Red Flag

Considered the first image of menstruation in art history, Red Flag was and remains controversial. The iconic close-up of a tampon being removed, part of Judy Chicago’s determination to openly express her experiences as a woman, even caused a dispute between Chicago and her good friend and mentor Anaïs Nin (1903 – 1977, French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist and writer of short stories and erotica), who disagreed with Chicago that it was an appropriate subject for art (Chicago and Nin, however, quickly made up…). One could aestheticize it and compare it to the ejaculatory process of the Abstract Expressionists, or one could just allow it to be exactly what it is: a radical image of an act that is both mundane (for those who perform it) and repulsive (for many who do not). Or, as Chicago once wrote of her disagreement with Nin and her defense of Red Flag: ‘We must make our hidden emotions and experiences visible and acceptable.’

Red Flag was conceived around the time when Chicago was part of the collective Womanhouse (30 January - 28 February 1972), a feminist art installation and performance space created by Chicago and Miriam Shapiro (1923 – 2015, Canadian-born artist based in the United States and a pioneer of feminist art) for the CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) Feminist Art Program. Womanhouse was the first public exhibition of art centered upon female empowerment, and Chicago (and others involved with Womanhouse) created various works which highlighted the ex­perience of menstruation; where blood, obviously, was an incredibly symbolically charged and provoking component.

At the time, Chicago and Schapiro stated, in a collaborative essay (Judy Chicago & Miriam Schapiro, ‘Female Imagery’, Womanspace Journal, 1973): […] we are suggesting that women artists have used the central cavity which defines them as women as the framework for an imagery which allows for the complete reversal of the way in which women are seen by the culture’. They also explained how this kind of imagery was intended to work, by asserting that the reclamation of the vagina as a hallmark of the movement’s iconography was meant to ‘establish a vehicle by which to state the truth and beauty of her identity.’

Institutional critique, confrontation of power dynamics and subversive repre­sentations of identity are all at the heart of Chica­go’s work, and Red Flag, as pointed out by Chloe Champion (‘Red Flag: A Contemplative Warning’, essay in You’re Seeing Less Than Half the Picture, exhibition catalogue, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, California, 2017):

touches on all of these powerful themes. This photolithograph depicts a figure — a close up of a woman’s crotch with a hand pulling a bright red blood-blotched tampon from themselves — as the main focal point of the piece. This vaginal focal point comes as no surprise, as central-core imagery and essentialism are key to Chicago’s work of this time.

Historically the representation of women’s bodies in art has been dictated by men. The image of the female nude has persisted through time and (persistently through time…) men are the one’s creating these images. Chicago was dealing with these issues of representation and nudity in all of her work. The reclamation of the representation of women’s bodies in art is meant to deconstruct the preordained code of regulations for the making and judging of art, which is derived from men’s sense of what is, or is not, significant. As Chloe Champion puts it:

The function of an image of a nude female form is radically changed depending on the maker of the image. In creating Red Flag, Chicago subverts what is expected of artwork that depicts nude women. She presents a powerfully charged image of an autonomous nude figure that is confrontational, refuses to conform, and does not adhere to the male gaze.

Chicago’s work traverses many modes of execution and material, consistently focusing on her idea of central-core imagery and the visibility of the ‘female’ experience. Her work aligns with an essentialist ideology of gender based on biological sex, commonly affiliated with the white, middle class, heterosexual feminism of the 1970s. Nowadays, however, this affiliation with a ‘white, middle class, heterosexual’ narrative raises new questions about race, class, gender and sexuality (and their place within the feminist movement). Chloe Champion, once again, writes:

The issues that Chicago’s work raise are central to understanding the politics of modernist, postmodernist, and feminist art theory and art history. This being said, it is also true that Chicago’s work emphasizes the ways in which femi­nism of the 70s fell short. The ‘female experience’ that was so key to Chicago’s work as well as her contemporary develop­ment of a feminist art movement was based on gender, de­fined by strict biological terms, and not about the race, class, or sexuality of the feminists involved. Throughout the history of feminism, white women have commonly ignored their privi­lege, defining the idea of the ‘woman’s’ experience within a limited framework. Perhaps the greatest thing about Chicago’s work is its ability to lead any viewer to question these notions of identity. Her work highlights both the triumphs and the failures of 1970s feminism. Red Flag offers an opportunity for the viewer to contemplate the ways in which Chicago’s work continues to chal­lenge us.

Titled, signed and dated: ‘Red Flag - Judy Chicago - 1971’.

Edition of 94.

Provenance

Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired at the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation