PowerPlay (1982-87)

While still engaged in the Birth Project, Judy Chicago undertook a series of work examining the gender construct of masculinity. In both modest and monumental drawings, paintings, weavings, cast paper pieces and bronzes, she cast a critical eye at the negative ways in which men have exercised power and some of the consequences for both them and the world.

Writing in Judy Chicago: An American Vision (the first monograph to appear on the artist), British art historian Edward Lucie-Smith stated: “PowerPlay, begun in 1982, is an enterprise that overlapped with the Birth Project, but that could hardly be more different. In fact, almost the only thing the two series of images have in common is that they are both confrontational and deal with issues that have usually not made much of an appearance in Western art.”

Lucie-Smith then quoted Chicago: “I knew that I didn’t want to keep perpetuating the use of the female body as the repository of so many emotions; it seemed as if everything – love, dread, longing, loathing, desire, and terror – was projected onto the female by both male and female artists, albeit with often differing perspectives. I wondered what feelings the male body might be made to express. Also, I wanted to understand why men acted so violently.”

 

Jonathan D. Katz Essay

Selected work

PowerPlay 10449_Rainbow_Man PowerPlay 10558_Crippled_by_the_Need_to_Control PowerPlay 10570_Pissing_on_Nature PowerPlay 10593_Driving_the_World_to_Destruction PowerPlay 11072_Four_Studies_for_Driving_the_World_to_Destruction PowerPlay 10571_In_the_Shadow_of_the_Handgun PowerPlay 11513_In_the_Shadow_of_the_Handgun_2 PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay 10514_Really_Sad_Power_Mad PowerPlay Study for Doublehead PowerPlay Study_for_Doublehead_3 PowerPlay 10446_Lavender_Doublehead_Hold_Me_5 PowerPlay 10257_Double_Head_1_Bronze PowerPlay Donald (Woodman) as Woeman PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay 10254_Woe_Man_with_Blue_Eye_Bronze PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay Judy Chicago, Disfigured by Power 5, 1984 PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay SONY DSC PowerPlay Malehead 11/Standing on the Corner Watching All the Girls Go By

Installation views

PowerPlay DRG_PowerPlay_Exhibition_3 PowerPlay DRG_PowerPlay_Exhibition_4 PowerPlay DRG_Powerplay_Exhibition PowerPlay PowerPlay Judy Chicago at Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) PowerPlay Judy Chicago A Retrospective installed at the de Young Museum DSC03075

Click on the image to view it in its complete form.

THE GALLERY IS LOADING
PLEASE BE PATIENT