Judy Chicago says, ‘I was being erased’ from Southern California art history
UCLA Alumna Judy Chicago on coming of age as an artist in LA and her show at Jeffrey Deitch
Judy Chicago, who earned her M.F.A. from UCLA, tells Carolina Miranda of the Los Angeles Times about her experiences as a young artist in Los Angeles, and her time decision to attend auto body school after getting her graduate degree on the occasion of her show at Jeffrey Deitch, Judy Chicago: Los Angeles.
"There are musicians whose careers are made by a single song, authors whose writing is defined by a single novel. For much of her career, Judy Chicago’s work has been overshadowed by a single art piece: “The Dinner Party,” a large-scale 1979 installation that imagined a gathering of 39 important women sidelined by history.Using the form of an elaborate banquet table with place settings that included hand-painted ceramic plates with designs inspired by female genitalia, the piece paid tribute to figures such as Hatshepsut, the 15th century B.C. Egyptian pharaoh; Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century Italian baroque painter; and Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who guided explorers Lewis and Clark.
When “The Dinner Party” debuted at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 1979, it immediately became a public sensation. (An estimated 100,000 people saw the work at SFMOMA in just three months.) It was just as quickly disparaged by critics. (“Crass and solemn and single-minded,” wrote Hilton Kramer in the New York Times.)"— Carolina Miranda, September 6, 2019
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
Read more coverage of this exhibition at the Los Angeles Magazine website.
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