Artwork Description
Judy Chicago – The Creation
Dimensions: 30.13 x 40.13″ framed / 30 x 40″ unframed
Year: 1985
Medium: serigraph on black Arches
Edition: 60/75
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. The print is included in numerous other museum collections, including the New Mexico State Museum of Art, et al. The image of the birth cavity as place of creation, where the receptive female is fertilized as well as the place where she delivers her creation into the world, is a pervasive concept in Chicago’s artistic career. As one considers this idea–the relationship between Chicago’s flower images, with a central receptive area of pollination and petals unfolding from that center–to the truth and beauty of the female body reveals the overarching focus of Chicago’s artistic career.
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?”