Judy Chicago: Herstory

Here's how Judy Chicago feels about the patriarchy.

"Grand Bronze Head with Golden Tongue" (2013) 

Politics, not lifestyle, dominates her first-wave feminism.  Nice Jewish girl (but bad speller) announced her name change in the 1970 pages of Artforum, declaring:

Judy Gerowitz hereby devests herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance and freely chooses her own name:  Judy Chicago.

I'd never heard of her until I met Audrey, who clued me in to "The Dinner Party" series, a work that catapulted her to fame and now commands its own gallery at the Brooklyn Museum.

The "Dinner Party" Plates Line Drawings (1977-78)

Elizabeth I Plate Line Drawing (1978)

I had the same reaction to Judy Chicago: Herstory as I did to seeing Louise Bourgeois exhibited at the Tate Modern:  she would be a lot more famous if she were a man.  

"Queen Victoria," Great Ladies series (1973) 

Would you believe that You Tube restricted video of this incredibly evocative performance piece to 18+ viewers?  Damn the algorithm--it's as oppressive as the patriarchy!

"Women and Smoke," (still) by Judy Chicago (1971-72/2017)

Needlepoint renderings of her artistic vision demonstrate Chicago's collaborative spirit with other women, all of whom are credited for their sewing skills

"A Chicken In Every Pot," Resolutions: A Stitch In Time series (2000)

A series of large, frightening paintings graphically convey the violence of men towards women.

"Crippled by the Need to Control/Blind Individuality"

Life begins here.

"Birth" (1980s)

Chicago chillingly reckons with the world's apathetic reaction to the Holocaust in several works.

"Wall of Indifference" (1989) 

I can't decide if this title is a pun or not, but I hear you girl:  death after a life well-lived does not have to be dreaded.

"Mortality Relief" (2018)

The slow, incremental expiration of planet Earth is another matter altogether.

"Stranded" (detail, 2016), Extinction Suite 

"A City of Ladies"--curated by Chicago herself--occupies an entire floor.  Festooned with feminist banners as well as some curvy, fertility goddess sculpture, it reflects an artist's unique sensibility, one imbued as much with sisterhood as taste.

"Portrait of Myself" by Florine Stettheimer (1923)

"The Mothers" by Käthe Kollwitz (1923)

"Celestial Pablum" by Remedios Varo (1958)

"Votive Picture (Strangling Angel)" by Méret Oppenheim (1931)

"Wounded Deer" by Frida Kahlo (1946)

Matzoh Cover (detail) by Anni Albers (1959)

Imagine a time when women demanding the right to vote could make men so nervous that they tailed you!

Surveillance Photo of Militant Suffragettes (1914)

Poem Fragments by Emily Dickinson