THE FUTURE IS FEMALE3: JUDY CHICAGO / ARTIST AND TROUBLEMAKER

The Dinner Party

Judy Cohen (b. Chicago 1939) began
exhbiting under the name Judy
Gerowitz but,in 1971,
changed her name to Judy Chicago,
a nickname given to her by an art dealer
because of her distintive accent.  Picture
above was used in an advert in the
influential magazine ArtForum for
her 1971 solo exhibtion at the Jack Glenn
Gallery

JUDY CHICAGO is back on the scene in a big way. One of the most controversial pioneers of feminism in art in America, her extraordinary life and career is being celebrated in three exhibitions and her early career and her struggles as a woman artist are being turned into an Amazon tv series directed by Jill Soloway, based on Judy's autobiography 'Through the Flower'.




She told The Art Newspaper that the writer Anais Nin was her mentor and that Nin "used to call me her radical daughter. That's kind of how I feel about Jill."


Her first solo show in San Francisco since 1979, is 'Judy Chicago's Pussies,'  a title that references both her early vaginal art but also her series of watercolours of her seven cats.

Two others concentrate on her most famous work 'The Dinner Party'. Produced in the 1970s, this extraordinary installation piece is now permanently housed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York Their exhibition 'Roots of the Dinner Party: History In The Making' explores its creation (until March 4th). 'Inside the Dinner Party Studio' an exhibit at the National Museum of Women In Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC  is open until January 5th.

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago is an icon of feminist art, which represents 1,038 women in history—39 women are represented by place settings and another 999 names  of mythical and historical women of achievement are inscribed in the Heritage Floor on which the table rests. This monumental work of art is comprised of a triangular table divided by three wings, each 48 feet long. The open triangle is a symbol of equality.

Judy Chicago is an extremely prolific artist, sculptor and creater of installations who also did pioneering work as an educator and organiser, co-founding the Feminist Art Program at Cal State Fresno as well as 'Womanhouse', an installation and performance space. Her work encompasses a huge range of techniques, skills and materials. The book 'Judy Chicago: An American Vision' by Edward Lucie-Smith [Watson-Guptil. 2000] is a wow - a great introduction to her work, which is truly impressive. [Amused to discover it was conceived, designed and produced by Ivy Press in Lewes where I live!]

 FINE OUT MUCH MORE ON HER WEBSITE: www.judychicago.com/

One-third scale clay maquette for Find It In Your Heart. 1999

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Happily, by chance, I discovered that Judy Chicago had created a book on Frida Kahlo, coauthored with art historian Frances Borzello, in which the two converse over a selection of Kahlo's work.

In an interview by Kerensa Cadenas in Ms magazine ['Judy Chicago on Frida Kahlo, Feminism and Women’s Art' / 30th Nov.2010]

Why do you think Kahlo became so iconic within the feminist movement?

I think there have been successive waves of interest. The first were among women: Her story appealed to women, her images appealed to women. In the second wave, in the Chicano and Hispanic movements, her interest and valorization of Mexican culture appealed to people who were claiming their heritage, just like women were claiming our heritage. Then the third wave was among gay and lesbians because of her shifting gender [roles] and open sexuality. That all coalesced, of course, when … the film came out, and she was propelled into the stratosphere.

What drew you to this project?

I was interested in trying to do something for her that I don’t think is done enough for women artists, myself included, which is looking at our overall body of work. I was interested in trying to see if we could approach Kahlo’s work without constant reference to her biography, which I found annoying. I find a lot of the imagery very, very powerful. Those are the things I was most focused on: looking at the imagery, understanding her work in a larger context and creating a new context in which to see her work.

Do you see an improvement in the representation of women artists today?

'Women can be themselves and do their work as women, which was not possible when I was young. That’s true of artists of color also, and gay and lesbian artists. That is to be celebrated...Sadly, the institutional change has lagged very far behind... I would say what we see in the art institutions is a reflection of political [power]...[in the art world]–there are a lot more women showing, but institutionally there has been very little change over 40 years of activism. If you go to most major art institutions you still see the same white, male Eurocentric narrative. If you look at the history books, history is still taught primarily from a very particular perspective and it’s a very male perspective. What men did was important and there are a few women thrown in. That’s not enough.'

