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Judy Chicago

Revelations: An Illuminated Manuscript, 2024

Hand-signed and numbered by the artist

8 x 10.5 in. (20.3 x 26.7 cm)

Bespoke wooden box, unique letterpress cover, velvet lining. Hand-bound book, vegan leather, with holographic foil stamping, 12 k white gold gilded edge

Digital print on Epson Hot Press Bright

Edition of 25 + 5 APS

£5,000 (incl. VAT)


Judy Chicago, And God Created Life, 2023. Prismacolor on paper, 30 x 22.25 in. (76.2 x 56.5 cm). © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY. Courtesy of the artist.


Each edition set, manuscript and print, is signed and numbered by the artist and comes unframed. Prices of the artwork are liable to change. As the limited edition sells out, prices of the artwork are subject to increase and the price will be clearly indicated.

 

The exhibition Judy Chicago: Revelations (23 May – 1 September 2024) takes its name from an unknown illuminated manuscript Chicago penned in the early 1970s while creating The Dinner Party (1974–79) – a monumental installation celebrating the achievements of 1038 women, now permanently on display at the Centre for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York. In conjunction with the exhibition, the manuscript has been updated and published for the first time by Serpentine and Thames & Hudson. Drawing on Chicago’s extensive research into goddess worship and women’s history, it offers readers a radical retelling of mythological creation and shares her lifelong vision of a just and equitable world.

Revelations is foundational to Chicago’s decades-long practice and a work that she believed would never be published in her lifetime. Inspired by illuminated manuscripts of the late Middle Ages, Revelations: An Illuminated Manuscript by Judy Chicago combines visual and literary elements and features archival and newly created drawings in the artist’s highly pigmented Prismacolor pencils – one of Chicago’s favourite mediums. On the occasion of the exhibition, Serpentine has collaborated with the artist to produce a distinctive presentation of this work. Each book has been signed and numbered by the artist and encased in a bespoke wooden box with a unique letterpress cover and velvet lining. The book has been printed on sumptuous, archival-quality paper and hand-bound in vegan leather, with holographic foil stamping and 12 k white gold gilded edges. Also mounted in the box is a signed and numbered print of And God Created Life (2023) which serves as the frontispiece.

Executed in Chicago’s signature vibrant blue, green and red Prismacolor pencils, And God Created Life (2023) was created especially for Revelations and is Chicago's most recent work included in the exhibition. Foregrounding a shift in the artist’s perspective from an inherently female position to a more all-encompassing view, it calls for an expanded and inclusive concept of God, one that is neither distinctly male nor female. For Chicago, the vision of a male God, found within many cultures and religions, “inherently places women in a secondary position, one that we will never escape until divinity is seen as both female AND male.” Instead of a bearded older man, Chicago’s vision of God sits beyond the racial and binary gender spectrum, replete with breasts, a vulva and a penis.

© Photo: readsreads.info

Judy Chicago

See more products by   Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago (b. 1939, Chicago, USA; lives and works in New Mexico, USA) is an artist, author, feminist, cultural historian, and educator. Named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in 2018, she has garnered an enduring stature. Born Judy Cohen, and known briefly after her first marriage as Judy Gerowitz, Chicago attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1970, the artist adopted the surname ‘Chicago’ and initiated the United States’ first Feminist Art Programme at California State University, Fresno.

Her work has been the subject of major retrospectives. Most recently the New Museum, New York City, NY (2023); the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2018); Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2018); and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2017). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, NY; British Museum, London; de Young Museum, CA; Getty Trust, CA; Hammer Museum, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; SFMOMA, CA; Tate, London; and more than twenty-five university art museums. She is the author of numerous books including The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago (Thames & Hudson: 2021); Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education (The Monacelli Press: 2014); The Birth Project (Doubleday: 1985); Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1979); The Dinner Party: A Symbol of our Heritage (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1979); and Beyond the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (Doubleday: 1975); among others.

Judy Chicago gained prominence in the late 1960s for making work from a woman-centered perspective, which challenged the male-dominated landscape of the art world. An artistic polymath, Chicago’s work is characterised by a commitment to craft and experimentation, evident in her subject matter, methodology and choice of materials.

Throughout her six-decade career, Chicago has contested the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon, developing a distinctive visual language that gives visibility to their experiences. Her individual and collaborative projects address themes of birth; masculinity; Jewish identity; notions of power; extinction; and a longstanding concern for climate justice.

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