Judy Chicago

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Judy Chicago : biography

20 July 1939 –

There is a renaissance of interest in the United Kingdom in Chicago’s work with two solo exhibitions in 2012 in London and another in Liverpool. At the Liverpool exhibition in November 2012, Chicago launched an illustrated monograph, a tribute to Virginia Woolf. She says that while she had previously thought of it as secondary to her art, she now considers her significant body of writing, including nine books and the "Meger" poem (1979), as integral to her artistic practice.

Notes

Education and early career

While at UCLA she became politically active, designing posters for the UCLA chapter NAACP and eventually became its corresponding secretary. In June 1959, she met and fell in love with Jerry Gerowitz. She left school and moved in with him, for the first time having her own studio space. The couple hitch hiked to New York in 1959, just as Chicago’s mother and brother moved to Los Angeles to be closer to her.Levin in Bloch and Umansky, 308 The couple lived in Greenwich Village for a time, before returning in 1960 from Los Angeles to Chicago so she could finish her degree. Chicago married Gerowitz in 1961.Levin in Bloch and Umansky, 311 She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1962 and was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Gerowitz died in a car crash in 1963, devastating Chicago and causing her to suffer from an identity crisis until later that decade. She received her Master of Fine Arts from UCLA in 1964.

While in grad school, Chicago’s created a series that was abstract, yet easily recognized as male and female sexual organs. These early works were called Bigamy, and represented the death of her husband. One depicted an abstract penis which was "stopped in flight" before it could unite with a vaginal form. Her professors, who were mainly men, were dismayed over these works. Despite the use of sexual organs in her work, Chicago refrained from using gender politics or identity as themes. In 1968, Chicago was asked why she did not participate in the "California Women in the Arts" exhibition at the Lytton Center, to which she answered "I won’t show in any group defined at Woman, Jewish, or California. Someday when we all grow up there will be no labels." Chicago began working in ice sculpture, which represented "a metaphor for the preciousness of life," another reference towards her husband’s death.Levin in Bloch and Umansky, 314 In 1969, the Pasadena Art Museum exhibited a series of Chicago’s spherical acrylic plastic dome sculptures and drawings in an "experimental" gallery. Art in America noted that Chicago’s work was on the forefront of the conceptual art movement, and the Los Angeles Times described the work as showing no signs of "theoretical New York type art." Chicago would describe her early artwork as minimalist and as her trying to be "one of the boys".Lewis and Lewis, 455. Chicago would also experiment with performance art, using fireworks and pyrotechnics to create "atmospheres", which involved flashes of colored smoke being manipulated outdoors. Through this work she attempted to "feminize" and "soften" the landscape.Levin in Bloch and Umansky, 315

During this time, Chicago also began exploring her own sexuality in her work. She created the Pasadena Lifesavers, which was a series of abstract paintings that placed acrylic paint on Plexiglas. The works blended colors to create an illusion that the shapes "turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, gesture, wiggle," representing her own discovery that "I was multi-orgasmic." Chicago credited Pasadena Lifesavers, as being the major turning point in her work in relation to women’s sexuality and representation.

From Cohen to Gerowitz to Chicago: Name change

As Chicago made a name for herself as an artist, and came to know herself as a woman, she no longer felt connected to her last name, Cohen. This was due to the late grief of the death of her father and the lost connection to her name through marriage, Judith Gerowitz, after her husband’s death. She decided she wanted to change her last name to something independent of being connected to a man by marriage or heritage. During this time, she married sculptor Lloyd Hamrol, in 1965. (They divorced in 1979.)Felder and Rosen, 280. Gallery owner Rolf Nelson nicknamed her "Judy Chicago" because of her strong personality and thick Chicago accent. She decided this would be her new name, and sought to legally change it. Chicago was described as being "appalled" with the fact that she had to have her new husband’s signature on the paperwork to legally change her name. To celebrate the name change, she posed for the exhibition invitation dressed like a boxer, wearing a sweatshirt with her new last name on it. She also posted a banner across the gallery at her 1970 solo show at California State University at Fullerton, that read: "Judy Gerowitz hereby divests herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance and chooses her own name, Judy Chicago." An advertisement with the same statement was also placed in Artforum’s October 1970 issue.Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago; A Biography of the Artist, p. 139