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE2: WOMEN ARTISTS and SURREALISTS / WHITNEY CHADWICK / FRIDA KAHLO

THE GENERALIST is fascinated with the history of art and has accumulated a substantial library on the subject. The official version of art history has always seemed flawed and male dominated. Women artists have consistently been overlooked, underplayed or deliberately ignored.
Here is a round-up of books that address this issue, provide an introduction to 50 women artists you should know and the Hidden work of Frida Kahlo.

The "all male" Surrealists

Whitney Chadwick is one of the most pre-eminent figures in this field with numerous important titles to her credit. 'Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement' was first published in 1985 and I bought it second-hand in the late 80s/early 90s. [A new edition with Frida Kahlo on the cover came out in 1991] As a fan of the Surrealists I was mainly unaware the role women artists had taken in the movement until reading this book. It opened my eyes to the bigger picture and lead me to Chadwick's seminal work 'Women, Art and Society'. The revised 2nd edition I have has a Paulo Rego painting on the cover. The book has now reached a 5th Edition (pub. 2012) with a suitably modern cover. Both books are published by Thames & Hudson. Read this and your views on the history of art will be changed forever.

Newly republished with a new cover is '50 Women Artists You Should Know' by Christiane Weidemann, Petra Larass and Melanie Klier [Prestel.2017]. This is a good introductory book which simply and effectively profiles many of the the usual suspects - Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe, Camille Claudel, Berthe Morisot for example - but also introduces some remarkable unfamiliar names. It stretches from Catharina van Hemessen [1528-1587], the first Flemish woman painter who is known today (her work represented by a self-portrait when she was 20) to a range of modern artists including performance artist Marina Abramovic, Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin and lesser known figures like Iranian photographer Shirin Neshat and video artist Pipilotti Rist. There is beautiful and fascinating work shown and the accompanying essays whet the appetite for learning more. 

Three Sisters Playing Chess by Sofonisba Anguissola. 1555

Barbara Kruger. 1989

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In a Previous Post: THE FUTURE IS FEMALE I reviewed a great graphic novel on Kahlo which led me to view the brilliant movie 'Frida' [2002] directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera.


During her lifetime, Frida Kahlo's work was rarely exhibited. She had her first and only one-woman show in 1953, the year before she died. Her home La Casa Azul (the Blue House) in Mexico City  was opened as a museum in July 1958. For many years her work was neglected.

The first modern  recognition came in 1978 with exhibitions in Mexico and Chicago and interest in her work and life was renewed due to the feminist movement for whom she has become an icon. In 1982 an exhibition of her work alongside photos by Tina Modotti was shown in London, several European countries and New York. In 1983, an acclaimed biography by Hayden Herrera drew further public interest. Since the film's release in 2002, that interest has escalated and has been dubbed "Fridamania". Kahlo is now one of the best-known women artists in the world.


All of which makes the publication of this superb new book  'Hidden Frida Kahlo' by Helga Preignitz-Poda [Prestel. 2017] of great interest. The author has spent 40 years absorbed with Kahlo's work and her catalogue raisonné was published in 1988. It contained 270 items of which around 145 were small format oil paintings.

The exhibitions that have been staged worldwide, which have each generally attracted some 300,000 visitors, are based entirely on only two large collections in Mexico.

Fortunately almost all Kahlo's work was photographed by Lola Alvarez  Bravo, a close friend responsible for also organising her one-woman show. Other work was photographed by Kahlo's father.

This books, says the author, is about the works that are known to exist but cannot be borrowed and shown because they are lost, are destroyed, or are in collections that are inaccessible or with collectors who refuse to lend them.The Frida Kahlo museum were unable to grant permission to print even works from its holdings that have been published elsewhere.

