It started with John Yau’s article for Hyperallergic (11/12/2022) “Bernice Bing’s Search for a Unified Self.” Bernice Bing is considered an abstract expressionist painter and was known to friends as Bingo.
Yau has spent more than two decades tracing her history; Yau’s article introduced me to her work. John Yau maintains that “Bing’s search was not about style, being fashionable, or fitting in. It was about trying to acknowledge the multiple worlds one inhabits,” hence the reference to the concept of a unified self or unity of consciousness.
Bernice Bing was born on April 10, 1938 and died August 18, 1998 from lupus [varied ill effects] and hemochromatosis, “a hereditary disorder in which iron salts are deposited in the tissues, leading to liver damage, diabetes mellitus, and bronze discoloration of the skin” [Google definition]. Hemochromatosis is simply “a dangerous buildup of iron in the body” [Carol Pogash, NYT].
Optional / References.
My quest: to find out more about this artist, Bernice Bing, and delve more deeply into the topic of unified self. Feel free to join in. The reference I used for examining unified self is mostly from Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy by A. Brook, revised May 19, 2017, and found at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/.
I used several refs for Bing’s life and work starting from John Yau’s article through several other sources and images and concluding (for now) with Carol Pogash’s article (10/14/2022) in the New York Times: “Ignored in Life, Bernice Bing Is Discovered As Museums Rewrite History” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/arts/design/bernice-bing-asian-americans-museum.html). The Pogash article emphasizes museum participation and the specific difficulties just in being an Asian artist.
Women Artists of the American West, Purdue University, offers several informative pieces, including an Artist Statement: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/rueffschool/waaw/asianamerican/Artists/BINGBio.HTM.
“Existentialism was the first influence that persuaded me toward the abstract
expressionist school of painting.” –Bernice Bing in her Artist Statement
Bingo’s Life: I developed the impression, from what sketchy information I learned about Bing’s life, that she responded to whatever happened on a personal or community level as needed. She followed her interests through study, art, and political activism.
Her history includes the facts, in somewhat random order, that Bing’s mother died from a heart ailment when Bernice was five years old; she never knew a father; her grandmother encouraged her art; while still a child, Bingo rebelled against mistreatment; experienced 17 different foster homes and one orphanage; picked plums; studied with famous painters and calligraphers; became a caretaker at a Napa Valley vineyard; gained a Masters in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961; has been recognized with art exhibitions and awards; consistently kept a personal journal; spent over 20 years developing community arts programs; spent 9 months at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur; received a Fulbright scholarship in 1984; traveled to Korea, Japan and China; became a Buddhist; studied quantum physics and poetry; worked at a grocery store; tended goats; and “finding her tribe,” Bernice Bing joined the Asian American Women Artists Association. The AAWAA was founded in 1989 when Bingo was 51 years old.
Bing’s Art: Bernice Bing had multiple exhibitions and received major awards during her lifetime; strong recognition of her work continues decades after her death.
Writer, poet and art critic John Yau visited Bing’s exhibition in San Francisco this year (2022). The show is titled Into View: Bernice Bing and will be at the Asian Art Museum through May 1, 2023. The exhibit includes paintings, drawings and journal entries from the late 1950s to the mid-90s according to journalist, writer, and editor Carol Pogash (see reference above).
Earlier benchmarks include a show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art running September 21, 2019 through January 5, 2020. The Sonoma show was titled Bingo: The Life and Art of Bernice Bing. In 1997-98 Bing’s work was part of a traveling exhibition, Asian Tradition/Modern Expression, 1945-1970, that greeted audiences in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In 1998 her work was included in Women On the Silk Road, traveling from San Francisco to various stops in Europe, Eurasia and China shadowing the ancient Silk Road trade route.
In 2013 a documentary film, “The Worlds of Bernice Bing” was made; in 2021 Bing featured in a comic book and a children’s magazine issue; in 2022 she was honored in a zine created by a Stanford scholar. Tributes continue.
