Product Description

Born to Jewish radical parents in Chicago in 1939, Judy Cohen grew up to be Judy Chicago — one of the most daring and controversial artists of her generation. Her works, once disparaged and misunderstood by the critics, have become icons of the feminist movement, earning her a place among the most influential artists of her time. Early to reject the modernist move away from content in art, Chicago first mastered and then transcended modernism’s formalist austerity, before blazing a trail to the new esthetic now known as postmodern.

In Becoming Judy Chicago, Gail Levin gives us a biography of uncommon intimacy and depth, revealing the artist as a person and a woman of extraordinary energy and purpose. Drawing upon Chicago’s personal letters and diaries, her published and unpublished writings, and more than 250 new interviews with her friends, family, admirers, and critics, Becoming Judy Chicago is a richly detailed and moving chronicle of the artist’s unique journey from obscurity to fame, including the story of how she found her audience outside the art establishment.

From her early training as a gifted child at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to the groundbreaking Feminist Art Program she created at Fresno State College in 1970–1971, Chicago has never feared to challenge the status quo. At a time when art history textbooks still omitted work by all women, she led her students on a remarkable journey during which they began to examine the meaning of being a woman, to explore women’s traditional crafts, and to compile a history of women artists. For Chicago, no topic has been taboo—from menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth to men’s abuse of power and the Holocaust.

Chicago has revolutionized the way we view art made by and for women. She has fundamentally changed our understanding of women’s contributions to art and to society. Influential and bold, The Dinner Party has become a cultural monument. Becoming Judy Chicago tells the story of a great artist, a leader of the women’s movement, a tireless crusader for equal rights, and a complicated, vital woman who dared to express her own sexuality in her art and demand recognition from a male-dominated culture.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #565479 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-27
• Released on: 2007-02-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
With Judy Chicago, Levin (Edward Hopper) takes on a subject who has spent most of her career fighting for her place in a male-dominated and masculinized art world. As the title suggests, the book shows how the daughter of a radical Jewish Communist became the power behind The Dinner Party (1979), a work that forces women's history forward on women's terms, expressed through craft and female imagery. Often described as outspoken, confrontational, strong willed and difficult by even her closest colleagues and friends, Chicago carved a path for other women artists. She demanded that her students—all female—live and create a radically new and feminist movement in the arts. Levin captures Chicago's struggle with her emerging feminism in the context of her marriages, her art and her role as teacher and collaborator. Levin handles the complexity of Chicago's relationships with both men and women deftly, in a manner that exemplifies the issues many women have gone through as they attempted to stake their claim in a man's world. Although not an authorized biography, this was written with Chicago's aid. Hagiographic at times and sometimes burdened by its living and larger-than-life subject, the book is an enlightening look at this controversial artist and at feminist art in general. 16 pages of color photos, 15 b&w photos. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Judith Cohen, born in Chicago in 1939 to radical activists, legally changed her name to Judy Chicago in 1970 to liberate herself from the conventions of "male dominance" and to celebrate her female identity. This metamorphosis initiated her controversial and profoundly influential feminist art. Levin, author of a groundbreaking Edward Hopper biography, tells Chicago's complex, galvanizing story in conscientious detail without losing narrative drive, providing fresh and invaluable insights into the intense emotional, aesthetic, and political brouhaha provoked by Chicago's female genitalia imagery, grand collaborative projects elevating such traditional women's crafts as china painting and embroidery to fine-art status, and unabashed conviction that art has a moral imperative. Ambitious, outspoken, multitalented, and relentlessly hardworking, Chicago--author of two inspiring memoirs and the veteran of numerous painful relationships complicated by her artistic commitment and reformer's zeal--has had an enormous impact on art and society. Chicago's most infamous work, The Dinner Party,inally has a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Levin's passionately researched, thoroughly analyzed, and deeply moving portrait-in-full presents Chicago as a courageous, tough, and innovative artist who, as catalyst and lightning rod, has illuminated the human condition. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“The factual, insightful but also miraculous story of a woman who is not only an individual but an energy field; an artist who is not only a creator but an organizer of communal creation. Without downplaying the pain and censure that comes with enlarging history by refusing to fit into it, Levin shows us the joy and permanence of Chicago's inclusive art that opens eyes, minds and hearts.”
–Gloria Steinem

“A landmark work…. painstakingly detailed, psychologically sophisticated, and constitutes a fair-minded–and therefore explosive--guide to the Art World, including the relationship between wealth, patronage, and artistic success and viability.  Levin’s Chicago is a quintessentially American artist: Bold, ambitious, hungry for success, hugely innovative, both loved and envied (especially by other feminist women),  and mocked by male artists. She is also a profoundly Jewish-American artist. Levin’s rich anecdotes and careful research allowed me to visit with many treasured friends, some still living, some dead, and to revisit the Second Wave feminist art movement that I knew and still treasure.
–Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D, author of Women and Madness

“A vivid and compelling biography of Judy Chicago, as well as a colorful narrative of the artist’s struggles to create a feminist art and to transform the lives of woman artists in an art world hostile to their endeavors. It is a balanced and sympathetic account, richly documented, of the personal and professional obstacles Chicago had to deal with and overcome, as well as a superb critical study of Judy Chicago’s art.”
–Arthur C. Danto, Art Critic, The Nation

“Levin’s compelling biography illuminates the life of a feminist icon whose art reflected and shaped the tumultuous era of which she was a part. Gracefully written and prodigiously researched, this is a fascinating and important contribution.”
–Joyce Antler, author of The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America

“A fascinating confluence of biography and cultural history inspired by personal aspiration, radical politics, avant-garde art, and the Women’s Movement. Rich in new research and insights, Levin’s work  is a valued and much overdue addition to the literature on Judy Chicago.”
--Susan Fisher Sterling, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Chief Curator, National Museum of Women in the Arts

Customer Reviews

It's a survey all American artist reference collections must have.
Any who would understand the life and influences of artist Judy Chicago must have BECOMING JUDY CHICAGO: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST. Where other art titles focus on a pictorial representation of her achievements, BECOMING JUDY CHICAGO, in contrast, provides an in-depth study of her life and is the only biography to offer such depth and details, considering not only Chicago's influences and contributions, but how her works helped transform society. It's a survey all American artist reference collections must have.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch