- Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago (born Judy Cohen on
July 20 ,1939 ) is afeminist artist, author, and educator.Judy Chicago is a feminist artist who has been making work since the middle 1960s. Her earliest forays into art-making coincided with the rise of
Minimalism , which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevancy. Major works include "The Dinner Party " and "The Holocaust Project ".Born in 1939 in Chicago, she moved to Los Angeles in 1957 to attend UCLA art school, where she was graduated in 1962
Phi Beta Kappa . In 1964, she received her MA from UCLA in painting and sculpture. In 1966, Chicago's work "Rainbow Pickets" was shown in "Primary Structures," a major minimalist exhibition at theJewish Museum . In 1970, Chicago founded the firstFeminist Art program atCalifornia State University at Fresno. This program was documented in the film "Judy Chicago and the California Girls", directed by Judith Dancoff and released in 1971. She also changed her last name to Chicago, emulating members of theBlack Panther Party , who believed their given names only re-enforced their "slave" identities.In 1971 Judy Chicago and
Miriam Schapiro jointly founded theCalArts Feminist Art Program for theCalifornia Institute of the Arts . Together they organized one of the first-ever feminist art exhibitions - "Womanhouse " -30 January -28 February 1972 . In 1973, Chicago co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop, located inside the Los Angeles Women's Building, a seminal feminist art teaching and exhibition space.Judy Chicago is most famous for her 1974-1979 work "
The Dinner Party ". This work, in which hundreds of volunteers participated, has been housed since 2002 in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It was donated to the museum by The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. It is now permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum within the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art which opened in March 2007. It is a homage to women's history in the form of a large triangular table with symbolic ceramic plates representing 39 famous women guests-of-honor. The work is intended as an elevation to heroic scale of the contributions of women in a way that has been excluded throughout history.Other famous works include Birth Project (which brought together a national network of skilled needle-workers 1980 -1985), the 1993 "
Holocaust Project " personifying thefinal solution , and the 1994 work "Resolutions", which returned to the theme of feminism, a thread that runs through all of her work.In 2004 Chicago completed the "Envisioning the Future" project in Pomona, California. The project including creating a 140' x 40' mural of the Goddess Pomona entitled
Pomona Envisions the Future .Currently, Chicago is married to photographer
Donald Woodman and serves as the Artistic Director ofThrough the Flower , a non-profit arts organization created in 1978 to support her work. The U.S. copyright representative for Judy Chicago and Through the Flower is theArtists Rights Society . [http://www.arsny.com/represented.html Artists Rights Society website: American Artists Represented by ARS] ] A biography, "Becoming Judy Chicago", by Dr. Gail Levin, was released in February, 2007.Her latest body of work is titled
Chicago in Glass. "Chicago in Glass" (a retrospective of Judy Chicago's work in glass) will be on display at theCanadian Clay and Glass Gallery , Waterloo ON from September 9th to January 13, 2008. The exhibition has been a great success thus far. It opened with a sold-out talk by the artist.A member of the
Guerrilla Girls , in an interview, is quoted as saying "...we just didn't want any more Judy Chicagos. No more monsters". ["But is it art, The Spirit of Art as Activism", Edited by Nina Felshin, Bay Press.]Judy Chicago is an advisory board member of the organization Feminists For Animal Rights.
Written works
*"Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist" (1975)
*"The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage" (1979)
*"Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework" (1980)
*"The Birth Project" (1985)
*"Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light" (1993)
*"The Dinner Party" (1996)
*"Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist" (1996)
*"Fragments from the Delta of Venus" (2004)
*"Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours" (2005)References
*Busch, Julia M., [http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/4ed0b0bd878eaf2a.html "A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s"] (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; [http://www.aupresses.com/ Associated University Presses] :
London , 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1External links
* [http://www.judychicago.com/ Judy Chicago's website]
* [http://www.artnet.com/awc/judy-chicago.html Judy Chicago catalogue in artnet's "Artist Works Catalogues"]
* [http://www.canadianclayandglass.ca/ The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery]
* [http://www.throughtheflower.org/ Through the Flower]
* [http://www.jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA013 Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution] from the [http://www.jwa.org Jewish Women's Archive]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X6ZsumBiuA CAFKA.TV's coverage of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, featuring Judy Chicago's Dinner Party]
* [http://www.lewallencontemporary.com/judychicago Judy Chicago's Archive at LewAllen Contemporary] (LewAllen Contemporary inSanta Fe, New Mexico )
*Documentary film [http://www.judychicagoandthecaliforniagirls.com Judy Chicago & the California Girls]
* [http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/ The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum]
* [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00326 Judy Chicago Papers.] [http://www.radcliffe.edu/schles Schlesinger Library,] Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
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