Judy Chicago
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Gender Roles in Society Through Judy Chicago's Womanhouse Meagan
Gender Roles in Society through Judy Chicago’s Womanhouse Meagan Howard, Department of Art & Design BFA in Interior Design Womanhouse was an exhibit that was a collaboration of many prominent woman artists’ Abstract: in the 1970s in the California area. This was the Womanhouse was created as an exhibition first female-centered art installation to appear in artwork by Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and the Western world and it shocked many of the the students of the feminist art program at UCLA people that saw it. Womanhouse raised a series of during the second wave feminist art movement. vitally important questions about how women are Created in an abandoned mansion, the treated in society daily and the gender roles that installations were designed to represent how a have been placed on women since the day they are woman’s life changes once she is married. To born. What made Womanhouse so important was create the concept for each installation, the artists that it was made by women and for women. participated in consciousness-raising sessions Chicago was only keeping women in mind when that allowed them to voice their thoughts and making this piece, because this was meant to feelings on a topic. The kitchen represented the celebrate the essence of being a woman. Men were nurturing side of women that were always only allowed to see Womanhouse so they might caretakers and became mothers to their children. understand the misogyny and gender roles that This work focused on essentialism, the celebration women are required to go through every day. -
Miriam Schapiro's Enduring Legacy Is on Full View at the Museum
Artnews 24 April 2018 Beyond the Surface: Miriam Schapiro’s Enduring Legacy Is on Full View at the Museum of Arts and Design By Claire Selvin http://www.artnews.com/2018/04/24/beyond-surface-miriam-schapiros-enduring-legacy-full-view-museum-arts-design/ ! In a 1989 interview, the artist Miriam Schapiro discussed her admiration for “heroines” like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Frida Kahlo. Noting their rather fraught lives, she said “that doesn’t stop you from expressing your point of view in whatever manner you choose to do it.” In the 1970s, Schapiro herself chose to make craft works that she termed “femmages” (a portmanteau of “feminine” and “collage”), which staked a claim for women, both in the art world and outside it, by centering the home as a site of resilience and subversion. And she certainly lived by these principles of resistance, deliberately situating her practice against artistic norms of her day. For years, Schapiro’s work was relegated to relative obscurity compared with that of many of her male contemporaries. But since her death in 2015, and following a retrospective at the National Academy Museum in New York the year after, her art has been reappraised, and is a key inspiration for a number of artists working today. A new exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, “Surface/Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro,” offers an vigorous look at the feminist pioneer’s work, placing it alongside pieces by nine contemporary artists and a selection of personal objects from the Schapiro estate. -
Dear Sister Artist: Activating Feminist Art Letters and Ephemera in the Archive
Article Dear Sister Artist: Activating Feminist Art Letters and Ephemera in the Archive Kathy Carbone ABSTRACT The 1970s Feminist Art movement continues to serve as fertile ground for contemporary feminist inquiry, knowledge sharing, and art practice. The CalArts Feminist Art Program (1971–1975) played an influential role in this movement and today, traces of the Feminist Art Program reside in the CalArts Institute Archives’ Feminist Art Materials Collection. Through a series of short interrelated archives stories, this paper explores some of the ways in which women responded to and engaged the Collection, especially a series of letters, for feminist projects at CalArts and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, University of London over the period of one year (2017–2018). The paper contemplates the archive as a conduit and locus for current day feminist identifications, meaning- making, exchange, and resistance and argues that activating and sharing—caring for—the archive’s feminist art histories is a crucial thing to be done: it is feminism-in-action that not only keeps this work on the table but it can also give strength and definition to being a feminist and an artist. Carbone, Kathy. “Dear Sister Artist,” in “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice,” eds. Elvia Arroyo- Ramirez, Jasmine Jones, Shannon O’Neill, and Holly Smith. Special issue, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3. ISSN: 2572-1364 INTRODUCTION The 1970s Feminist Art movement continues to serve as fertile ground for contemporary feminist inquiry, knowledge sharing, and art practice. The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program, which ran from 1971 through 1975, played an influential role in this movement and today, traces and remains of this pioneering program reside in the CalArts Institute Archives’ Feminist Art Materials Collection (henceforth the “Collection”). -
