Judy Chicago

This is the first of a new, quarterly e-blast that we will be sending to friends and supporters. Recently, my career seems to have exploded and because there is so much to report, I am going to briefly focus on a few happenings, then concentrate on the upcoming Getty initiative, Pacific Standard Time, which could re-write the history of 20th century art, and also affirm my place in southern California art history.

But first, I want to mention two exciting events; the acquisition by Penn State University of my art education archive and Through the Flower's K-12 Dinner Party Curriculum (developed in collaboration with a team of curriculum writers headed by Dr. Marilyn Stewart), and the university's exciting plans for both my archive and the curriculum. To learn more, read the recent press release sent out by PSU.

And as many of you know, I will be receiving the Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts on September 16th. The day will kick off with the opening of a small exhibition at the Governor's Gallery in the Capitol Building in Santa Fe where I am showing six of twenty-one drawings from a series titled My Accident. This work represents the first collaboration between me and my husband, photographer Donald Woodman, and chronicles my having been hit by a pick-up truck while running in early 1996, only three weeks after our wedding.

The Governor's award ceremony takes place at the NM Museum of Art and you can read my planned remarks here. After the awards, there will be a reception at the Governor's Mansion which is now occupied by Susana Martinez, the first female governor in New Mexico's history. Even though our politics may differ, it is heartening to see women making progress in the higher offices of our country. After the ceremony, we will have a celebration dinner with some friends at Aqua Santa, one of our favorite Santa Fe restaurants. 

By now, you have received information about Through the Flower's Celebration Sunday at The Albuquerque Museum, which will include a panel discussion, "Overcoming the Odds: The Legacy of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, which I will moderate. The panel will be followed by a benefit concert by Nashville singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier, followed by a small, sold-out dinner at James Beard-nominated restaurant, Jennifer James 101. I am hopeful that I will see many of our friends and supporters at these events. For tickets, go to the Celebration Sunday link at  throughtheflower.org.

National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

Lastly, before I share all the exciting activities surrounding Pacific Standard Time,  I want to discuss my June tour of the British Isles where I presented lectures that dealt with both my career and my recent Kahlo book (Frida Kahlo: Face to Face, co-authored with Frances Borzello). My earlier 2010 book tour to museums around the United Stated became a surprising vehicle for discussing many of the issues that have been the focus of my art and life, for example, the fact that it is difficult for women artists to have the whole body of their work seen and understood.

In Kahlo's case, most people know only her self-portraits. Although these constitute a major portion of her art, she also produced a significant number of still life paintings. However, because women's art and concerns have not yet been fully integrated into the art historical canon,  other aspects of Kahlo's work - such as her self-portraits with animals or her use of doll imagery - cannot be fully appreciated without an understanding of the many ways in which these same subjects have figured in many women's work. 

Left: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkey, 1940  Right: Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Bed, (Me and My Doll), 1937

Like Kahlo, most people are familiar with only one aspect of my career, notably, The Dinner Party. Although I am gratified by the recognition this piece has brought me, at the same time I long for it to be seen as only one work in a large and diverse body of art. Hopefully, Pacific Standard Time will begin a process that will make this clear. Let me begin by saying that PST represents an unprecedented collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across southern California, each presenting thematically linked exhibitions and programs designed to celebrate the region's vibrant post-WW II art scene. In addition, more than eighty galleries plan to participate by mounting related shows.

As I spent the first twenty years of my professional career in Los Angeles, I am excited that different aspects of my early work will be presented in a variety of situations (For a complete listing of the Pacific Standard Time shows and events in which I am involved, please consult Get Out Your Calendar. For some time, I have been feeling as if my California roots were being erased, perhaps because of the permanent housing of The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum; the gift to the Museum of Arts and Design in New York by Audrey and Bob Cowan of the work I've done in tapestry with Audrey; my paper archives at the Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America at Radcliffe/Harvard; and now, the establishment of my art education archive at Penn State. 

Somehow, as the nexus of my career turned eastward, California was often forgotten by those who wrote about my art. And despite the extremely macho atmosphere of the L.A. art scene in the 1960's and 70's, there was an atmosphere of self-invention that allowed me to envision  a new type of feminist art education and craft a feminist art practice. At the same time, recently, there have been a spate of shows about southern California art and I've been left out, which really irked me because I was one of the few women who was able to make a place for herself there. 

Judy Chicago and Arlene Raven,  Feminist Studio Workshop, Woman's Building, Early 1970's

Nine years in the making, Pacific Standard Time is aimed at setting the historic record straight about an extraordinary period that is little understood outside of southern California, in particular, the 1970's, which was marked by the introduction of many new, previously excluded voices. At the same time, Los Angeles was home to many unique art movements including the Feminist Art Movement, which will be documented by an exhibition at Otis Art Institute about the Women's Building, which - with designer Sheila de Bretteville and the late art historian Arlene Raven - I helped to found.

In addition, my work will be included in seven other museum exhibitions and several art fairs. At the end of September, Donald and I will be making the first of four trips to L.A., this one for the gala opening weekend of Pacific Standard Time. During this trip, I will also be presenting two lectures, the first at Cal-State, Long Beach, and then at Pomona College where I will have a "conversation with my younger (more radical) self", engaging with a lecture that I presented there in the early 1970's. 

Left: Judy Chicago, Car Hood, 1964  Right: Judy Chicago, Big Blue Pink, 1971

The Getty Museum's painting and sculpture show (also titled Pacific Standard Time) will include my famous Car Hood  (now in the collection of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden) and Big Blue Pink, one of my monumental minimal paintings. Other exhibitions will focus on my Atmospheres (what are now considered legendary fireworks pieces); some of my performance work from the early 1970's: my radical early feminist images (like Red Flag, a lithograph that represents one of the first images of menstruation in Western art); as well as other work that has been rarely seen. 

In January of 2012, as part of the Getty's ten day Performance Festival, I will be re-staging one of my Dry Ice Environments, originally created in collaboration with Eric Orr and Lloyd Hamrol. This time, I will be working with Material Applications, an alternative architecture group, to reconceive the piece in contemporary terms.  And I will also be presenting the first fireworks piece that I have done since 1974, A Butterfly for Pomona, sponsored by the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont.

Judy Chicago, