Judy Chicago Interview | Time Out


I spoke with one of America’s most important, prolific and pioneering artists, Judy Chicago at her studio in Sante Fe. As charismatically outspoken now as she was in the 1960s, she told me about her show at Riflemaker (London) which featured Butterfly Test Plates from her most famous installation The Dinner Party, her inclusion in ‘The World Goes Pop’ at Tate Modern that featured her famous spray-painted car bonnets, what it means to be a woman artist and why she changed her name (from Judith Sylvia Cohen).

Freire Barnes: You're often referred to as a feminist artist: do you think of yourself in that way?

Judy Chicago: I think of myself as an artist who has tried to make a contribution to art history: who has tried to counter and overcome the erasure of women artists in history.

FB: You're included in the Tate's new pop art show: did you ever consider yourself a pop artist?

JC: No, not in the original definition. When I look at the other work in the show, I can see how the interest in popular culture was there in my work but that came more out of living in southern California where there was a lot of interest in car culture and there was tremendous freedom in terms of self-invention and using materials.

FB: How many of your Car Hoods series will be at the Tate?

JC: All four car hoods are going to be brought together. Or, as I say, all four sisters will be together for the first time in a long time.

FB: Your college teachers didn't like your work at the time, did they? 

JC:Yeah, three of the works are based on some paintings I did in graduate school which my male professors hated. They hated the imagery, they hated the colour and one of them said: 'Ugh, wombs and breasts,' like those were horrible things to appear in a work of art. I actually destroyed those paintings. When I left college I enrolled in an auto- body school to learn how to spray paint. I was the only woman out of 250 men. Me and my airbrush have had a long relationship.

FB: What advice would you give a younger artist?

JC: You should always trust yourself. I learned from that experience because when I looked back at those paintings I thought, you know, there was never anything wrong with that imagery, there was never anything wrong with my colour.

FB: Do you think it's different for women artists now?

JC: It's definitely different for younger women artists and artists of colour and various sexual orientations because one can just be one's
self in ways that were completely impossible and taboo. At the same time, on an institutional level, there has been very little change. The higher up you go in arts institutions, the fewer women you see.

FB: How did your name change come about? 

JC: When I went to college in LA I brought with me this incredible Chicago accent. Later, I started showing with Rolf Nelson, who used to call me 'Judy Chicago' because of my accent. So at the end of '60s, when I wanted to make a radical change in my work and take charge of my identity, I changed my name. Do you want to know the stupidest thing anybody ever wrote about me? Somebody said I changed my name so my initials would be JC!

This article first appeared on Time Out London here.

Image: © Donald Woodman