“I had a singular vision from very early on and for a long time I didn’t understand why I kept encountering so much resistance in the word,” legendary feminist artist, educator, and activist Judy Chicago tells Dazed. As a white, cis, middle-class, Jewish-American woman coming of age in the mid-twentieth century, Chicago was not content to allow society to dictate the trajectory of her life. She learned from an early age that the only way forward was to craft her own identity and path – a lesson that served her throughout her trailblazing career.
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To call Chicago “prolific” would be an understatement; her output is monumental, her mediums as varied and all encompassing as womanhood itself, her style and subject matter a one-woman revolution in the history of art. Now, with her first-ever career retrospective opening on August 28 at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, Chicago brings together works from her groundbreaking projects including The Dinner Party (1974-1979), The Birth Project (1980–1985), PowerPlay (1982–1987), Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985–1993), and The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction (2015–2019, which broke through the boundaries proscribed around gender in the contemporary art world.
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Although Chicago is outspoken and fearless when it comes to challenging sexism and misogyny, she is no extrovert; public appearances are simply a necessary part of her work. It is in the studio alone with her work where she draws energy and builds strength, her dedication and determination necessary to play the long game. Her projects are like icebergs: massive in scope, though what the public sees is only the pinnacle of years of research and development.
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Such could be said of The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago (Thames & Hudson), the extraordinary 416-page memoir that she penned while in social isolation. Releasing July 20, Chicago takes us on an intimate tour of her development as an artist, sharing the challenges, struggles, and triumphs to make space for women in the male dominated art world, which established false hierarchies that continue to this day. Refusing to play along, Chicago subverted the system from within, using her work to call out established notions of art, history, and gender, restoring the Divine Feminine to its rightful place in the pantheon.
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