Judy Chicago
Learning Resource
Contents
1) Background Information
2) Judy Chicago Chronology
3) Artists Biographies
4) Themes in the Exhibition
5) Activities and Discussion
All photographs of Judy Chicago's work are copyright Judy Chicago and
are photographed by Donald Woodman
Background Information
Ben Uri is delighted to present this particular selection from
Chicago’s extensive canon. In doing so, the museum, perhaps
unintentionally, subverts the expectations of those visitors who equate
Chicago solely with The Dinner Party, her large-scale iconic 1970s
installation, which occupies a ground space of some 3600 square feet.
Rather, the works on display are predominantly small-scale works,
allowing a representative survey which highlights selected themes from
across four decades.
These themes embrace autobiography, art as diary, erotica,
feminism, the nude, self-portraiture, performance, issues of masculine
power, birth and motherhood – and cats, too, which find, perhaps,
unexpected areas of commonality in all three of the accompanying
artists from the other side of the Atlantic: Paris-born Louise Bourgeois
(1911–2010), Helen Chadwick (1953–1996) and Tracey Emin (b.1963).
Furthermore, with its focus on autobiography, this exhibition brings
a hitherto less well-known and less critically examined side of Judy’s
oeuvre to a new British audience.
In showcasing Chicago’s work, Ben Uri also continues its tradition
of showing works by influential Jewish women artists, such as Sonia
Delauney, Anna Ticho, Else Meidner, Orovida Pissarro and Dorothy
Bohm. And Ben Uri is perhaps unusual amongst art museums in that
more than a quarter of the works in its permanent collection are by
women artists.
Chronology
1939
July 20 – Judy Cohen born in Chicago, Illinois. (Legally
changes her name in 1971 to Judy Chicago)
1945
Begins attending art classes at the Chicago Art
Institute.
1957
Leaves Chicago for Los Angeles to attend UCLA,
majoring in art and minoring in humanities.
1962
Graduates from UCLA as Phi Beta Kappa.
Her first husband, Jerry Gerowitz, dies in a car
accident.
1964
Receives MA from UCLA in painting and sculpture.
1965
First solo show at Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles.
1970
The first year of Chicago’s pioneering feminist art
programme at California State University at Fresno.
Changes her surname in a move to demonstrate
female emancipation. Her first art dealer, Rolf Nelson,
suggested “Chicago” earlier on account of her strong,
native accent.
1971
Brings Feminist art programme to California Institute
of the Arts, teaching together with artist Miriam
Schapiro.
Legalises her name change.
1972
Creates the female-centric art installation
“Womanhouse” together with Schapiro and their
students in the Feminist Art programme.
1973
With Arlene Raven and Sheila de Bretteville, Chicago
co-founds the Woman’s Building, housing feminist
organizations and art galleries, including the first
independent feminist art school, the Feminist Studio
Workshop, also established by the trio.
1974
Chicago begins six years of work on The Dinner Party, a
symbolic history of women in Western Civilization
1975
Publication of Chicago’s first book, Through the Flower,
which chronicles her struggles to find her own identity
as a woman artist and is subsequently published in the
UK, Canada, Germany, Japan and China.
1978
Chicago founds Through the Flower, a non-profit
Feminist art organisation, which provides a fiscal
structure for donations to complete The Dinner Party.
1979
Premiere of The Dinner Party at San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art. Despite its great success, the
scheduled exhibition tour collapses and Through the
Flower mounts an unprecedented grass roots fuelled
exhibition tour that eventually brings The Dinner Party
to 16 venues in 6 countries on 3 continents, including
the USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, to a viewing
audience of over one million visitors.
1980
Chicago begins five years of work on the Birth Project,
on which 150 needleworkers are selected to work.
This project is sponsored and , subsequently, toured by
Through the Flower to over 100 venues, with the art
being gifted to museums, university galleries, birthing
centres and hospitals in order to introduce Feminist art
into mainstream culture.
1982
For the next five years, Chicago’s PowerPlay project
examines the construct of masculinity in drawings,
paintings, sculptures, weavings, cast paper and bronze.
1985
Publication of Birth Project book.
Chicago marries photographer Donald Woodman.
Beginning of work on the “Holocaust Project: From
Darkness into Light”, an eight-year collaborative
project with Woodman and selected artisans, exploring
the meaning of the Holocaust in a contemporary
context.
1990
Through the Flower moves to New Mexico where it
presents public seminars and art workshops.
1993
Publication of Holocaust Project book
For the next seven years, the Holocaust Project is
toured by Through the Flower to ten venues. Since
that time, selected work from the project continues to
travel.
1994
Chicago spends six years creating “Resolutions: A Stitch
in Time” with a select group of needleworkers. This
project playfully reinterprets traditional proverbs for a
multi-cultural future.
1999
Chicago returns to teaching at institutions around
the USA, doing residencies at Indiana University,
Bloomington; Duke; University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill; (and with her husband, Donald) Western
Kentucky University; Cal Poly, Pomona and the Pomona
Art Colony, CA; and Vanderbilt
2000
“Resolutions: A Stitch in Time” opens at the Museum
of Art and Design in New York, subsequently traveling
to museums in the USA and Canada.
