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Judith Golden lived in Los Angeles for only four years, but she had a substantial impact in the region (among her students at UCLA were Gillian Brown, Jack Butler and Kenneth Shorr). Moreover, as she puts it, “the Hollywood influence” on her own work “cannot be denied.”

Golden studied as an undergraduate in Chicago with two artists known for their experimental attitude toward photography, Joyce Neimanas and Keith Smith. As a graduate student at the university of California, Davis, she got a major dose of California Funk, working with Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley.

In Los Angeles Golden’s circle included Eileen Cowin, Robbert Flick, Barbara Kasten, Robert Heinecken and Susan Rankaitis, among others. It was in that environment that she produced her first mature work.

The Magazine Series and the closely related Magazine Makeovers are self-portraits in which the artist inserts herself into magazine versions of ideal beauty. They are direct hits on mass media’s impossible standard of glossy perfection.