Chicago, Judy

orig. Judy Cohen

born July 20, 1939, Chicago, Ill., U.S.

U.S. multimedia artist.

She studied at UCLA, and in 1970 she adopted the name of her hometown. Motivated by perceived discrimination in the art world and alienation from canonical art traditions, she developed "environments" featuring feminine imagery. Her most notable work, The Dinner Party (1974–79), is a triangular table with place settings for 39 important women, each represented by personalized ceramic plates and table runners embellished with embroidery styles typical of their eras. This installation established her reputation as a leader in feminist art. In 1973 she cofounded the Feminist Studio Workshop and Woman's Building in Los Angeles.

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▪ American artist

original name  Judith Sylvia Cohen 

born July 20, 1939, Chicago, Ill., U.S.

      American feminist artist whose complex and focused installations created some of the visual context of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s and beyond. Reared in Chicago, Cohen attended the University of California, Los Angeles (B.A., 1962). Her change of name in the 1960s served both as a gesture to her birthplace and eventually to indicate her burgeoning interest in the cultural implications of patriarchal practices. In 1973 she helped found Womanhouse, a feminist art gallery in Los Angeles. Her early professional exhibitions included sculptures and abstract paintings, but it was an installation, The Dinner Party (1974–79), that made her reputation. It became an instant touchstone for the growing feminist movement in the United States.

      A large mixed-media installation composed of ceramics, embroidery, weaving, and text, The Dinner Party presents a large triangular banquet table placed on 999 handmade tiles that name significant women. The table displays elaborate, unique place settings for 39 notable women, including Pocahontas, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Georgia O'Keeffe (O'Keeffe, Georgia). Working collaboratively with dozens of assistants and volunteers, Chicago intended to illustrate the often overlooked breadth of women's history and to privilege mediums, such as needlework and pottery, long associated with women and undervalued in the art world.

      First shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979, the installation was exhibited to great acclaim and considerable controversy throughout the United States and abroad. After many years out of public view, The Dinner Party was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2002. Chicago continued to use large mixed-media installations and the life experiences of many women in The Birth Project (1980–85), and in The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985–93) she examined the Holocaust and her own Jewish identity. Two volumes of autobiography are Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (1975) and Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist (1996). In addition to a number of books chronicling her various projects, she wrote Kitty City: A Feline Book of Hours (2005).

Additional Reading

Lucy R. Lippard, Edward Lucie-Smith, and Viki D. Thompson Wylder, Judy Chicago, ed. by Elizabeth A. Sackler (2002); Gail Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist (2007).

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