2001
“Trials and Tributes: Works on Paper“ retrospective of
Chicago’s production on paper is organised at Florida
State University, curated by Dr Viki Thompson Wylder,
touring to nine venues within the USA.
2002
Survey exhibition at the National Museum of Women
in the Arts in Washington, DC.
The Elizabeth A Sackler Foundation acquires and gifts
The Dinner Party to the Brooklyn Museum, which
exhibits it for the second time to a better critical
response.
2005
Through the Flower buys a small building opposite the
Belen Hotel and begins a series of Art Conversations
to bring art discourse to their small community. It also
initiates the New Mexico Women’s Cultural Corridor,
highlighting sites throughout the state devoted to
women’s achievements.
Chicago publishes Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours,
consisting of a series of watercolours chronicling
a day in the life of her household with six cats. In
conjunction with this publication and its exhibitions,
Chicago works with animal rescue agencies for cat
adoptions around the country.
2006
The Dinner Party is featured in Janson and Janson’s ‘A
Basic History of Western Art’, described as “a powerful
icon for women’s liberation and independence” that
ushered in post-modernism. “Chicago in Glass” opens
at LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, surveying
Chicago’s stained glass, fused, cast, etched and painted
glass works in both two and three-dimensions.
2007
Opening of The Dinner Party in its permanent home at
the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A Sackler Center for
Feminist Art, the first such institution in the world.
Publication of biography, Becoming Judy Chicago by Dr
Gail Levin (New York: Harmony Books) in conjunction
with the exhibition, “Judy Chicago: Jewish Identity” at
HUC Gallery in NY, which subsequently travelled.
Publication of Chicago’s final and definitive book about
The Dinner Party.
Opening of “WACK: Art and the Feminist Revolution”
at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art.
2009
Through the Flower launches a K-12 Dinner Party
curriculum, which is downloadable by school teachers
all over the world. The curriculum was created by
Chicago in collaboration with board member and
educators Dr Constance Gee, Dr Marilyn Stewart and
faculty members at Kutztown University.
Chicago co-authors Frida Kahlo: Face to Face with
Frances Borzello (published by Prestel).
2011
The Museum of Art and Design in New York presents
the first survey of Chicago’s work in tapestry woven by
Audrey Cowan since the mid 1970s.
Chicago’s work is exhibited in eight museums as part
of “Pacific Standard Time”, a Getty-funded initiative
documenting and celebrating Southern California art
from 1945-1980.
Chicago visits Great Britain to lecture on Kahlo book
and is interviewed on BBC4’s Woman’s Hour by Dame
Jenni Murray.
Chicago’s art education archives are acquired by Penn
State University where it links to Chicago’s paper
archives at the Schlesinger Library for the History of
Women in America at Harvard/Radcliffe
2012
Chicago restages several historic events as part
of “Pacific Standard Time”, including her (dry Ice)
Disappearing Environment and her fireworks piece
Atmospheres.
Chicago exhibits in London for the first time since The
Dinner Party tour in 1985 with associated events in
Liverpool and Manchester.
Retrospective
in a Box
Retrospective in a Box contains prints which illustrate
seven of Judy Chicago’s key projects:
Abstract Imagery
Judy Chicago b.1939
Into the Darkness (from Retrospective in a
Box)
2009
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b. 1939
Rainbow Pickett
1965
Early Feminist
Judy Chicago b.1939
The Return of the Butterfly (from
Retrospective in a Box)
2012
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b. 1939
Smoke Bodies III (from the Women and Smoke
series)
1972
Archival pigment print on paper
Fireworks performed in the Californian desert
Through The Flower Archives, Belen, NM
The Dinner Party
Judy Chicago b.1939
Signing the Dinner Party (from Retrospective
in a Box)
2009
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b. 1939
Installation view of The Dinner Party
1979
Photographed by Donald Woodman
Birth Project
Judy Chicago b.1939
The Crowning (from Retrospective in a
Box)
2010
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b. 1939
Birth Tear / Tear detail
1982
Holocaust Project
Judy Chicago b.1939
One Must Scream (from Retrospective in a
Box)
2012
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b. 1939
Installation view of Rainbow Shabbat
from the Holocaust Project,
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA
1995
Powerplay
Judy Chicago b.1939
Rather Rage Than Tears (from
Retrospective in a Box)
2012
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b.1939
Pissing on Nature
1982
Mixed media
Self Portrait
Judy Chicago b.1939
Aging Woman/Artist/Jew (from
Retrospective in a Box)
2012
Lithograph on paper
Landfall Press, Santa Fe, NM
Judy Chicago b.1939
Self Portrait as my Six Cats
1999
Biographies
Judy Chicago [born 1939]
Born Judith Cohen in 1939 in Chicago, Illinois, Judy Chicago is an artist and feminist whose near five decade career has
engaged with audiences world-wide through her creativity, authorship and educational commitment. Her art has been
frequently exhibited in the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
In the early seventies after a decade of professional art practice, Chicago pioneered Feminist Art and art education
through a unique program for women at California State University, Fresno, a pedagogical (teaching) approach that she has
continued to develop. She then brought her program to Cal-Arts, where she team-taught with Miriam Schapiro, producing
with their students the ground-breaking Womanhouse project.
In 1999 Chicago returned to teaching for the first time in twenty-five years, having accepted a succession of one-semester
appointments at various institutions around the country. Since then she has been involved in numerous university projects
across the USA working in partnership with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman.
Although Chicago has been an influential teacher and prolific author, the primary focus of her career has been her studio
work. In 1974 Chicago turned her attention to the subject of women’s history to create her most well-known work,
The Dinner Party, which was executed between 1974 and 1979 with the participation of hundreds of volunteers. This
monumental multimedia project, a symbolic history of women in Western Civilization, has been seen by more than one
million viewers during its sixteen exhibitions held at venues spanning six countries. The Dinner Party is now permanently
housed at the Brooklyn Museum as the centre piece of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
From 1980 to 1985 Chicago worked on the Birth Project, designing a series of birth and creation images for needlework
that were executed under her supervision by 150 skilled needle-workers across the USA and exhibited in more than 100
venues, While completing the Birth Project, Chicago again focused on individual studio work to create PowerPlay, an
unusual series of drawings, paintings, weavings, cast paper, and bronze reliefs, in which Chicago brought a critical feminist
gaze to the gender construct of masculinity.
The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light – which involved eight years of inquiry, travel, study, and artistic creation –
merged Chicago’s painting with the innovative photography of her husband Donald Woodman, as well as works in stained
glass and tapestry designed by Chicago and executed by skilled artisans.
Resolutions: A Stitch in Time was Judy Chicago’s last collaborative project. Begun in 1994 with skilled needle workers with
whom she had worked for many years, Resolutions combines painting and needlework in a series of exquisitely crafted and
inspiring images which playfully reinterpret traditional adages and proverbs.
In 1999 an extensive retrospective of Chicago’s works on paper, ‘Trials and Tributes’ premiered at the Florida State
University Art Museum in Tallahassee. In October 2002, a major survey of Chicago’s career was presented at the National
Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. In 2009, the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto mounted “If Women
Ruled the World,” the first major survey of Chicago’s work in the needle and textile arts.
In 2011 and 2012, Chicago’s important contributions to southern California art were highlighted in “Pacific Standard
Time”, a Getty funded initiative documenting and celebrating the region’s rich history. She was featured in eight museum
exhibitions.
In addition to a life of prodigious art making, Chicago is the author of numerous books including: Through the Flower: My
Struggle as a Woman Artist, 1975 (subsequently published in England, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and China); The Dinner
Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage, 1979; Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist, 1996 (Viking Penguin);
Women in Art: Contested Territory (co-authored with Edward Lucie-Smith), 1999 (Watson Guptill) Fragments from the
Delta of Venus, 2004 (powerHouse Books); Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours, 2005 (Harper Design International); and Frida
Kahlo, Face to Face (co-authored with Frances Borzello), 2010 (Prestel)
Biographies
Louise Bourgeois [1911 - 2010)
Born in Paris on Christmas Day 1911 to gallery owners specialising in antique tapestries,
Bourgeois grew up in a cultured environment, although her father’s treatment of her
caused her great distress. This would feature greatly in her later art, which was largely
autobiographical, including many allusions to childhood and the female condition.
This also provoked her to study mathematics and geometry at the Sorbonne in order to
have some notion of stability, rooted in subjects with set rules.
Throughout most of the 1940s, her work went unnoticed as she attempted to break into the
New York art scene, but she used the time to hone her skills and investigate different media
and themes, principally that of “falling”. She subsequently joined the American Abstract
Artist Group, through whom she met Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning.
Bourgeois did not begin to receive real appreciation or attract an audience for her work
until the early 1970s, when she first began teaching in institutes and schools after the death
of her husband. Her first major retrospective was held in 1982 at MoMA in New York City,
her adopted home.
Her 1974 fabric structure Destruction of the Father was one of many works dealing with the
psychological despair her father had caused her as a child. The work was shown alongside
others of her masterpieces at the Tate Modern’s 2007 exhibition, “Maman.” The central
(and title)piece of this exhibition was Bourgeois’ most famous, nine metre-high sculpture
of a spider, which became a central motif in her work, as she likened the creature to her
mother: for her benevolence, weaving responsibilities in the family business and protection.
Also included in the exhibition were her “Cells” series, which consisted of a series of doored
enclosures, filled with found objects, into which the viewer could look and find different
emotional and physical states and spaces. This work was created when Bourgeois was
already in her eighties, but was by no means the last; she continued to create until the week
before her death at the age of 98 in 2010.
Her works feature in the collections of some of the most important museums in the world,
with “Maman” touring globally, and currently installed at the Qatar Museums Authority in
Doha, Qatar. Most recently, an exhibition of Bourgeois’ psychoanalytical writings, drawings
and sculptures featured at the Freud Museum, London (March–May 2012).
Biographies
Helen Chadwick [1953 – 1996]
Born in Croydon to a Greek mother, Chadwick lived, worked and taught most of her life in London,
until her unexpected and premature death in 1996 from a virus contracted whilst researching her next
project in a hospital.