John Yau is particularly impressed by her 1960 self-portrait, “Self Portrait with a Mask.” See: http://onlinecollection.asianart.org/view/objects/asitem/materials@canvas/43?t:state:flow=48c1cc87-599f-4281-b005-cfa037fc47af. Bing created only this one known self portrait; Frida Kahlo made 55, Van Gogh 36, and Rembrandt, king of self-portraiture, 100.
There isn’t a single web source featuring all her art work, yet it can be found online and maybe, with luck, sometime in your neighborhood.
Bingo’s “Unified Self” Idea
Whoah! I didn’t realize the whole concept of a person being unified was such a staggering idea. According to the 30+ pages of the Stanford reference paper by A. Brook, mentioned above in Optional / References, the idea has been recorded and discussed for almost 400 years, ever since René Descartes (1596-1650).
In the 2020s there’s been resurgence of interest in unity of consciousness or the idea of a unified self. A simple definition, from AlleyDog.com is that a unified self is “a means of referring to the ‘composite’ persona, or to the ‘self’ that contains all of the other personas that exist within a person's interactional style.”
After skip/stumbling through Brook’s extensive research, his conclusions, observations, questions and thoughts [paraphrased] are: unity of consciousness is an important feature of being; it can break down, and that’s interesting; what is its relationship to cognition; all theories about unity of consciousness are problematic; there’s still room to work on this idea.
As John Yau said in the Hyperallergic article, “Bing’s search was not about style, being fashionable, or fitting in. It was about trying to acknowledge the multiple worlds one inhabits.” For sure she responded to a surprising assortment of life experiences.
And what of the worlds inhabiting one’s person? My devious mind led me to Ed Yong’s wonderful book “I Contain Multitudes.”
Yong’s focus is one’s microbiome, all those natural little travelers inhabiting one’s person. Yong maintains that they are vital and says “they sculpt our organs, defend us from disease, break down our food, educate our immune systems, guide our behavior, bombard our genomes with their genes, and grant us incredible abilities.” I suspect Bing’s microbiome assisted this independent artist and activist in quite unified action.
Yau has spent more than two decades tracing her history; Yau’s article introduced me to her work. John Yau maintains that “Bing’s search was not about style, being fashionable, or fitting in. It was about trying to acknowledge the multiple worlds one inhabits,” hence the reference to the concept of a unified self or unity of consciousness.
Bernice Bing was born on April 10, 1938 and died August 18, 1998 from lupus [varied ill effects] and hemochromatosis, “a hereditary disorder in which iron salts are deposited in the tissues, leading to liver damage, diabetes mellitus, and bronze discoloration of the skin” [Google definition]. Hemochromatosis is simply “a dangerous buildup of iron in the body” [Carol Pogash, NYT].
Optional / References.
My quest: to find out more about this artist, Bernice Bing, and delve more deeply into the topic of unified self. Feel free to join in. The reference I used for examining unified self is mostly from Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy by A. Brook, revised May 19, 2017, and found at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/.
I used several refs for Bing’s life and work starting from John Yau’s article through several other sources and images and concluding (for now) with Carol Pogash’s article (10/14/2022) in the New York Times: “Ignored in Life, Bernice Bing Is Discovered As Museums Rewrite History” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/arts/design/bernice-bing-asian-americans-museum.html). The Pogash article emphasizes museum participation and the specific difficulties just in being an Asian artist.
Women Artists of the American West, Purdue University, offers several informative pieces, including an Artist Statement: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/rueffschool/waaw/asianamerican/Artists/BINGBio.HTM.
“Existentialism was the first influence that persuaded me toward the abstract
expressionist school of painting.” –Bernice Bing in her Artist Statement
Bingo’s Life: I developed the impression, from what sketchy information I learned about Bing’s life, that she responded to whatever happened on a personal or community level as needed. She followed her interests through study, art, and political activism.
