Judy Chicago
Overview
Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance. Major works include The Dinner Party
The Dinner Party
The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago depicting place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women. It was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and was first exhibited in 1979. Subsequently, despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues...
, a collaborative piece created by a team of 129 artists and administrators and currently housed at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is on the fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum, New York.-History:The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened on March 23, 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum...
at the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
and the multimedia work The Holocaust Project: From Darkness to Light.
Born in 1939 in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, her first artistic training began in 1947, when she took weekend art lessons for children at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
.
Quotations
Because we are denied knowledge of our history, we are deprived of standing upon each other's shoulders and building upon each other's hard earned accomplishments. Instead we are condemned to repeat what others have done before us and thus we continually reinvent the wheel. The goal of The Dinner Party is to break this cycle.