Chadwick studied sculpture at Brighton Polytechnic from 1973–76, followed by an MA at Chelsea
College of Art and Design. She continued to teach at both, as well as at the Royal College of Art and a
number of other regional institutions, throughout her life.
Following her MA graduation, Chadwick’s first London exhibition was the 1977 “In the Kitchen”, a
performance/ installation piece in which she encased her models in the frames of large wearable,
‘soft’ kitchen appliances, leaving them free to move around the gallery. Chadwick collaborated in the
performance with her neighbour, Maureen Paley, who was to subsequently open a ground-breaking
gallery in her own home in East London. The aim of the performance was to symbolise the female body
as a machine, making the comment that women were not their own masters. This was the first overtly
public expression of Chadwick’s staunch feminism, which would re-emerge in her later works.
Her first major project was Ego Geometria Sum, which she worked on throughout 1982–84, and which
was exhibited at the 1985 British Art Show. It was an autobiographical work, probing her own body and
exploring her lifespan to date, beginning with her premature birth, her body’s origins and its journey of
evolution. For this work she pasted large images of herself onto the surfaces of plywood, shaped like
objects associated with childhood, resulting in her own form becoming a two-dimensional, motionless
and simple structure. In 1986 her installation Of Mutability was shown at the ICA where it attracted
controversy for the use of unusual materials; a film, shown in the unpleasantly-scented gallery featured
nude images of the artist amidst columns of decomposing vegetable matter, maggots, gravy and dead
sheep.
The following year Chadwick became one of the first women to be short-listed for the Turner Prize in
1987. She gained further notoriety in the media for her Piss Flowers (1991–92), created by making
casts of the indentations made by her and her partner urinating on snow. In these thought-provoking
works, the masculine stamen of the ‘flowers’ was formed from the indentation made in the snow by
Chadwick (female), and the pollen and petal texture by that of her male partner, her husband David
Notarius.
One of her last great exhibitions was “Effluvia” held at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994. From the same
year, the installation sculpture, Cacao/ Wreathes of pleasure, juxtaposed the guilty bliss of enjoying
chocolate with the depravity of misuse of faeces.
The following year Chadwick took up a residency at King’s College Hospital, London, where she began
photographing IVF embryos that had been rejected for implantation, for use in the series “Unnatural
Selection”. She was working on this project when she contracted a viral infection which contributed to
her premature death. She is now hailed as one of the great twentieth century artist-explorers of the
human story, so much more than the feminist artist as she is often unjustly branded.
Biographies
Tracey Emin
[born 1963]
Born in Croydon to an English Romani mother and a Turkish Cypriot father, Emin had a difficult
childhood and adolescence, which strongly impacted on some of her later works. She studied
fashion at Medway College of Art and Design, where she met Billy Childish, leading to an
association with his punk-poetry group “The Medway Poets” in a period she would later
describe as one of the most important of her life. Associated with the so-called YBA group
of artists who first came to prominence in the late 1980s, she was amongst those who were
greatly supported by the contemporary collector, Charles Saatchi.
In 1987 Emin completed an MA at the Royal College of Art and after working to fund her artistic
career, held her first solo show in 1993 at London’s White Cube Gallery. Entitled “My Major
Retrospective”, the exhibition saw the beginning of her lengthy and continuing investigation
into highly personal autobiographical works. Emin exhibited perhaps her most well-known
autobiographical work, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With
1963–1995 (1995), in late 1997 as part of “Sensation”, The Royal Academy‘s high-profile
exhibition of works by YBA artists from the Saatchi Collection. The piece, a tent on the walls of
which Emin had appliquéd a list of names, was not simply a statement about her sexuality, but
also referred to family members she shared a bed with as a child and the twins she had aborted
at the age of eighteen. The piece was later destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.
Emin’s versatility is shown by her ability to work in a range of media, including film,
photography, neon light signs, installations and fabric, as well as painting, sculpting and
drawing. In recognition of her work within the medium of drawing, Emin became one of the
first female artists to receive a professorship at the Royal Academy Schools, when she was
elected Professor of Drawing in 2011. She has lectured in the UK and abroad on links between
creating art and autobiography, including at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Britain.
Emin was a Turner Prize nominee in 1999 for her installation My Bed, and in 2007 represented
the UK at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition “Borrowed Light”. Critics commented that
this display presented a much more elegant set of works exploring her body than those with
which she had previously shocked her audiences. In 2007 Emin was appointed RA.
Important retrospectives have included the 2008 “Tracey Emin: 20 Years”, shown in Malaga and
at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, and “Love is What you Want” at the Hayward
Gallery in London in 2011. In the same year Hauser and Wirth exhibited “Do Not Abandon Me”,
her collaboration with sculptor Louise Bourgeois. Emin recently exhibited “She Lay Down Deep
Beneath the Sea” in her hometown of Margate at the newly built Turner Contemporary Gallery,
as a part of the London 2012 Festival.
