Promising Monsters: Judy Chicago Style

While reading Rosemary Betterton’s “Promising Monsters: Pregnant Bodies, Artistic Subjectivity, and Maternal Imagination,” in which she discusses “how examples of visual art . . . disrupt maternal ideals in visual culture through differently imagined body schema,” I immediately forged a connection between Betterton’s claims and feminist artist Judy Chicago’s works (80). In the article, visual works by artists “Susan Hiller, Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper, Tracey Emin, and Cindy Sherman” are used to emphasize and epitomize the notions presented by Betterton, and I believe that Chicago is yet another artist whose work efficiently represents and subverts traditional concepts of the female body as mother, most closely related to the works of Hiller and Sherman (80). In her collection entitled Birth Project, Chicago uses needlework, a visually intense medium which has long been dismissed by the mainstream art scheme due to its association with female artists to create her works. Stemming from the notion that prior to Birth Project there were few depictions of maternity and birth within the mainstream Western art community, Chicago’s utilization of needlework as a visual medium proves even more significant, as needlework pervades our everyday lives yet is still largely undermined as an artistic medium. A similar case can be made for illustrations of maternity and birth, as these two often inextricably linked occurrences are also inextricably linked to the human condition due to the fact that one is created through the process of maternity and birth, rendering it an experience common to all humanity. Chicago’s Birth Project relies heavily on myths of creation, which is comparable to Betterton’s claim discussing “such monstrous imaginings are the stuff of fairy tales and horror films” in that myths, fairy tales, and horror films are all connected through notions of fiction and storytelling (81). For fiction to be considered fiction, it must have some relation to reality, which, in turn, “[disturbs] our own sense of reality” (81).

Like the works of Hiller and Sherman, Chicago’s Birth Project examines maternity through lenses of “the pregnant embodied subject and the artist as creative subject” and “[monstrous sexuality]” (84-95). Because Birth Project is comprised of multiple needleworks, I will use Chicago’s “Birth Tear/Tear,” a singular work, as an example of Betterton’s claims. “Birth Tear/Tear,” as pictured below, is a seemingly monstrous depiction of the birthing process. The title of the piece, “Birth Tear/Tear,” is significant due to its wordplay: tear is used to signify the literal tear which streams down the pregnant subject’s face, as well as the literal tearing of the body which often occurs during the birthing process. The piece is rendered with various shades of red, suggestive of bloody aspect of the birthing process, and features the maternal subject as much larger compared to the child which she birthed. The depiction of the assumed female subject without hair is a direct subversion of typical Western conceptions of femininity, as hair is closely tied with the degree to which a person is considered feminine. The subject’s face, as further emphasized by her crying, is contorted into an expression of extreme agony; quite literally, bringing new life into the world requires an ineffably painful sacrifice. Further, the illustration of discomfort along with the amniotic sac still intact is suggestive of a miscarriage or stillbirth.