TITLE: Birth Project: the Crowning Q 5 ARTIST: Judy Chicago DATE
TITLE: Birth Project: The Crowning Q 5 ARTIST: Judy Chicago DATE: 1982 SIZE: 56 1/2” x 89” MEDIUM: reverse appliqué and quilting over drawing on fabric ACCESSION #: 97.4 Additional works in the collection by the artist? Yes X No ___ ARTIST’S STATEMENT “Women’s deeds and work need to be a part of permanent history.” Judy Chicago ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY Judy Chicago is well known for the convention-shattering nature of her work in such monumental, collaborative pro- jects as The Dinner Party, Birth Project, Holocaust Project and Resolutions: A Stitch in Time. As an artist, author, feminist, educator and intellectual whose career now spans more than four decades, she has been a leader and model for an artist’s right to express freely his or her core identity, for a definition of fine art that encompasses craft tech- niques, and for the necessity of an art that seeks to effect social change. Chicago has explored an unusually wide range of media over the course of her career: painting, drawing, printmaking, china-painting, ceramics, tapestry, needlework, and most recently glass. Her fluency with diverse media, her commitment to creating content-based art in the service of social change and her interest in collaboration have led to her being included in the art historical canon—most re- cently in Janson’s Basic History of Western Art. CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION For Chicago, The Birth Project reveals “a primordial female self hidden among the recesses of my soul…. The birth- ing woman, as in The Crowning, is a part of the dawn of creation.” Chicago states, “Traditionally, men make art and women have babies,” so “the Birth Project is an act of solidarity, both with those women who had to choose, and with those who refused to choose.” MEDIA DESCRIPTION The media used in the Birth Project as a whole include fabrics of cotton and silk, needlepoint yarns, threads, and the associated mesh canvases, paint, quilted panels, appliqué, and various other materials usually thought of as women's craft materials, not the materials of “high” art. -
Biography and CV BIOGRAPHY Born July 20, 1939 – Chicago, IL Judy Chicago Is an Artist, Author, Feminist, Educator, and Intelle
Biography and CV BIOGRAPHY Born July 20, 1939 – Chicago, IL Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, educator, and intellectual whose career now spans five decades. Her influence both within and beyond the art community is attested to by her inclusion in hundreds of publications throughout the world. Her art has been frequently exhibited in the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, a number of the books she has authored have been published in foreign editions, bringing her art and philosophy to readers worldwide. 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 approach that she has continued to develop over the years. 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 has been the subject of countless articles and art history texts and is included in innumerable publications in diverse fields. The impact of The Dinner Party was examined in the 1996 exhibition, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History. Curated by Dr. Amelia Jones at the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, this show was accompanied by an extensive catalog published by the University of California Press. -
THE MARY H. DANA WOMEN ARTISTS SERIES: from Idea to Institution
4 THE JOURNAL OF THE THE MARY H. DANA WOMEN ARTISTS SERIES: From Idea to Institution BY BERYL K. SMITH Ms. Smith is Librarian at the Rutgers University Art Library During the 1960s, women began to identify and admit that social, political, and cultural inequities existed, and to seek redress. In 1966, a structural solidarity took shape with the founding of NOW (National Organization for Women). Women artists, sympathetic to the aims of this movement, recog- nized the need for a coalition with a more specific direction, and, at the height of the women's movement, several groups were formed that uniquely focused on issues of concern to women artists. In 1969 W.A.R. (Women Artists in Revolution) grew out of the Art Worker's Coalition, an anti- establishment group. In 1970 the Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee was formed, initially to increase the representation of women in the Whitney Museum annuals but later a more broad-based purpose of political and legal action and a program of regular discussions was adopted. Across the country, women artists were organizing in consciousness-raising sessions, joining hands in support groups, and picketing and protesting for the relief of injustices that they felt were rampant in the male-dominated art world. In January 1971, Linda Nochlin answered the question she posed in her now famous and widely cited article, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Nochlin maintained that the exclusion of women from social and cultural institutions was the root cause that created a kind of cultural malnourishment of women.1 In June 1971, a new unity led the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists to threaten to sue the Los Angeles County Museum for discrimination.2 That same year, at Cal Arts (California In- stitute of the Arts) Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro developed the first women's art program in the nation.3 These bicoastal activities illustrate merely the high points of the women's art movement, forming an historical framework and providing the emotional climate for the beginning of the Women Artists Series at Douglass College. -