Erotica
Feminism
Diary
The Nude
Autobiography
Key Words & Concepts
Self Portrait
Physical Trauma
Performance
Relationships
Autobiography/Visual Diary
Autobiographical art describes art in which the content of the piece is in some way related to an event,
experience, or emotion from the artist’s life. This could include a prolonged period of time from the artist’s
life, one particular significant moment, or an expression of their feelings towards another person. Within
this genre there is no limit to the range of media artist’s may use to engage the viewer. For example, artist’s
may use diaries, photographs, personal objects and documents from the past, installations and, of course,
fine art practice such as painting, drawing and sculpture.
Autobiographical themes explored by Judy Chicago within her work include, her relationships with her
husband, family, her heritage, and significant traumatic life events. In ‘My Accident’ Chicago uses text,
illustration and photography to document her feelings and experiences following a very serious road
accident. As the name would suggest, in ‘Autobiography of a Year’ Chicago documents her inner thoughts
and feelings over the course of a year using text and illustration. In the Excision notebook, a powerful diary
of drawings and text, Chicago documents her thoughts and feelings surrounding her hysterectomy, as well
as her relationship with her husband during this difficult period.
Tracy Emin’s work is significantly informed by autobiographical content. It is often described as
‘confessional art’ due to the explicit or revealing nature of the images produced. In this exhibition Emin’s
text piece, CV, reveals a written glimpse into her private life, including accounts of violence, rape and her
personal relationships.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
My Accident
Autobiography of a Year
Excision
Tracey Emin
CV
Masturbating in the bath - from Memory
Consider:
Is autobiographical art a recent art form?
How does autobiographical art challenge traditional conventions of what art ‘is’?
Should some things be kept private?
Can we believe everything we see in Autobiographical work?
Self Portraiture
A self-portrait is a piece of work in which the artist depicts him or herself. This may include a traditional
portrait, in which the artist represents him/herself naturalistically (as close to reality as possible), or it
could include abstract portraiture, in which certain markings, shapes and ideas represent elements of the
artist. Self-portraiture may involve concentrating entirely on representing personality and inner emotions
as opposed to an exact depiction of physical appearance. Artists have even used objects such as clothes or
furniture to represent themselves.
Artists may also produce self-portraits which not only represent themselves, but also comment on other
ideas or societal events that have influenced the artist’s life.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Autobiography of a Year
My Accident
Self-portrait as My Six Cats
Study for Aging Woman/Artist/Jew
Tracey Emin
Masturbating in the Bath
Louise Bourgeois
Self Portrait
Consider:
What is the difference between autobiography and self-portraiture?
The photographs, Eve in the Garden and Tracey Emin’s The Last Thing I Said to You was Don’t Leave Me
Here II are both portraits of the artist. However, it is important to note that both of these images were
photographed by other artists. How can they also be understood as self-portraits?
Erotica
Erotica is visual art or literature that celebrates or expresses sexuality and sexual relationships. Derived
from the Greek “eros”, meaning human, physical love, erotica is one of the oldest subject matters in Art
History, with the earliest expressions appearing alongside depictions of hunting from c. 30,000 BC. As a
theme, erotica spans the entirety of the history of art; from Roman sculptures of the fertility god Priapus to
Titian’s Mary Magdalene (1554) - thinly veiled sexuality in the guise of a biblical allegory.
Nudity often goes hand in hand with the theme of erotica. Historically, the study of the history of art,
and the production of works of art, have been fields dominated by men. Traditionally, women are often
depicted by male artists as ‘objects’ of desire, a depiction which renders women as ‘passive’, ‘objectified’,
and powerless.
The rise of Feminist art in the late 1960s brought with it a new wave of artistic interrogation of erotic
themes. Artists such as Judy Chicago ‘reclaimed’ the female body using imagery to produce work that both
celebrated women, and challenged the ‘patriarchal’ social norms within art (the objectification of women).
Women portrayed female nudity and sexuality from the point of view of women. Rather than being
‘objects’ to be looked upon, Feminist artists often use their own bodies to highlight the marginalisation of
women within society, as well as the objectification of women within art.
To this day, erotica is often viewed as shocking and inappropriate, which has in some cases led to censoring.
However, some critics believe that censorship of erotica increasingly contributes to viewer’s interest, and
the work’s perceived desirability.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Nine Fragments from Delta of Venus
Study #1 for Caterotica
Butterfly Vagina Erotica
Louise Bourgeois
Untitled (Sleep II)
Tracey Emin
Masturbating in the bath - from Memory
Consider:
What is the difference between pornography and erotica?
Why is there censorship surrounding sex and nudity?
Are women still ‘objectified’? Are men objectified?
Feminism
In the United Kingdom, up until the beginning of the Victorian Women’s Liberation in 1895, the term ‘feminism’
was used to describe the qualities of a woman, rather than the “advocacy of the rights and claims of women”
(OED). Women did not enjoy the same rights and freedoms as men and were expected to stay at home carrying out
domestic duties and relying on their husbands or fathers for financial support.
Although many existed, female artists were virtually unheard of until the 19th century, as they were denied the same
opportunities for studying art, practising art and exhibiting art, as their male counterparts. Furthermore, with women
generally holding positions solely within the private sphere, the public cultural sphere was believed to be beyond the
understanding of a woman, thus women’s art was deemed insignificant.
