Beyond the flower

Anais Nin heralded the first volume of Judy Chicago's autobiography, Through the Flower, as "remarkable" and "invaluable for all women." Now, twenty years on, Chicago takes us Beyond the Flower, lifting the veil of the international public persona she has become since her influential work The Dinner Party, and revealing her very personal struggles as an artist and a woman in late-twentieth-century America. With the same intense intimacy and unabashed probing of issues of gender, power, and history that characterize her monumental works of art and made Through the Flower a classic in the literature of women and the arts, she asks hard questions about the role of art in our culture. Judy Chicago's contagious and affirmative energy suffuses Beyond the Flower, and this volume will excite and provoke dialogue among feminists, art lovers, and talented women rising through the ranks of any profession - or now taking stock of their lives.