JUDY CHICAGO

Where Are We Now? The Judy Chicago Interview
by Artsy Staff

Judy Chicago has made a notable mark on feminist art history as both an artist and an educator. As an artist, she is perhaps best known for her early work "The Dinner Party," a triangular table set for a celebratory banquet of 39 historical and mythical women figures. Each woman's name is reverently stitched onto the cloth of her place setting, and upon each plate is painted a butterfly-like vulvic design. The table is only large enough to accomodate a few, so 999 more names are embroidered onto the floor drapery. A symphony of female artisans was employed to undertake the crafting of this monumental work, which Chicago humorously describes as "a reinterpretation of the Last Supper as told from the point of view of those who have done the cooking throughout history."

How have you seen the feminist movement work and how have you seen it fail?
Well, what's worked is that things are definitely different for young women artists than they were when I was your age. At that time... people used to say that you can't be a woman and an artist too. And there was certainly no possibility of making art that was woman-centered, which is what I set out to change. And there's no question now that there's a lot of woman-centered art being made by younger female artists. However, that's the good news. The bad news is that the goals of the feminist art movement and the women's art movement in general have not been achieved- I mean, to really transform the world. I hear way too many stories of how, still, women are educated without even knowing much about women's history. They go to art school and still don't know anything about women artists. So the institutionalization of those changes has not occurred at a significant enough level.

more to come

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