The Victorian and Edwardian women known as the Suffragettes are some of the most well-known feminist groups
from the 19th and early 20th centuries. They campaigned for the right to vote, and in 1918 achieved the vote for
some women over 30. However, it would take another 10 years for all women over 21 to be given the right to vote.
The Second World War can also be seen as a significant event in the progression of attaining women’s rights. Most
of the UK’s men were drafted into the army, navy and air force, and the women at home took on men’s roles in the
workplace, such as building ships and tanks, working in factories and driving fire engines (jobs in which women were
previously excluded from). Post-war, it was ‘assumed’ that these women would revert back to their previous roles.
However, women had become used to working and playing a vital role in the running of their communities. They
became frustrated with their status compared with that of men, and in the late 1960s, some decided to take a stand,
in the form of the Women’s Liberation Movement.
The Women’s Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 70s was hugely important for women artists because it
questioned why the art world and the study of art history had historically been predominantly male dominated. As a
result, many women’s art groups emerged. Feminist artists began not only to rediscover those female artists whose
work had been marginalised, but also to question the whole concept of gender identity and how it is constructed,
as well as to explore how the historical exclusion of women artists had denied women a place within art historical
canons.
There is still much dispute about the term, ‘Feminist Art’. Not all art by female artists is feminist, and not all “feminist
art” is made by females. Feminist art is defined here as, all types of creative work which engages with themes of
sexual equality and interrogates patriarchal oppression. Feminist art cannot be understood as having one ‘style’. It
often utilises those art forms traditionally excluded from the umbrella of ‘high art’, such as film, performance and
craft skills such as embroidery. Additionally, in questioning patriarchal dominance in society, Feminist Art paved the
way for questioning and forging pathways for other under-represented groups.
The Dinner Party (first shown in 1979) by Judy Chicago is still understood to be one of the most important pieces
of feminist art ever created. The Dinner Party is a huge sculptural installation, which took Chicago and her team
six years to complete. The work celebrates the contributions and achievements of western women throughout
history who have traditionally been omitted from the history records. It was created using a number of methods
traditionally understood as being of the ‘feminine arts’ such as needlework and decorative ceramic painting. The
work was controversial for a number of reasons: one being that Chicago was accused of exploiting the craftspeople
that had helped her to physically produce the piece, and second being the emphasis on vaginal iconography. In Ben
Uri’s exhibition, the work ‘The Dinner Party’ is directly referenced by Chicago’s print, Signing the Dinner Party, which
features a signature triangular shaped vulva.
However, it is not only the public achievements of women that are highlighted in feminist art, but also the everyday,
and the routine, those aspects of women’s lives that are rarely described, acknowledged or celebrated. Chicago’s
Menstruation Bathroom and Red Flag challenge the viewer to come face to face with a woman’s menstrual cycle,
which can be seen to celebrate the power of child birth and life giving, as well as the right of women to choose not
to have children. The piece can also be seen to highlight the taboo of menstruation as a patriarchal tool for making
women feel shame and self-hatred. Feminist art often purposefully forces viewers to engage with uncomfortable
subject matter. The Last Thing I Said to You was Don’t Leave Me Here II shows a naked, and vulnerable Emin.
Although not explicit in meaning, an audience familiar with Emin’s work is reminded of her accounts of rape,
abortion, and other personal agonies (as described in the work CV)
Feminism (continued)
In spite of the very serious issues that feminist art explores, feminist art can also be very funny, using humour to
make sexist conventions look ridiculous. Helen Chadwick subverts the notion of the “domesticated” woman with
her 1977 installation photographs, In The Kitchen. Chadwick designed kitchen appliances to be worn by women
who moved about the gallery space. These works explore ideas of the societal constrictions placed upon women,
elaborating on the idea of the mindless, domestic machine. The ideas are serious and pertinent, but the attraction of
the work lies perhaps in the tongue and cheek nature of the robotic design, where a breast plate (perhaps also a nod
to the concept of body armour) is replaced by the cooking rings of an oven. Furthermore, Chadwick’s Piss Flowers
depicts a world where the hierarchy of the phallus is reversed; the larger and more phallic of the shapes has been
created by the woman pissing, given her close proximity to the snow. Here ironically, it is the woman’s body that
makes the most phallic looking shape.
Feminism remains a highly political term continuously fuelling debate amongst both women and men. Some women
feel that it is no longer necessary to define themselves as feminists as they believe that equality has been achieved.
Some women support the continued work for furthering equality between men and women but do not want to
identify with the Feminist ‘label’. Other women feel that the term is still hugely valid and that there is still a great
need to pursue greater equality for women throughout the world. Furthermore ‘Feminism’ does not describe one
viewpoint; there are a wide and varied number of ideological positions within Feminism itself.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Gunsmoke
Red Flag
Love Story
Photographs from ‘Ablutions’
What is Feminist Art?
Menstruation Bathroom from Womanhouse
Pissing on Nature 2
Women and Smoke series
The Dinner Party (and all related adverts etc)
Helen Chadwick
In the Kitchen
Tracey Emin
This is What a Feminist Looks Like, photograph (of Tracey Emin)
Consider:
How can we define Feminist Art?
