Editorials, Essays, Book Chapters by Elissa Auther
Radical Fiber: Threads Connecting Art and Science
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, 2023
Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other, 2023
Judy Chicago: The Inside Story, 2023
Hey, I'm going make a difference in the world. I was struggling to be taken seriously as an artis... more Hey, I'm going make a difference in the world. I was struggling to be taken seriously as an artist, much less have my talent and potential acknowledged. Elissa: I see that in the book-the intertwining of your coming of age as an artist with your sexual awakening. And that reappears later in the book when you talk about your female students and their issues with their understanding of themselves as sexual people in the world. Judy: That's absolutely right. Elissa: And their struggle to understand themselves as artists. Judy: That's absolutely right. Elissa: Let's talk more about the cultural climate. I happened to bring a copy of the 1970 Artforum issue that includes your gallery ad with the photo of you as a boxer in the ring wearing a sweatshirt that announces your name change to Judy Chicago. Most of us are familiar with this iconic feminist image, but it's very revealing of the times to look at its placement in context. To me this says it all. Because on the previous page, there's an ad for Max's Kansas City with a nude woman reclining in a pasture with cattle grazing. The tagline is "Eat at Max's" (fig. 1). The Erotic as Power: Elissa Auther interviews Judy Chicago fig. 1. Artforum name change ad, 1970 To me, this is like an avant-garde version of the Hugh Hefner fantasy of the Playmate next door. I mean, the juxtaposition is revealing, maybe shocking at first. Judy: Now it is. Then it was, like, my ad was more shocking in that context. I'd have to say that was probably Phil Leider, the editor of Artforum at the time-or John Coplans, who was then a member of the editorial staff. You know, I've actually never seen this juxtaposition before. Elissa: Oh, really? You never looked at the original issue? Judy: I don't think so. Elissa: I ran across it years ago doing research for something. I was just paging through and thought, wait a second. .. Judy: Well, it was because of Phil Leider that it got printed. Jack Glenn, my gallerist, would not pay for it to go into the magazine after it was printed as a gallery announcement-a mailing announcement for my exhibition. And Phil called Jack and said, I think you should take a full-page ad out, but he said no, so Phil ran it for nothing. It was a time in Southern California when there was beginning to be a lot of ferment. There was the antiwar movement. There was just the very beginnings of the women's movement. The Chicano movement. .. Watts riots-all of it. LA was a hotbed of radical activity. And Phil apparently had political consciousness. So, I believe he did that. Elissa: I would have loved to have been in the meeting where it was decided, I mean the layout. Judy: It was so small, Artforum. I doubt there was any vote. It was Phil Leider and John Coplans sitting there with the women who did all the work probably. Elissa: So just to get back to the book for one moment, what was the reaction from your readers to the emphasis on sex and its entwinement with your story of becoming an artist? Judy: I have no idea. Elissa: Like, no one mentioned it to you. .. Judy: The thing that was important to me about Through the Flower was what I learned from it. Which is, you know, here I am, having this terrible struggle in the art world, and Through the Flower comes out, and it's got all these pictures of my work, and then it was published in multiple languages. And so it brought my art to people all over the world. And then I got letters, mostly from women, saying reading it changed their life. Elissa: I see. Judy: That was the beginning of the "Judy changed my life" response. Elissa: Let's talk about some of your earliest paintings with the biomorphic abstractions that resembled body parts-like breasts, phalluses, buttocks, wombs, etc. (fig. 2) You talk about that imagery as growing out of a direct feeling. How would you describe that direct feeling? Judy: I think that my most natural impulses as an artist were reflected in that early work. Actually, this is very funny. When I was working on the 2019 Dior collection banners [What If Women Ruled the World], and I wanted to include the question "Would buildings resemble wombs?" (fig. 3) I did something I had never done before. I got a schematic of a uterus, of the female anatomy, Elissa Auther interviews Judy Chicago Elissa: And the color fades as a symbol of that dissolving feeling of orgasm or a metaphor for a larger life experience? Judy: Right. Because I knew what I was encountering outside the studio had to do with my gender. But there was absolutely no recognition, no possibility of talking about it. You know, if you brought it up it's like, what are you, some kind of suffragette? And so how could I write that my identity dissolved when I left my studio and encountered male attitudes and cultural attitudes towards women, in a time when there was no context for that? I think that's what I was alluding to. Elissa: I see. So, I was reading it in a slightly different way, where the direct feeling of orgasm is what you're trying to put down on paper or canvas, as a visual language. The dissolving optical effect you create through the color gradients are intriguing here, because they produce an involuntary physical reaction of disequilibrium. Judy: Yeah, but see, it had nothing to do with Op Art. Elissa: No, I don't think it had anything to do with Op Art as a style either. But the paintings do create similar physical sensations. .. Judy: Yeah, I know. Elissa:. .. that you don't necessarily have control over, right? You can't rationally master the painting-there's something going on beyond the level of the idea that physically affects the viewer. Judy: Yeah, I know. It's like when people look at the painting Through the Flower [1973] and they say, "Do you know it moves?" And I burst out laughing. I'm like, yeah, I made it move with color. But anyway-I mean, you can find the dissolving thing in my smoke pieces too, you know. Elissa: Yes, absolutely. Judy: My major thing was painting and sculpture. But it's obvious that I was also interested in that. But by the time of all that work from 1973-Through the Flower, Let It All Hang Out, The Great Ladies-that period represents my first success at fusing the visual and formal language I had developed with my real content. The real content being my experience as a woman. That's what I set out to do in those. Elissa: Let's talk about some of the early prints, like Gunsmoke [1971] and Love Story [1971]. Where were those coming from, that imagery? And why the technique of printmaking? Judy: These were offset lithographs. Again, you have to understand the period. So here I am, having moved away from my natural instincts as an artist, and feeling very constrained by the structure of the art world in Los Angeles. And I start reading, and the early literature of the women's movement starts seeping into the West Coast. I read Valerie Solanas's "SCUM Manifesto" [1967], Kate Millett's Sexual Politics [1970] , Robin Morgan's anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful [1970]-all that early work, including Anne Koedt's The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm [1970], which was a revelation. I'm sure not only for me-because I'm sure decades of women thought to themselves, What's wrong with me?, which resulted in all this faking orgasm that women did. It's the same thing that caused me to write Through the Flower. So I'm thinking, Oh my God; this is a historic opening, a change, a huge change-women actually telling the truth about what their experiences have been and how they feel, living in a completely sexist world. It was unbelievably radical. And it made me think about the fact that my identity was Elissa Auther interviews Judy Chicago Wait, I love objects. And I've built this language. So I think I'm going try and get all these feelings out, figure out how to bend the language, develop the language. I took a little divergent path. I tried it out. Elissa: Gunsmoke and Love Story also seem connected to the early critique of the depiction of women's bodies in pornography that leads to sex wars. The divide between the pro-sex and antisex or the anti-pornography vein of the women's movement. Judy: Those are a lot later. Elissa: It is later, but I see you already moving away from what would become an anti-sex position into the creation of an imagery that's affirmative or very positive about sexuality and women's sexual agency.
Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me, 2023
This is the gallery text for the exhibition Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me. It includes co... more This is the gallery text for the exhibition Shary Boyle: Outside the Palace of Me. It includes co-curated new content for the Museum of Arts and Design that extends the exhibition's original checklist. Co-curated by Elissa Auther and Sequoia Miller with Shary Boyle.
Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle, 2023
Loie Hollowell: Plumb Line, 2019
With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985, 2019
bauhaus-imaginista.org, 2019
Tate Research Publications, 2018
Reimagining the Contemporary Art Canon, 2017
Kim Dickey: Words Are Leaves, 2016
Ana Maria Hernando: We Have Flowers, 2016
Crafting Modernism, 2012
Between 1945 and 1970, the field of fiber experienced dramatic growth and diversification, result... more Between 1945 and 1970, the field of fiber experienced dramatic growth and diversification, resulting in a new visibility for a medium long dismissed in the U.S. and elsewhere as irrelevant to art. The direction of the field examined in this essay-its movement beyond that of an amateur pursuit to professional spheres of practice in textile design and the high art world-was ignited by a range of social, historical, and aesthetic forces in the post war period. These included, among others, the ascendency of modernism in art and architecture, the expansion of university art departments, the counterculture of the 1960s, the revitalization of tapestry weaving in Europe, and the avantgarde's broad experimentation with new media. The major turning point in the period occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the formation of a studio practice characterized by individual experimentation and freedom from the commercial textile market. This formation eclipsed an earlier established ideal of the weaver-designer dedicated to collaborating with architects and industry in the production of functional textiles. For the weaver-designer, the handwoven textile was more or less accepted as an utilitarian component of interior design. The emergence of a group of weavers with the desire to explore the potential of fiber as art rather than a product to be subordinated within an architectural scheme created a E. Auther
Senga Nengudi: Improvisational Gestures, 2015
Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty, 2016
West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, 2012
Peter Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years, 2016
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Editorials, Essays, Book Chapters by Elissa Auther