Judy Chicago
noffarJudy chicago
Judy Chicago (born 1939) is an American feminist artist and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces which examine the role of women in history and culture.
personal life
Judy Chicago was born Judith Sylvia Cohen in 1939, to Arthur and May Cohen, in Chicago, Illinois. Her father came from a twenty-three generation lineage of rabbis, including the Vilna Gaon. Unlike his family predecessors, he would become a labor organizer and a Marxist. Arthur's active participation in the American Communist Party, liberal views towards women and support of worker's rights, strongly influenced Chicago's way of thinking and belief system. He died in 1953.
While at UCLA she became politically active. In June 1959, she met and fell in love with Jerry Gerowitz.
MASTER
Piece
Personal life
Chicago married Gerowitz in 1961. He died in a car crash in 1963, devastating Chicago and causing her to suffer from an identity crisis until later that decade.
As Chicago made a name for herself as an artist, and came to know herself as a woman, she no longer felt connected to her last name, Cohen. This was due to the late grief of the death of her father and the lost connection to her name through marriage, Judith Gerowitz, after her husband's death. She decided she wanted to change her last name to something independent of being connected to a man by marriage or heritage. During this time, she married sculptor Lloyd Hamrol, in 1965. (They divorced in 1979.) Gallery owner Rolf Nelson nicknamed her "Judy Chicago" because of her strong personality and thick Chicago accent. She decided this would be her new name, and sought to change it legally.
The dinner party
Chicago's masterpiece, The Dinner Party, now in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum.It took her five years and cost about $250,000 to complete. First, Chicago conceived the project: a large triangle, which measures 15-meters by 13-meters by 11-meters, consisting of 39 place settings.
The dinner party
Each place setting commemorates a historical or mythical female figure, such as artists, goddesses, activists and martyrs. The project came into fruition with the assistance of over 400 people, mainly women, who volunteered to assist in needlework, creating sculptures and other aspects of the process.
through the flower
In 1978, Chicago founded Through the Flower, a non-profit feminist art organization. The organization seeks to educate the public about the importance of art and how it can be used as a tool to emphasize women's achievements. The organization also maintained The Dinner Party Curriculum, which serves as a "living curriculum" for education about feminist art ideas and pedagogy. The online aspect of the curriculum was donated to Penn State University in 2011.
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