Ocal Self-Portrait c.1938, Private collection

The author's purpose is 'to increase the public's access to works by Frida Kahlo that have never been exhibited or can only be seen in private.' So here are 125 works that are non-loanable: 26 are lost oil paintings and roughly 50 are in inaccessible collections. Eighteen drawings have been lost and at least fifteen are in inaccessible collections. So for the first time these works can be seen and discussed to add new facets to the public perception of this important artist. The author points out that these missing works are being copied by forgers. Forgeries, she says, are already an 'unbelieveable nuisance' with new ones appearing daily.

Helen Preignitz-Poda is a world authority and the intensity of her research is stimulating. She explains that Frida's paintings are packed with symbols, metaphors and rebuses that need to be decoded if we are to understand the true meaning she was bringing to the subject. The author writes in a highly readable and incredibly well-informed style. She brings the images to life, introduces the reader to the numerous individuals and subjects that Kahlo chose to paint.

Her frustration at not being able to examine many of these paintings "in the flesh" so to speak is palpable, as photos or reproductions of the works can be misleading. She challenges many of the existing theories with her superbly detailed knowledge. She has a lot to say about Kahlo's poems. Kahlo read widely and her work draws inspiration from multiple sources including James Joyce's 'Ulysses'and Homer's 'Odysseus'. She was steeped in the magical realism of Mexican culture and pre-Hispanic symbolism. Everything in her pictures means something if you understand the key. Above all, the paintings were about herself. She said: 'I paint my own reality'. The book ends with this powerful conclusion:

Frida Kahlo - whose work always revolved around herself - is perhaps so popular today, as queen of the selfie, because her constant self-reflection and loneliness represent the fundamental issues of our time, In the attempt to overcome overcome loneliness, in search of passion and love, and in the longing for closeness, the constantly questioning gaze directed towards the viewer is the driving force of her work. To this end she deployed a wealth of symbols and metaphors to articulate her desires. Just as selfies today - no matter which background they are taken against - generally document only the loneliness of the photographer. Kahlo's art is a deeply personal one, which in the triumph over pain touches universal human feelings. In this, her many self portraits are only the most striking examples of a widespread longing to be known understood and remembered.

This large-format book is beautifully produced on fine paper with strong reproductions. Each chapter opens with a striking full-page black and white photos that are themselves works of art.

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For Kahlo completists, another important title for the library is 'The Diary of Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait [Bloomsbury /1995] This facsimile is wonderful, full of striking drawings, writings and paintings, which are explained in an appendix at the back by Sarah M. Lowe. Apart from the diary itself, the other valuable part of the book is a marvelous essay by the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes who saw her only once at a concert in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, when her entrance drew all eyes. It's a poetic and deeply understood vision of an extraordinary artist.

 See also Previous Post: THE FUTURE IS FEMALE: FRIDA KAHLO / RADICAL WOMEN /  LATIN AMERICAN ART

THE FUTURE IS FEMALE: FRIDA KAHLO / RADICAL WOMEN: LATIN AMERICAN ART 1960-1985

VANNA VINCI / Source: Zero

Like many women artists of her time, Frida Kahlo did not consider herself a feminist. Yet in the 60+ years since her death her extraordinary life and remarkable artworks, have earnt her iconic status amongst the sisterhood worldwide.

Her personal image and the images she created have permeated global consciousness. Plays and feature films have been produced about her and a library of biographies and academic works have examined her life and ouevre in complex detail.

This wonderful new graphic biography by Vanna Vinci is a marvellous new addition to the literature. It not only chronicles her life but also finds ways to reach into Kahlo's inner self. These two double-page spreads document the tragic accident that marked a huge rupture in her life, crippling her body and setting the scene for a lifetime of pain.

As these pages show, she is in conversation with death from then on.Vinci pulls no punches. The blood, the sex, the murder, the infidelities are all vividly displayed. Kahlo's remarkable resilience, the power of her spirit are captured in powerful vignettes. The drawings and colouration are beautiful. A triumph. [Published by Prestel]

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By chance or design, Prestel have published another title - 'Radical Women: Latin American Art: 1960-1985' - which follows on neatly from Frida Kahlo.

