Artwork Description
Judy Chicago – Sappho in Glass
Dimensions: 20 x 20 x 0.5″ / 23 x 25.5 x 8″ on base
Year: 2006
Medium: etching and glass paint on clear glass
The flower with opening petals, containing a center resembling female genitalia, is considered one of the most identifiably Judy Chicago symbols in her iconography.It is autobiographically important to her not only as an image, but as a philosophy of life. Chicago combines her most potent symbol of female truth and beauty–the flower with parting petals, with the material of glass, which she sought to help elevate into the realm of fine art.
Chicago writes in her autobiography “Through The Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist” “I felt myself …moving through the limits of the female role. I used the flower as a symbol of feminity…the petals of the flower are parting, and one can see an inviting but undefined space, the space beyond the confines of our own femininity…my longing for transcendence…my first steps in being able to make clear, abstract images of my feelings as a woman.”