Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago (born Judy Cohen on July 20, 1939)^{[nb 1]} is a feminist artist, author, and educator.

Chicago has been making work since the mid 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 relevance. Major works include The Dinner Party and The Holocaust Project.

Contents 1 Life 2 Written works 3 Notes 4 References 5 Sources 6 Further reading 7 External links

[edit] Life

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 the Jewish Museum. In 1970, Chicago founded the first Feminist Art program at California 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.

A full page ad in the October 1970 Artforum announced Chicago's name change from Gerowitz. The ad says she made the change to divest "herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance...".^[3] The name change may have also been emulating members of the Black Panther Party, who believed their given names only re-enforced their "slave" identities.^{[citation needed]}

In 1971 Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro jointly founded the CalArts Feminist Art Program for the California Institute of the Arts. Together they organized one of the first-ever feminist art exhibitions - Womanhouse - January 30-February 28, 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.

Currently, Chicago is married to photographer Donald Woodman and serves as the Artistic Director of Through 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 the Artists Rights Society.^[4] A biography, Becoming Judy Chicago; A Biography of the Artist, by Dr. Gail Levin, was released in February, 2007.

Judy Chicago is an advisory board member of the organization Feminists For Animal Rights.

[edit] 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)
• Yasmin Benitez: A Winner Amongst the Losers" (2009)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• Levin, Gail (2007). Becoming Judy Chicago; A Biography of the Artist (1st ed.). United States: Harmony Books. ISBN 978-1-4000-5412-1. 

[edit] Further reading

• Busch, Julia M., "A Decade of Sculpture: the New Media in the 1960s" (The Art Alliance Press: Philadelphia; Associated University Presses: London, 1974) ISBN 0-87982-007-1

[edit] External links

• Judy Chicago's website
• Judy Chicago catalogue in artnet's Artist Works Catalogues
• The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery
• Through the Flower
• Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution from the Jewish Women's Archive
• CAFKA.TV's coverage of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, featuring Judy Chicago's Dinner Party
• Judy Chicago's Archive at LewAllen Contemporary (LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico)
• Documentary film Judy Chicago & the California Girls
• The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum
• Judy Chicago Papers.Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.