THROUGH THE FLOWER: My Struggle as a Woman Artist

by Judy Chicago ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 1975

Judy Chicago is no bullshitter: she gets things done. Starting out from a left-leaning liberal family in Chicago and going on to study at UCLA, Judy made it on her own, a woman artist in a man's profession. Since she puts praxis before theory, she came to the women's movement quite apart from the bandwagonning, out of necessity as an artist. She felt that success as a hard-edge painter was a masculinization of her own creativity, yet teachers, peers and critics -- all male -- unanimously rejected her pieces of soft, vaginal, feminine art. First teaching practical skills at Fresno State, then, with Miriam Schapiro, at the Feminist Art Program at LA's California Institute of the Arts and in the total-art ""performances"" at Womanhouse, also in LA, she pioneered a ""new kind of art"" revolutionary in both content (paintings and sculptures of breasts, lipsticks, kitchen curtains) and form (crochet, for instance) that focuses on the hidden lives and feelings of the second sex. ""Men's refusal to accept woman's view of herself as expressed in her art reflects men's larger denial of reality -- human vulnerability, weakness and mortality."" She writes very well -- simply, directly, assertively -- about sexual relationships, work, her role as a leader and cultural catalyst and as a student of the past, about how she got it all together. . .and she is very together. Judy Chicago is, above all, able as well as committed and just about as passive as dynamite. (The introduction is by ""aesthetic mother"" Anais Nin and there will be illustrations.)

Pub Date: March 7, 1975

ISBN: 0595380468

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION