Judy Chicago at Jeffrey Deitch

(link)

At one point in our history, Anne Truitt's color on sculpture had Donald Judd railing. It is important to remember that for many years Judy Chicago's work wasn't taken seriously because it specifically affected associations (rightly or wrongly) with the feminine, or what wasn't serious high-cultural affect. There should be a history of these affects we don't allow to speak. Even if we let them in late, we should have a list of the things that were unacceptable then. And a list of what deemed acceptable, why.

Judy Chicago at Jessica Silverman

(link)

As ambiguous abstraction and bio-innuendo makes a stunning return to art, it would make sense Chicago comes with. There's been a resurgence of cats too. Orifices and cats, pussies, the feline, Schneemann, Carolee, and her cat kissing. A long history of cats in art, Bonnard, Manet, Egypt, etc. The dog doltish in comparison. The cat more sly, artistic, essentialistically feminine.


Literally, Cat butts: Autumn Ramsey at Night Club, Autumn Ramsey at Park View, Alice Tippit at Night Club, Trevor Shimizu at Rowhouse Project

Judy Chicago at CAPC

(link)

"Why Not Judy Chicago?" answered by what appeared as Chicago's essentialist conservatism against more radical notions of gender performativity and less explicitly "feminine" imagery that seemed to only entrench gender roles in reacting to and thus confirming the overt power structure's definitions rather than just stepping aside, the same way many queer theorists rejected "Same-sex Marriage"* as simply the hetero-patriarchy asking a subaltern community to conform or perish, adopt its structures for its community or be forever exiled, like no one had read Adorno. That some women didn't want to be reduced their genitalia. Of course that was how it all appeared, and in hindsight Chicago's expressions of femininity - however they bent around the forms of stereotypical gender-roles - were still pretty radical expressions in their unironic brash political insistence of the "feminine" even if some were uncomfortable with imagery emanating lots of waves symbolizing the feminine ethereal power of "woman" sort of like you have op-eds in the NYT from feminist moms expounding their schizo position of raising daughters who demand to wear pink, our reactionary uncomfort to anything resembling gender roles, having become today's "not that there's anything wrong with that."

* What a fucking name.


See too: Lily van der Stokker at Koenig & Clinton