Do you believe there is still a need for feminism?
Have women and men achieved equality? Is equality just about legal rights?
Should every woman be a feminist?
Can men be feminists?
The Nude
In visual art, the term ‘nude’ describes the portrayal of the human naked body. Throughout history, the nude has
been depicted in various ways, from the Classical Greek statue of the Adonis (a handsome male youth) to Titian’s
suggestive Venus of Urbino, to Stanley Spencer’s graphic oil-painting, Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second
Wife (1937).
Although images of the nude have been extensively produced throughout Art History, it was not until the late 1960s
and the rise of Feminist Art that women artists began to use their own naked bodies within their art. Dealing with
provocative, female issues such as childbirth, menstruation and rape, feminist artists used their bodies to claim back
the female form from the male-centric art world.
In Ageing Woman/Artist/Jew, Judy Chicago explores the nude in this non-traditional way. She uses a photograph of
herself in her seventies - an “ageing woman”, so rarely represented positively in art. This lack of representation in art
is also challenged in Eve in the Garden at 70. Photographed by her husband, Donald Woodman, this image shows
a vibrant, energetic woman, whose nudity and laughing smile challenges the viewer’s preconceptions of what is a
“socially acceptable” woman’s body.
The idea of performance is prevalent in many of the images on display in the exhibition. In Judy Chicago’s work this
is evident in the photographs ‘Boxing Ring Advert’ (a depiction of Judy as a boxer in the ring staring directly out at
the viewer), and in the Women and Smoke series which photographs naked women in the desert landscape with
coloured smoke. In the Helen Chadwick series In the Kitchen, Chadwick and her collaborators wear costumes based
on kitchen appliances whilst reading texts on the nature of women’s domestic roles.
Tracey Emin also uses her naked body as a tool for communication in her art. In the photograph, The Last Thing I
Said to You was Don’t Leave Me Here II, Emin crouches in the corner, away from the camera lens, wearing nothing
but a necklace. She looks vulnerable. However, in the image Running Naked, used as the publicity shot for her 2011
Hayward Gallery show, Emin seems free and powerful - still turning away from the camera, but waving a Union Jack
flag and adopting a “streaker” pose as she runs down the street. In her photographic piece Monument Valley (Grand
Scale), Emin is photographed as a small figure juxtaposed against the open desert of the American West, whilst she
reads from her own text, ‘Exploration of the Soul’. Emin also uses herself as a subject for her drawings, paintings and
monoprints.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Aging Woman/Artist/Jew
Eve in the Garden at 70
Women and Smoke series
Helen Chadwick
In the Kitchen
Tracey Emin
The Last Thing I Said to You was Don’t Leave Me Here II
Running Naked
Consider:
What is the difference between “naked” and “nude”?
There are many more female nudes in galleries than male nudes - why do you think this is?
Family & Relationships
All four of the artists in the exhibition explore their own personal relationships within their work.
The artist’s relationships with their Mothers are explored and documented in their art works. Louise
Bourgeois famously created a giant sculpture of a spider entitled Maman (French for Mother), following the
early death of her mother, who died when Bourgeois was just 21. Judy Chicago addresses the death of her
Mother in Autobiography of a Year, asking questions in collaged text such as ‘Momma, Why didn’t you tell
me?’ Judy Chicago refers to the agony she feels at not knowing the full extent of her mother’s bad health.
Tracey Emin also explores her relationship with her Mother, and other members of her family as a recurring
theme in her work. The video Conversation with my mum features Emin and mother discussing whether
or not Tracey should have a child. Emin has made public her sadness at never having children, and some of
her work concerning her abortions features her unborn child, whom she has named “Tiny”.
Judy Chicago’s The Birth Project allows the voices of individual Mothers to be documented. The work
consists of 84 exhibition units with textile panels that contain imagery related to aspects of child birth.
Relationships concerning marriage are also key themes explored in the exhibition. In My Accident, Chicago
expresses guilt and shame from her new husband Donald seeing her injured body, a result of being hit by
a truck. The work features photographs of her body, covered in cuts and bruises. A later photograph in the
series shows a contented Judy and Donald in bed. Furthermore the Excision notebook, previously unseen
by the public, documents Judy Chicago’s hysterectomy and the complexity of her relationship with her
husband during another difficult period marked by physical and psychological trauma.
Helen Chadwick’s Piss Flowers reveals a playful, fun side of the relationship between her and her husband,
David Notarius. The misshapen flower sculptures are casts of the cavities made in the snow, by Chadwick
and Notarius’s urine. The work explores the frivolity and pleasure of behaving like naughty children, as well
as the complementary shapes of male and female genitalia. However, the work also explores more serious
issues regarding the symbolic representation of the phallus and alludes to feminist debates surrounding the
representation of the female body and genitalia.
The relationship between artist and cat is also prevalent throughout the exhibition. Merchandise from
Emin’s own shop, ‘Emin International’ is represented by a cat bowl and mug featuring a 2003 mono-print
of Emin’s cat, Docket, inscribed with the words, “I love him, I love him”. Chicago has also produced work
professing her love for her own cats, work which includes Self Portraits as my Six Cats, a coloured pencil
drawing which sees Chicago morph into her cats, and Caterotica, a tongue in cheek approach to her deep
love for her feline friends.
