Culture | Exhibitions On the eve of her retrospective at London’s Serpentine North Gallery , artist Judy Chicago is visibly moved. “It’s so overwhelming for me, because there’s a lot of work in this show I never thought would be shown.” Even at the age of 84, Chicago looks like a rock star with bleached blonde hair and gold nails.
Dressed in a red smock and boot-cut jeans, she carries a glittery cane. She knows how to make her presence felt. She always has.
A pioneer of the feminist art movement, Chicago came to prominence in the Sixties, challenging the male-dominated art world. Over a seven-decade career, she has known loneliness and adversity. At times she had to sell her work because she couldn’t afford to store it.
She received threats over her more polemical pieces, exploring birth and creation, toxic masculinity and the absence of the Holocaust in modern art (Chicago is Jewish). But now Chicago is having a moment. She has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and long-forgotten pieces are being celebrated.
She is also the focus of major retrospectives, such as this one at the Serpentine, which is her largest solo show in a London gallery. As she prepares to open this exhibition in west London, the capital is awash with shows by pioneering female artists. Yoko Ono has a retrospective down the road at Tate Modern.
Tate Britain currently has a major show about female artists in Britain from 1520 to 1920, which follows hot on the heel.
