Artist Profile

Judy Chicago (1939–    )

Born Judy Cohen in 1939, Judy Chicago has risen to become a leading figure in feminist art.  As an artist, author, feminist, educator and intellectual, Judy Chicago has a career that has spanned over four decades.  Educated at the University of California in Los Angeles in the early 1960’s, Chicago earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  Fame came only after she had worked as a painting instructor at several California universities and experimented with multiple media.

Chicago first achieved personal recognition for her convention-shattering clay and fabric work The Dinner Party (1974).  Her commitment to creating art from a female point of view, The Dinner Party is an installation of 39 large, unique, illustrated plates.  Each of the plates represents a woman of distinction, and collectively the work tells the history of women of western civilization.  Set up on a narrow-topped, triangular table configuration, the exhibit is breathtaking. The Dinner Party has traveled the world over and is considered to be Chicago’s best work.  It can be seen today at its permanent exhibition site, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The Dinner Party did two things to further a greater understanding and appreciation of women in art.  The masterpiece is not only a chronicle of women in history but also a collaboration of hundreds of contemporary female volunteers who helped create the completed work.  These volunteers worked from 1974 to 1979 doing hand stitching, ceramics and tapestry that accompanied each of the 39 plates.  This exhibit focused on the use of craft as art and crushed the accepted notion that much of what women do, and had previously been ignored as mundane, was now considered artwork.  From a contemporary point of view, Chicago revolutionized the way feminine art and artists, minimalism and crafts were viewed.

Other work done by Chicago after the success of The Dinner Party included The Birth Project, a series on birth and creation images.  She again worked with volunteer needleworkers and artisans from around America. Birth took from 1980 to 1985 to complete.

Started before and completed during The Birth Project was the personal project Powerplay (1978-1982), where Chicago took a critical feminist look at masculinity.  The source of inspiration for this series of paintings came in the autumn of 1982 when Chicago visited Rome for the first time and was inspired by the monumental scale and realism of Renaissance painting.  She decided to make a series of oil paintings in the classical tradition, but do it her way. Her use of the historical style converted to a contemporary purpose supports Chicago's post-modern feminist mentality as an artist.

From 1985 to 1993 Chicago worked on Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light.  This was a collaboration with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, and included mixed media works that explored the issues of power and powerlessness in relation to the way humans heal or destroy the world.

Premiering in 2000 was the exhibition called Resolutions: A Stitch in Time, where Chicago again worked with skilled needleworkers in combination with her paintings.  The exhibit was a series of inspiring images that looked at traditional adages and proverbs in contemporary context.

Chicago has chosen to make art that is thought-provoking and she stirs controversy with the images she creates.  Because of her style and philosophy on art, she continues to be of interest to thousands of art fans.   Recently, she worked in the exploration of the expressive potential of glass.  The final image in the Holocaust Project is a 16-foot triptych in stained glass that started her interest in glass work.  She carves and paints on glass that is then laminated, involving repeated carving and firing, then fusing and casting of the glass.

One thing can be said of Judy Chicago:  She pushes the envelope of exploration and discovery and seems always to come up with not only thought-provoking subject matter, but also diverse and fascinating materials with which to work.  See examples of her art at: www.judychicago.com and www.throughtheflower.org.  Through the Flower is a non-profit Feminist art organization founded by Judy Chicago in 1978.

Copyright ARTtalk Vol. 19 No. 5 — March 2009