111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603, United States
In 1947, Judy began to attend Art Institute of Chicago.
Gallery of Judy Chicago
Los Angeles, California 90095, United States
She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. Two years later, in 1964, Judy received her Master of Arts degree at the same university.
Career
Gallery of Judy Chicago
Durham, North Carolina 27708, United States
In 2000, Chicago held the post of a visiting artist at Duke University.
Gallery of Judy Chicago
3801 West Temple Avenue, Pomona, California 91768, United States
In 2003, Judy acted as a visiting artist at California State Polytechnic University.
Gallery of Judy Chicago
1970
Judy Chicago with backdrop, Boxing Ring Ad, Artforum, 1970.
Gallery of Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago in front of her work "The Dinner Party".
Gallery of Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago painting "Virginia Woolf" plate, Santa Monica, California.
She attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. Two years later, in 1964, Judy received her Master of Arts degree at the same university.
Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist
(In this book, the renowned artist and feminist continues ...)
In this book, the renowned artist and feminist continues the story of her life and takes a provocative look at late twentieth-century American culture.
(Kitty City is a celebration of Chicago's life with these ...)
Kitty City is a celebration of Chicago's life with these delightfully independent creatures. With a lavish design, that evokes a contemporary version of illuminated manuscripts, Chicago tells this charming real-life story by adapting the concept of the Book of Hours, which first gained popularity in the early 1400's as intricately illustrated private devotional books, containing texts and prayers for each hour of the day, meant to inspire and provide points of reflection for their owners.
Judy Chicago is an American artist, art educator and writer, who represents Feminist Art movement. She is considered one of the most prominent voices in ongoing dialogue about women and art. Judy is a co-founder of "Through the Flower", a non-profit feminist art organization. Also, Chicago has written eight major books, documenting her and other female artists' work.
Background
Judy Chicago was born on July 20, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She is a daughter of Arthur Cohen, a labor organizer and a Marxist, and May (Levenson) Cohen, a medical secretary, who both worked to support their children and openly articulated their left-wing politics.
Education
Chicago began drawing at the age of three. She started to attend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. Some time later, she continued her education at the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating with Bachelor of Arts degree in 1962. Two years later, in 1964, Judy received her Master of Arts degree from the same university.
Also, Chicago received several Honorary Doctorate degrees from different educational institutions, including Russell Sage College (1992), Lehigh University (2000), Smith College (2000) and Duke University (2003).
Judy's early paintings were bold depictions of female sexual expression, but rejection from her peers soon persuaded Chicago to turn her attention to sculpture. By the 1960's, Chicago began gaining recognition for Minimalist, geometric works, that suited the 1960's art-world tastes. Avoiding the more traditional sculptural media, such as bronze and stone, Judy worked in a variety of materials: she painted on porcelain and used fireworks to make drawings in the air. From the early 1970's, her work focused on feminist themes, often using the motif of a flower or butterfly to symbolize a woman's sexuality and incorporating conversational language, written directly on the artwork. Judy's work was always noted for its high level of technical finish.
In 1970, Chicago pioneered a radical educational experiment, fundamental to the emerging women's movement. Together with artist Miriam Schapiro, she ran a women-only art course at California State University in Fresno before moving it to the California Institute of Arts in Valencia. The course focused on the development of technique and expression through the process of "consciousness-raising", which recognized female identity and independence through the group's art practice, combining object-making, installation and performance. This educational experiment inspired Judy to establish "Womanhouse", an art space, which was created to provide a forum for teaching, performance, exhibition, discussion and expression.
In 1973, Judy founded Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles. At that time, her "Womanhouse" expanded to become the Woman's Building in a site among numerous other creative feminist organizations. The female arts community in Los Angeles was now firmly established and became a major symbol of the 1970's feminist movement.
In 1974, Judy started to work on her most significant and most controversial work, entitled "The Dinner Party", which was completed in 1979. It was a three-sided table, forming a triangle, along which were 39 place settings with plate, goblet and embroidered cloth. Each setting symbolized an illustrious woman from history or mythology, ranging from a primordial goddess to the American painter Georgia O'Keefe. On the floor inside the triangular table were the names of more than 999 women. Each place setting contained symbols of a woman, often derived from a flower-motif, suggesting a vagina. The artwork was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1979 and toured the United States, also being shown at the Brooklyn Museum. "The Dinner Party" met controversy and mixed critical response wherever it went, being variously described as visionary and Utopian or as obscene and overly didactic. Museums withdrew offers to show the work in spite of high attendance rates. Three decades of protest and controversy surrounding the piece followed until it was finally reinstalled in 2007 in a permanent exhibition space at the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art in Brooklyn, New York.
Chicago's next major work was "The Birth Project". Its aim was to celebrate the act of giving birth, which is rarely treated in Western art, while being common in the art of other cultures. It also drew controversy from male-based mainstream culture. Unlike "The Dinner Party", this project was two-dimensional and consisted of approximately 100 needlework designs, that summarized the birthing process as culled from interviews Judy conducted with women from around the country, regarding their experiences giving birth. The needlework designs were executed by women from the United States, Canada and New Zealand.
Working with the photographer and her third husband Donald Woodman, Judy directed a project, confronting the horror of Nazi inflicted genocide during World War II. "The Holocaust Project" is described by Chicago as being her personal record of trying to understand this awful epoch of recent history. In order to complete a multimedia piece, consisting of painting, photography, needlework, silk-screen, tapestry and stained glass, Chicago and Woodman spent over two years, researching and visiting key sites of the Holocaust in Europe. The year of 1993 saw the completion of this ambitious and rather uncomfortable project.
In 1994, Judy Chicago started to work on "Resolutions: A Stitch in Time", which took 6 years to complete. The public audience later got to see this project at the Museum of Art and Design in New York in 2000. In 1999, in partnership with Woodman, she returned to teaching, expanding her pedagogical approach from the 1970's. In 2012, Chicago held two solo exhibitions in the United Kingdom, one in London and another one in Liverpool.
During her lifetime, Judy also held the post of a visiting artist, working at different educational institutions, including Duke University (2000), California State Polytechnic University in Pomona (2003) and others.
When Judy was a student of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she became politically active, designing posters for the UCLA National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter.
Views
Quotations:
"Women's history and women's art needs to become part of our cultural and intellectual heritage."
"I could no longer pretend in my art that being a woman had no meaning."
"There has to be more room for us as artists. We have to be able to be seen in our fullness in terms of our own artistic agency, and we're a long way from that."
"Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel. The goal of The Dinner Party is to break this cycle."
"I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling, that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized world. I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism."
Connections
In 1961, Judy married Jerry Gerowitz, who died in a car crash in 1963, devastating Chicago and causing her to suffer from an identity crisis until later that decade. In 1965, she married Lloyd Hamrol, a sculptor, but their marriage didn't last long — the couple divorced in 1979. Some time later, in 1985, Chicago married her third husband, Donald Woodman, a photographer.