Judy Chicago

I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history.

I go to make art as who I am as a person. The fact that I am a woman comes into play maybe in the kinds of things I'm interested in or in the way I structure a canvas.

You shouldn't have to justify your work.

Donald, my husband, considers himself a feminist.

So women are at the beginning of building a language, and not all women are conscious of it.

I think what's important is to give space to the range of human experience.

There's no question that many more women artists are showing worldwide now than they were when I was a young woman, and that's really great.

With my early work I got eviscerated by my male professors, and so you learned to disguise your impulses, as many women have done. And that's definitely changed.

Ah, well, do I wish that we lived in a world where gender didn't figure so prominently? Of course. Do I even think about myself as a woman when I go to make art? Of course not.

People have accepted the media's idea of what feminism is, but that doesn't mean that it's right or true or real. Feminism is not monolithic. Within feminism, there is an array of opinions.

I feel like I have at least begun to make a contribution, but my most significant concern has to do with whether my actual art will be preserved for future generations or be erased.

I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.