In this series of paintings, I created a group of mid-twentieth-century domestic scenes that refer to advertising imagery and old family snapshots. These narrative paintings simultaneously provoke feelings of nostalgia for a mythicized American lifestyle and confront the idealized female icon through the lens of irony.

This mid 20th century exists for the artist only as cultural mythology of America’s recent past where there was a palpable sense of hope, and a belief in a bright and shining future. This underscores a sense of lost innocence and doubt in our contemporary culture as a whole.

This exhibition, entitled “American Dream” is set in the context of a home that represents abundance, prosperity, and the emotional center of the universe. The image of the perfect, smiling housewife/mother who resides primarily and blissfully in the kitchen remains an emotionally charged symbol. Even though from a twenty-first-century perspective the domestic goddess icon seems irrelevant she continues to lurk in our subconscious as an ideal that women have left behind, yet can’t live up to.

The paintings use this image as a vehicle to examine a cultural shift from a time period that seemed to see the future as brimming with great possibilities to one where we now look to the future with a heightened sense of insecurity.

Lauren Bergman | New York City | 2002

I Dreamed I Went Shopping   |  60” x 40” watercolor on paper | SOLD