Interrogating Heroic-Ness – and Judy Chicago’s Cultural Powers
Adobe Airstream, 07/12/2012
Ellen Berkovitch

July 7th at St. Francis Auditorium found artist Judy Chicago sharing a stage with art historian and queer theorist Jonathan D. Katz, to discuss a body of her work that she began in 1982 and had not shown publicly in more than three decades before the current exhibit, Reviewing PowerPlay, went on view at David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, June 29th. (Through August 11.) The painting above sold to a major US collector of feminist art last week, for $300,000.

An astute observer would have to notice that Chicago’s message – woman’s work toward a re-envisioned male whose body forms tears as well as fists – remains not only current but avidly debated among a group that spanned a 26-year-old art student and a few octogenarians. Also in the audience were members of the board of directors of the Through the Flower organization – for which the reception following the talk was a benefit.

That reception, at David Richard, was a tour of Reviewing PowerPlay starring Judy and Jonathan, with Donald Woodman videotaping the repartee. It digressed from painting styles to the cultural freight of grimaces, penises and whether fingers pointing guns were unleashing sprays of blood or of menstrual blood (among the evening’s more bizarre ad-libs).

Onstage at St. Francis Auditorium, Judy had opined, after Jonathan observed stained-glass (or an appeal to the sacred) in the “tripartite” painting titled Rainbow Man Composite, that that may have been a unconscious prefiguring, of her later work in glass.

Long before Judy holed up in a Canyon Road adobe to work out PowerPlay back in 1982, she was inhibited by “prohibitions” against what a woman artist, or any artist, could show of men in art. She situated the freedoms of the series also to her meeting Donald Woodman; he gave advice, urging on her a re-articulation of what was allowable for men (as she’d done for women, in The Dinner Party. Hear my interview with Judy on The Dinner Party here).

“Performative feminism,”was a phrase that Jonathan Katz, who is a professor at SUNY Buffalo and president of the board of directors of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, used in talking Judy to Judy. He noted the works’ size: from 9 feet wide x 6- to 22-feet tall, and the gamut from featureless male faces brandishing handguns, to intensely expressive mens’ anguish or rage, that bore “labial folds” or scrotal noses. Out came another observation by the artist, credited to her husband, that she’s been “in an adversarial relationship with my myth.”

While the avidity of the cultural-personal sharing at the afternoon event seemed to say Judy’s myth remains a principal issue of Judy’s work, the revelations came not just from the artist and her critic but from a visiting psychiatrist who appeared to relish the opportunity for self-disclosure, among strangers.

Observing the work amid all the sturm over gender roles, its size remains a primary factor of engaging it. A thin silhouette and airbrush mark out the picture plane. The men have super-big hands. When one squeezes out a tear, it’s often more milky than translucent, as if the act of crying can’t quite trade truculence (or seminal fluid) for bloody vulnerability. The works have an energetic field, an intense impression of force, as if what had to transmute from the artist to her figure was a birth of the next very big thing.

Associated Artist

• Judy Chicago

Associated Exhibitions

• JUDY CHICAGO ReViewing PowerPlay
  June 29, 2012 - August 11, 2012
  MORE INFO

Associated News

• May 14, 2015
  Press Release - Judy Chicago "Heads Up"


• December 1, 2014
  Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal Part 2 launched Dec. 1
  Penn State, 12/01/2014
  Catherine Grigor
  
  


• October 30, 2014
  History Was Impetus, But It's Future Work That Drives Judy Chicago
  


• October 26, 2014
  Invitations on the Journey: Wisdom from Elders
  Patheos, 10/27/2014
  Elizabeth Nordquist
  
  


• October 23, 2014
  "Judy Chicago" at Denver's RedLine honors great American troublemaker
  The Denver Post, 10/23/2014
  Ray Mark Rinaldi
  
  


• July 24, 2014
  Santa Fe Retreat: Judy Chicago
  Lofty Ambitions Blog, 07/23/2014
  


• July 7, 2014
  Heads Up! New Works by Judy Chicago
  Artsy.net, 07/07/2014
  
  


• May 22, 2014
  Judy Chicago: Early Work at the Brooklyn Museum
  NYArts Magazine, 05/22/2014
  Anni Irish
  
  


• April 23, 2014
  Judy Chicago at the Brooklyn Museum and Environs
  Paradigm Shift, 04/23/2014
  Heather Saunders
  


• April 23, 2014
  Judy Chicago Proves She's About More Than Vagina Plates at Brooklyn Museum Show
  The Village Voice, 04/23/2014
  Lilly Lampe
  
  


• April 10, 2014
  The Breakfast That Preceded ‘The Dinner Party’ ‘Chicago in L.A.’ Focuses on Judy Chicago’s Early Work
  The New York Times, 04/10/2014
  Ken Johnson
  
  


• March 28, 2014
  Judy Chicago Celebrates 75th Birthday


• March 28, 2014
  Judy Chicago
  ArtForum, 03/28/2014
  Paige Bradley
  
  


• March 6, 2014
  Chicago on Chicago
  Harvard Gazette, 03/05/2014
  Valerie Vande Panne
  
  


• January 18, 2014
  Can Judy Chicago make D.C. her sister city?
  The Washington Post, 01/18/2014
  Philip Kennicott
  
  


• March 1, 2013
  WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH ARTISTS: CELEBRATING WHM WITH JUDY CHICAGO AS THE KING OF HEARTS
  Huffington Post, 03/01/2013
  
  


• February 16, 2013
  JUDY CHICAGO
  Woven and Stitched
  February 15 – March 23, 2013
  
  Gallery Lectures and Discussions on Tapestries and Textiles:
  Saturday, February 23, 2:00—4:00pm


• August 30, 2012
  PUSSYRIOT: WOMEN STILL A POTENT FORCE, SAYS FEMINIST ART FOUNDER JUDY CHICAGO
  International Business Times, 08/30/2012
  Gianluca Mezzofiore
  
  


• August 20, 2012
  
  A SERIES OF JUDY CHICAGO EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS IN THE UK FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 1985
  ArtDaily.org, 08/20/2012
  


• August 8, 2012
  Judy Chicago: Reviewing Powerplay
  ArtInfo.com, 08/08/2012
  
  


• August 1, 2012
  
  JUDY CHICAGO: REVIEWING POWERPLAY
  THE Magazine, August 2012
  Susan Wilder
  
  


• July 12, 2012
  Interrogating Heroic-Ness – and Judy Chicago’s Cultural Powers
  Adobe Airstream, 07/12/2012
  Ellen Berkovitch
  
  


• June 16, 2012
  Press Release - Judy Chicago "ReViewing PowerPlay"


• March 3, 2012
  THE CROCKER ART MUSEUM OPENS A SURVEY OF GROUNDBREAKING ARTIST JUDY CHICAGO
  Art Knowledge News, 03/03/2012
  
  


• February 23, 2012
  THE INAUGURAL PALM SPRINGS FINE ART FAIR FEATURES MORE THAN 2,000 POST-WAR & CONTEMPORARY WORKS
  Art Knowledge News, 02/15/2012
  
  


• February 5, 2012
  Press Release - Judy Chicago "Material Girl"


• December 12, 2011
  JUDY CHICAGO TO RECEIVE THE PALM SPRINGS FINE ART FAIR'S LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
  Visual Art Source, 12/12/2011
  
  


• October 30, 2011
  Q&A: JUDY CHICAGO
  Los Angeles Times, 10/30/2011
  Jori Finkel
  
  


• October 26, 2011
  JUDY CHICAGO'S UPCOMING DISAPPEARING ENVIRONMENTS: HOW DO YOU MAKE ART OUT OF GIGANTIC PYRAMIDS OF DRY ICE? LA Weekly, 10/26/2011
  
  


• June 20, 2011
  Press Release - Artist Judy Chicago Is Now Represented by David Richard Contemporary