Louise Bourgeois’ etching, Self Portrait shows the artist as a five legged cat, with each leg representing a
member of her family.
Another form of relationships explored through the work of Judy Chicago is the collaboration between
Chicago and others in the creation of her art works. The Birth Project featured the skills of 150 needle
workers who executed Chicago’s designs under her guidance. The Dinner Party was created by a number of
women working under the guidance of Judy Chicago. The works allow viewers to reflect on a collaborative
approach to art making, calling into question relationships between artists and their artworks, ownership
and authorship.
Family & Relationships (continued)
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Self Portrait as my Six Cats
Accident Drawings
Autobiography of a Year
Louise Bourgeois
Self Portrait
Consider:
What do the artists tell us about their maternal relationships?
Is it a solely “female thing” to produce work about mothers or have you seen male artists portraying their
relationships with their mothers also?
Why do you think these artists have chosen to represent themselves as cats?
Physical Trauma
Judy Chicago’s My Accident describe the event in which she was hit by a truck whilst out running, her
subsequent experiences in hospital, and how the accident affected her relationship with husband Donald.
The work features drawings, writing and photographs of her body post-trauma. Here, issues are raised
regarding the emotional effects of physical trauma, as well as resultant effects upon relationships.
A huge part of Tracey Emin’s body of work is based on physical trauma, specifically, her harrowing
experience of abortion. Terribly Wrong, a mono-print from 1997 recalls Emin’s realisation that the abortion
operation had not been carried out effectively. The shaky handwriting is childlike and vulnerable, the
content explicit in its subject.
Judy Chicago’s The Birth Project also explores the physical trauma of childbirth, in particular, the
embroidered piece, Birth Tear/Tear. This glossy red fabric work reveals the physical agony of childbirth,
a subject which rarely, if at all, has been the theme of an art work. Having never experienced childbirth
herself, Chicago developed studies for the piece by witnessing a friend in labour.
There is a distinct parallel between Chicago’s Birth Tear and Emin’s Terribly Wrong. Both show a woman
with her legs splayed, apparently in a considerable pain. The only difference being one woman is giving
birth to a child, while the other is losing one.
Key Examples from the exhibition:
Judy Chicago
Birth Tear/Tear
Tracey Emin
From Memory - My Abortion
Consider:
Why do artists represent and explore experiences of physical trauma in their art works?
What are the similarities and differences between the representations of pain and trauma in this
exhibition?
Ideas for Further Work
Feminism
Inventory and Documentation
What examples of feminist art do we see around us today?
Chicago has explored and detailed the (often undocumented)
achievements of women throughout history in her work The
Dinner Party. Helen Chadwick made lists of the buildings in the
area where she grew up and Tracey Emin documents the area
of Margate, where she too grew up.
What issues surrounding gender identity might be explored
through art?
How might you challenge issues surrounding gender
inequality through your art work?
Autobiography
What would you choose to document, and why?
What is the significance of your list?
How can you represent your list visually?
In Autobiography of a Year, Judy Chicago uses colour to
describe her mood and feelings.
How is colour meaningful to you?
What colours describe your moods and feelings and why?
How could you create an artwork that uses colour to express
your own identities, thoughts and feelings?
Performance
How might you become a piece of art work? How will you
record the performance, if at all? Where is the material in the
artwork? Is it the performance itself, the audience response,
the record of the performance?
How can we express colour through sculpture, through
photography?
Autobiography
In Autobiography of Year, Judy Chicago documents her life
using drawings and text.
How might you create an Autobiography of a Year?
You could collect objects, record journeys, record your
thoughts or dreams, create a blog, create a photographic
record etc etc.
You could try documenting your life for a week. What might
this look like?
Re-working
In Resolutions ‘A Stitch in Time’ Judy Chicago reinterprets
traditional proverbs and sayings, giving them new meaning for
the future.
In Through the Flower, she says: In retrospect, the attraction
of reinterpreting age-old maxims seems consistent with much
of my previous work, which often involved a recasting of
myths, images or art historical themes.
“As usual, I wished to introduce a new twist, in this case
turning round English proverbs - which too often transmit
a narrow, white, male Eurocentric perspective - in order to
present a larger, more inclusive world view.”
In Honour
In 1980, Judy Chicago and Through the Flower invited the
submission of small, triangular quilts honoring women of the
quiltmaker's choice. Since that time, over six hundred of these
colourful creations have travelled with The Dinner Party and
are now part of Through the Flower's archive, catalogued by
Dr. Marilee Schmit Nason.
Which woman would you honour and why?
Perhaps there is more than one?
What is it about this woman that you respect and admire?
How might you reflect this in your work?
Who else in history needs to be honoured and why?
Retrospective
In Retrospective in a Box Judy Chicago documents her key
projects through a series of lithographs. Tracey Emin titled her
first exhibition, ‘My Major Retrospective’ despite it being her
first solo show.
What would your retrospective consist of?
What could you rework and why?
What have been the key moments in your life?
Why is it necessary to rework what you have chosen?
How might you document or celebrate these?