A ground-breaking survey of Latin American women artists and Latina and Chicano women artists in the USA, it's a mammoth book linked to a major exhibition that took some seven years to research and stage.

Claiming to be the first genealogy of radical and feminist art in the region, it covers the work of 120 women artists and collectives from 15 countries. Sixteen of the featured artists died during the lengthy reaserch and production process.

The majority of this work has been marginalised and hidden. Most of the artists at the time were unaware of each others' works. Less than 20 women artists from the region are widely recognised in the gallery system and several of those are wives of male artists. In the past Kahlo's work was considered "unhealthy" and her craziness "transmissible".

 [Left] Maris Bustamante: 'The Penis as a work instrument' 1982.

One of the two curators Cecilia Fajardo-Hill (the other being Andrea Giunta) writes: 

'The reality is that many more women artists participated in the shaping of twentieth century art than have been accounted for. In Latin America this has been partly because of sexism and because the system, both on the continent and internationally, judges the quality of  artists' work on the basis of visibility and success,which are often denied to women.'

[Left] Sonia Gutiérrez 'We'll Keep Saying Homeland' 1972.

In the introductory essay, the curators say that most of the work they're presenting is:

  'deeply bound to the political situation in much of the continent at the time, particularly in countries ruled by the authoritarian governments that aimed to control behaviour, thought and bodies...The lives and work of these artists are emeshed in the experiences of dictatorship, imprisonment, exile, torture, violence, censorship and repression.'

Apart from Mexico (since the late 1970s), no other country in the region had a organised feminist art movement. The curators claim their purpose is to write a new chapter in art history.

A word on the book's structure. Front and back are essays - general comments before, at the back a series of country by country papers by various scholars, with an appendix of detailed artists biographies.

In-between is a substantial gallery of Plates showing the artists' work, organised in alphabetical order. The exhibition itself is organised around themes: The Self Portrait / Body Language / Mapping the Body / Resistance and Fear / The Power of Words / Social Places / The Erotic.

[Above] Ana Mendieta. Facial Hair Transplants. 1972

During the 25-year period the book focuses on, the depiction of the female body became the battlefield in these women's commitment  to revolutionary struccle and resistance to the region's dictatorships. In Latin America the relationship between the body and violence was central. Women were being held in detention illegally, or exiled. Their children were stolen. There were specific methods of torture on women's bodies.

In response, these brave artists subverted the portrait, depicted the faces of the "disappeared", made artworks with tortured bodies, works using blood, semen, urine and excrement, portrayed eroticism, sexuality and revolutionary kisses between gays and lesbians.

One of the book's essays is a conversation between three women, practitioners and/or academics, which concludes with a statement that underlines the importance of bringing this work to the attention of the world:

'In the current context of violence against women in Latin America, where, according to the Pan American Health Organization, sexual violence—including human trafficking, domestic and sexual abuse, and femicide—are an everyday reality, we believe that for a work of art to be called feminist it must do more than address the issues that afflict women in patriarchal Latin American societies. Artists must go further and embrace feminist politics. 

'The act of calling oneself a feminist artist or artivist, as those who came before us did, is extremely significant in today's world, which would like to see us dead or disappeared, enslaved or submissive. The legacies of artists from the 1970s are alive in the present. This is evident in feminist art collectives, in the individual work of many artists, and in feminist art organizations...[there are] more than one hundred artists and artists' groups that make up the Latin American feminist art scene.'

[Above] Untitled work, Part of a series by Liliana Maresca. 1983


This remarkable book, beautifully produced to the highest print quality, is a seminal work. The artworks on display cover a huge range of forms of expression: paintings, prints, performance pieces, photography, video clips, sculptures and beyond. True inspiration for the next wave of female artivists and an object lesson in creativity and bravery.

SEE PREVIOUS POST: BRAZILIAN MUSIC: MONICA VASCONCELOS / TROPICALIA / LUAKA BOP / SOUND AND COLOURS / BIXIGA 70