“My Personal Is Not Political?” a Dialogue on Art, Feminism and Pedagogy
Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies Vol. 5, No. 2, July 2009 “My Personal Is Not Political?” A Dialogue on Art, Feminism and Pedagogy Irina Aristarkhova and Faith Wilding This is a dialogue between two scholars who discuss art, feminism, and pedagogy. While Irina Aristarkhova proposes “active distancing” and “strategic withdrawal of personal politics” as two performative strategies to deal with various stereotypes of women's art among students, Faith Wilding responds with an overview of art school’s curricular within a wider context of Feminist Art Movement and the radical questioning of art and pedagogy that the movement represents Using a concrete situation of teaching a women’s art class within an art school environment, this dialogue between Faith Wilding and Irina Aristakhova analyzes the challenges that such teaching represents within a wider cultural and historical context of women, art, and feminist performance pedagogy. Faith Wilding has been a prominent figure in the feminist art movement from the early 1970s, as a member of the California Arts Institute’s Feminist Art Program, Womanhouse, and in the recent decade, a member of the SubRosa, a cyberfeminist art collective. Irina Aristarkhova, is coming from a different history to this conversation: generationally, politically and theoretically, she faces her position as being an outsider to these mostly North American and, to a lesser extent, Western European developments. The authors see their on-going dialogue of different experiences and ideas within feminism(s) as an opportunity to share strategies and knowledges towards a common goal of sustaining heterogeneity in a pedagogical setting. First, this conversation focuses on the performance of feminist pedagogy in relation to women’s art. -
WOMANHOUSE Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity
WOMANHOUSE Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity Susana Solís-Zara1 University of Sevilha 1. Introduction This text examines the issue of art and intimacy, and its strong connection with the concept of identity: and especially representations of female identity in the collaborative feminist art installation, perfor- mance space, exhibition and pedagogical project Womanhouse (Janu- art exhibition, coinciding with the foundation of feminist art criticism at the beginning of the seventies in the United States . The Project Womanhouse was a collaborative project that deals with women’s gender experiences within the context of a real house 1. Susana Solís-Zara https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9932-9452 Universidad de Sevilla Departamento de Educación Artística, Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación Calle Pirotecnia s/n. CP. 41013 (Sevilla), Spain. [email protected] 298 Susana Solís-Zara setting in an urban neighbourhood in Los Angeles (http://www.wom- anhouse.net/). It presented and exhibited feminist artistic proposals concerning subjective identity, gender and intimacy like the ones found in domestic spaces. It includes perspectives such as the home as a space for both intimacy and identity, the body-house-home relationship, as- pects of maternity and the dichotomy between the private and the pub- lic, all of which continue to be narratives in contemporary women’s art. The main object of this essay is therefore to analyse the Woman- house project, as well as to examine some of its most prominent art- works and how intimacy was used as a means of expression, bringing - tion. It is precisely women who developed the notion of intimacy, as their role in history has been one of marginality and invisibility, being - WOMANHOUSE: Intimacy, Identity and Domesticity 299 2. -
SUZANNE LACY, FEMINISM and QUILTING by JACQUELINE
EVER PRESENT, NEVER PRESENTED: SUZANNE LACY, FEMINISM AND QUILTING by JACQUELINE WITKOWSKI B.A. (Hons), DePaul University, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Art History) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) September 2014 © Jacqueline Witkowski, 2014 Abstract Seated at tables of four, over four hundred women aged 55-95 years old unfold tablecloths of yellow, red, and black. With their choreographed and synchronized gesturing hands, they mimic traditional Euro-American quilt patterns. This performance, titled The Crystal Quilt, was produced by Los Angeles-based artist Suzanne Lacy in 1987 as the culminating work to the two- year long, statewide initiative Whisper Minnesota (1985-1987). There is a continued resonance of the quilt in Lacy’s oeuvre, as The Crystal Quilt was the third project to reference quilts and quilt making. The first project, Evalina and I: Crimes, Quilts, Art (1975-78), and a smaller commemorative project (1980), employed tactile quilting projects instead of the conceptual quilt arrangement that Lacy would incorporate in 1987. The formal and historical attributes of this textile practice have been largely ignored in contemporary scholarship on the artist, thus raising the question of how this very specific medium encouraged her artistic and activist agenda. The primary focus of this thesis is an exploration of how Lacy mediates these two approaches, one of feminism and the other inspired by conceptual artist Allan Kaprow, through the medium of the quilt. Neither Lacy’s quilt works nor the use of craft during the second wave feminist movement has been sufficiently analyzed within craft scholarship. -