Her history includes the facts, in somewhat random order, that Bing’s mother died from a heart ailment when Bernice was five years old; she never knew a father; her grandmother encouraged her art; while still a child, Bingo rebelled against mistreatment; experienced 17 different foster homes and one orphanage; picked plums; studied with famous painters and calligraphers; became a caretaker at a Napa Valley vineyard; gained a Masters in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961; has been recognized with art exhibitions and awards; consistently kept a personal journal; spent over 20 years developing community arts programs; spent 9 months at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur; received a Fulbright scholarship in 1984; traveled to Korea, Japan and China; became a Buddhist; studied quantum physics and poetry; worked at a grocery store; tended goats; and “finding her tribe,” Bernice Bing joined the Asian American Women Artists Association. The AAWAA was founded in 1989 when Bingo was 51 years old.
Bing’s Art: Bernice Bing had multiple exhibitions and received major awards during her lifetime; strong recognition of her work continues decades after her death.
Writer, poet and art critic John Yau visited Bing’s exhibition in San Francisco this year (2022). The show is titled Into View: Bernice Bing and will be at the Asian Art Museum through May 1, 2023. The exhibit includes paintings, drawings and journal entries from the late 1950s to the mid-90s according to journalist, writer, and editor Carol Pogash (see reference above).
Earlier benchmarks include a show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art running September 21, 2019 through January 5, 2020. The Sonoma show was titled Bingo: The Life and Art of Bernice Bing. In 1997-98 Bing’s work was part of a traveling exhibition, Asian Tradition/Modern Expression, 1945-1970, that greeted audiences in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In 1998 her work was included in Women On the Silk Road, traveling from San Francisco to various stops in Europe, Eurasia and China shadowing the ancient Silk Road trade route.
In 2013 a documentary film, “The Worlds of Bernice Bing” was made; in 2021 Bing featured in a comic book and a children’s magazine issue; in 2022 she was honored in a zine created by a Stanford scholar. Tributes continue.
John Yau is particularly impressed by her 1960 self-portrait, “Self Portrait with a Mask.” See: http://onlinecollection.asianart.org/view/objects/asitem/materials@canvas/43?t:state:flow=48c1cc87-599f-4281-b005-cfa037fc47af. Bing created only this one known self portrait; Frida Kahlo made 55, Van Gogh 36, and Rembrandt, king of self-portraiture, 100.
There isn’t a single web source featuring all her art work, yet it can be found online and maybe, with luck, sometime in your neighborhood.
Bingo’s “Unified Self” Idea
Whoah! I didn’t realize the whole concept of a person being unified was such a staggering idea. According to the 30+ pages of the Stanford reference paper by A. Brook, mentioned above in Optional / References, the idea has been recorded and discussed for almost 400 years, ever since René Descartes (1596-1650).
In the 2020s there’s been resurgence of interest in unity of consciousness or the idea of a unified self. A simple definition, from AlleyDog.com is that a unified self is “a means of referring to the ‘composite’ persona, or to the ‘self’ that contains all of the other personas that exist within a person's interactional style.”
After skip/stumbling through Brook’s extensive research, his conclusions, observations, questions and thoughts [paraphrased] are: unity of consciousness is an important feature of being; it can break down, and that’s interesting; what is its relationship to cognition; all theories about unity of consciousness are problematic; there’s still room to work on this idea.
As John Yau said in the Hyperallergic article, “Bing’s search was not about style, being fashionable, or fitting in. It was about trying to acknowledge the multiple worlds one inhabits.” For sure she responded to a surprising assortment of life experiences.
And what of the worlds inhabiting one’s person? My devious mind led me to Ed Yong’s wonderful book “I Contain Multitudes.”
Yong’s focus is one’s microbiome, all those natural little travelers inhabiting one’s person. Yong maintains that they are vital and says “they sculpt our organs, defend us from disease, break down our food, educate our immune systems, guide our behavior, bombard our genomes with their genes, and grant us incredible abilities.” I suspect Bing’s microbiome assisted this independent artist and activist in quite unified action.