| Essay excerpts
© by Beatriz Badikian-Gartler |
| Judy Chicago was born Judy Cohen in the city she
later adopted as her namesake. Her parents were involved in leftist politics, their house being the center for political activity in the neighborhood. As a consequence Judy Chicago grew up in a home filled with people of all races and a keen appreciation for human values, regardless of color, religious affiliation, or gender. Her father was a union organizer, and her mother worked outside the home, which gave Chicago a sense that she could be and do what she wanted. Two older female cousins, both in college and active intellectually, also provided psoitive role models for her. Judy Chicago played a pioneering role in the feminist art movement of the 1970s, founding the nation's first feminist art education program in Fresno, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, whose goal was to challenge the limitations placed on women artists. The students develoepd traditionally "masculine" skills such as negotiating business transactions and contstructing their own studio space. Executed through the labor-intensive, traditionally feminine crafts of embroidery and china painting, "The Dinner Party" represents a monumental homage to women throughout history. It opened in 1979 in San Francisco at the Museum of Modern Art and drew record-breaking crowds of mostly female viewers. It also generated intense controversy among art critics and historians. With a team of 400 women and men, Chicago created thirty-nine handmade porcelain plates representing dinner guests, women ranging from prehistoric goddesses to Georgia O'Keefe. Each plate rested on a hand-embroidered runner executed in the needlework style of the honored guest's historical period." |