Judy Chicago's the Dinner Party and the Problem of Female Identity
Stilling 1 Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party and the Problem of Female Identity Rosalyn Stilling Nicholls State University In the 1970s, the feminist movement rocked the social scene finding prominence in many disciplines of the humanities including the art world. Judy Chicago was inspired by her feminist convictions to create her infamous sculpture The Dinner Party (1974-79), which has become an icon of feminist art. Her sculpture features a triangular configuration of tables with thirty-nine plates for various historical women decorated with obviously vaginal abstracts called “butterflies”. (Kuby 129). Although Judy Chicago’s intent was to bring attention to women forgotten from history books, a noble cause, the execution of her piece left viewers and critics with polarizing views, some praising her genius and others deriding her work. These differing reactions call into question feminism as a methodology of art. Lolette Kuby’s review of The Dinner Party called “The Hoodwinking of the Women’s Movement: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party” from 1981 reveals the problems of Chicago’s piece from a feminist perspective. Most striking and poignant was Kuby’s observation that Chicago’s vaginal imagery did more to objectify than glorify women. Kuby’s review calls into question the success of feminism as a methodology of art because of the extreme subjectivity and controversial sexual imagery used by the artist. Lolette Kuby prefaces her article explaining that she was prepared to love the sculpture, even the potentially shocking vaginal imagery, due to her feminist background Chénier, Summer 2015 Stilling 2 and support of the growth of feminism. -
California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Materials Collection
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2199r38x No online items Guide prepared by Abigail Dixon for History Associates Incorporated California Institute of the Arts California Institute of the Arts Archive California Institute of the Arts 24700 McBean Parkway Valencia, California 91355-2397 Phone: (661) 253-7882 Fax: (661) 254-4561 Email: [email protected] URL: http://calarts.edu/library/collections/archive 2008 CalArts-003 1 Administrative Summary Creator: California Institute of the Arts Title: California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Materials Collection Dates: 1971-2007 Date (bulk): (bulk 1972-1977) Quantity: 2.3 cubic feet Repository: California Institute of the Arts. Library. Valencia, California 91355-2397 Abstract: The California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Materials Collection contains articles, brochures, correspondence, exhibition catalogs, invoices, newsletters, and other materials documenting the influence of feminism on the training of artists and the making of art. The collection covers the years 1971 to 2007 with the bulk of the material ranging from 1972 to 1977. California Institute of the Arts Archive Identification: CalArts-003 Language of Material: English Restrictions on Access This collection is open for research with permission from California Institute of the Arts Archive staff. Publication Rights Property rights and literary rights reside with California Institute of the Arts. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact California Institute of the Arts Archive staff. Related Material Located in the California Institute of the Arts Archive Archives Unprocessed collections with related material are located in the CalArts Library Archives. Preferred Citation California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Materials Collection. -
Oral History Interview with Suzanne Lacy, 1990 Mar. 16-Sept. 27
Oral history interview with Suzanne Lacy, 1990 Mar. 16-Sept. 27 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Suzanne Lacy on March 16, 1990. The interview took place in Berkeley, California, and was conducted by Moira Roth for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview has been extensively edited for clarification by the artist, resulting in a document that departs significantly from the tape recording, but that results in a far more usable document than the original transcript. —Ed. Interview [ Tape 1, side A (30-minute tape sides)] MOIRA ROTH: March 16, 1990, Suzanne Lacy, interviewed by Moira Roth, Berkeley, California, for the Archives of American Art. Could we begin with your birth in Fresno? SUZANNE LACY: We could, except I wasn’t born in Fresno. [laughs] I was born in Wasco, California. Wasco is a farming community near Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley. There were about six thousand people in town. I was born in 1945 at the close of the war. My father [Larry Lacy—SL], who was in the military, came home about nine months after I was born. My brother was born two years after, and then fifteen years later I had a sister— one of those “accidental” midlife births.