Artwork Description
Judy Chicago – Birth Tear/Tear
Dimensions: 30 x 40″ paper / 25 x 35″ plate
Year: 1985
Medium: serigraph on Stonehenge Natural White
Edition: 26/100
Judy Chicago’s “Birth Tear/Tear” is one of the most iconic images from her “Birth Series,” which has been featured in museums and galleries extensively. Recently, the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico, which houses another famed New Mexico artist Agnes Martin’s works, hosted an exhibition of Chicago’s “Birth Series”.
This image relates to Chicago’s imagery embracing the truth and beauty of being female; the birth cavity/flower/place of creation, where life is both fertilized and delivered in the natural world.
-Tonya Turner Carroll
Judy Chicago’s artworks are found in the permanent collections of the world’s top museums. Gloria Steinem, upon introducing her long time friend as she was being honored by the Hammer Museum, famously said she could define art history as before and after Judy Chicago. There are numerous monographs and books about Judy Chicago, including the most recent monograph published by National Museum of Women in the Arts. Art historians and curators can search the Judy Chicago Portal, which combines her archives at Harvard, Penn State, and National Museum of Women in the Arts. In 2020 Judy Chicago completed a widely acclaimed collaboration with Dior Couture in Paris, in which her Female Divine monumental sculpture was erected outside the Rodin Museum in Paris and housed her banners posing the question “What if Women Ruled the World?” Read more about why Dior invited her to collaborate with them.
This image by Judy Chicago is part of her Birth Project, a series of works in which Chicago renders the heroic and underrepresented imagery associated with giving birth. This image was included in a major exhibition of her The Birth Project, at the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico, in 2019.