Judy Chicago celebrated 75 years of age on July 20, but the party didn’t stop until just a couple weeks ago. She’s been touring the nation, celebrating her life’s work as an artist, educator, and feminist by giving lectures and opening exhibitions at eight different museums across America. This scattering of her work at various institutions over the course of 2014 creates what she calls a “dispersed retrospective,” and Denver was fortunate to host the artist and her provocative artwork at the very end of the landmark journey.

Chicago gave a talk at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design on October 16. The auditorium filled with artists, students, professors, gallerists, and collectors eager to hear what this long-standing figure in the art world had to say about looking back at her decades of groundbreaking achievements. Simon Zalkind from Denver’s Mizel Museum curated an exhibition of her work at RedLine and introduced Judy to the crowd. Her husband, photographer Donald Woodman , helmed the projector and was instructed by his wife to change the slides every five minutes to keep the pace lively.

She breezed through her minimalist work of the 1960s and her struggle to find her voice in the male-dominated world of art school. There was no reference to Womanhouse or Miriam Schapiro, and she mentioned in passing how much of a nightmare Rainbow Pickett, her most famous work from that time, had caused her. (In a 2012 Flash Art interview with Glen Phillips and Eleanor Antin she revealed that she destroyed it because curator Walter Hopps “refused to look at it.” It was recreated in 2004).

The Dinner Party was the focus of the 1970s, as was Powerplay and The Birth Project in the 1980s. When the slide switched to the 1990s, Donald joined her on stage and talked about his collaborative work with Judy on their Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light. Since he was on stage talking instead of changing the slides, a lot more ground was covered for this topic, which is great because it is one that does not get the same attention as Chicago’s earlier projects. In her years of art historical research, Chicago realized that there was little to no artistic representations of the Holocaust, and as with her previous ventures in elevating the feminine in art, she and Donald sought to do the same for those who endured this dark time in world history.

Once her talk was complete, Judy took questions from the audience.

“What advice do you have for young artists?”
“Get a job. There are too many artists coming out of MFA programs right now and the art world will chew you up and spit you out before you’re 30.”

“Is there anything from your body of work that you don’t feel the same connection to, or don’t like anymore?”
“No.”

“If someone had never heard of you before, what is one artwork that you would tell them to see first?”
“I’d tell them to go to Judy Chicago dot com.”

The exhibition at RedLine, Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2014, contains significant works throughout her career, including early sketch designs and test plates from The Dinner Party, beautiful glass work, and a major piece from The Holocaust Project. Curator Simon Zalkind did an excellent job of putting together a thorough representation of the artist’s work over 40 years.

Surveying Judy Chicago: 1970-2014 is on view at RedLine through December 28.

-Hayley Richardson