocaust in Greece in stark black and white. His painting of a casualty being helped by Greek villagers onto a rowboat, heading for rescue by a British warship, captures the motion and exertion of a community working together to save a single life. 

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Creating Beauty

Soon enough, Perlin transitioned from social realism to magical realism. “After the war he earned some fellowships and traveled through Italy and France from 1948-1953,” Dubin explains. “He went to museums, engaged with Renaissance art and biblical and mythological themes, and pivoted toward creating beautiful pieces.”

Returning to New York, he earned a living from commercial work, proving that advertising can also be beautiful. He continued to paint, enjoyed his first solo show at the Knoedler Gallery and depicted the city’s gay life. In his painting from that period, The Bartender, row upon row of bottles confront a crowd of men, their faces concealed in dark shadows. Many of his paintings from the ‘50s onward were luminescent with incandescent landscapes and spectral human figures. But his career as an artist followed no straight line and included many tangents

Although his social circle overlapped with Truman Capote and Gore Vidal, and he painted Leonard Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, Perlin mocked the pretense of New York’s visual art scene and went into what Dubin describes as “self-imposed exile in Connecticut.” He has been overlooked. “Against the Grain” is an opportunity to reexamine Perlin’s place in the story of 20th century American art.

“Against the Grain: The Remarkable Life of Artist Bernard Perlin” runs September 27-January 26 at Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave. For more information, visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org.