Judy Chicago: Pioneer of the feminist art movement

JULY 20, ON THIS DAY

An influential artist, art educator and founder of the first feminist art program in US at California State University Fresno, Judy Chicago was born on this day, 20^th July 1939. She’s an American feminist artist whose complex and focused installations created some of the visual presence of the women’s liberation movement in 1970s and beyond.

Born Judith Sylvia Cohen in Chicago, Illinois, the artist attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her passion for art was instilled by her mother May Cohen, and she started drawing at the age of five.

Judy describes her earlier works as minimalist. She used to experiment with performance art using fireworks and pyrotechnics to create “atmospheres” which involved flashes of coloured smoke being manipulated outdoors. She had her first solo show at the Rolf Nelson Gallery in Los Angeles, and was subsequently shown in the first major minimalist show at the Jewish Museum, where she was one of the only four female artists exhibited. With the aim to explore her own sexuality in her work, she created a series of abstract paintings that placed acrylic paint on Plexiglas titled ‘Pasadena Lifesavers’. These works blended colours to create an illusion that the shapes “turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, wiggle”, representing her own discovery that “she was multi-orgasmic’. The series was a major turning point in her work in relation to women’s sexuality and representation.

Chicago’s work has continued to address themes from women’s lives with ‘The Birth Project’ (1980-1985) and ‘The Holocaust Project\’ (1985-1993). Her most well-known work is ‘The Dinner Party’ which is permanently installed at Brooklyn Museum. The installation comprises a massive ceremonial banquet arranged on a triangular table, and celebrates women’s history through seated places designed for 39 mythical and historical famous women. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.

Judy is a prolific lecturer and writer, and has taught at Duke University, Indiana Universities and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Getty Foundation, and four honorary doctorates as well.