Judy Chicago Case

Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is an artist whose career has been devoted to expressing ideas related to feminism and the role of women throughout history. She pioneered the term "feminist art" during the 1970's and founded the first feminist program in the United States. Judy Chicago is unique because she is one of the first women artists to combine feminism and politics into art. She not only did paintings and sculptures, but has also written books and taught at universities across the county.

Judy Chicago was born Judith Sylvia Cohen on July 20, 1939, in Chicago, Illinois. She first rose to fame and critical acclaim in the 1970s. She was raised on ideals that were very controversial for her time. Her family preached to her that all people should have equal rights especially women. As a child, Chicago started out taking art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. She then attended the University of California, Los Angeles in the early 1960s, earning a bachelor's in art in 1962. In 1964, Chicago finished her master's degree in painting and sculpture at UCLA. (Chicago 10-15)

The love of her life was a man named Jerry Gerowitz. They met, fell in love and made way to New York City. They married in 1961 and two years later, her husband died in a car crash. Her works then began to depict her unresolved grief. She created a line of work called Bigamy Hood, Flight Hood and Birth Hood. All of the work in this collection consisted of male and female sex organs, the heart, wombs and body parts in abstract form. These paintings were sprayed with lacquer on a car hood. She actually went to auto body school to learn how to paint cars. The meaning behind this collection was to express unrelenting grief due to the passing of her husband and her father. Chicago lost her father at the age of six. She used this collection as a way to free herself from the overwhelming emotions that consumed her day to day life. After the death of her husband, Chicago really started to realize what it meant to take art seriously and the struggles she was going to have to face because of that fact and because she was a woman in a man's world. (Chicago 32).

Her most famous work, which is showcased at the Brooklyn Museum, is called "The Dinner Party." It consists of 39 place settings all of which represent famous women from western civilization. Each place setting is decorated with the woman's name and her accomplishments, with a napkin, utensils, a glass, and a plate. Many of the plates have a butterfly, or flowerlike sculpture which is supposed to symbolize the vulva. It took six years and 250,000 dollars to complete. She worked on this project by herself for about three years and for the remaining three she hired volunteers to help her. Over the next three years, over 400 volunteers contributed to the creation of the work. The floor beneath the table is called "Heritage Floor" it has the name of 999 other notable women from ancient civilization to present day. Like most great works of art, this piece did not go without criticism. Some critics claimed it was "disrespectful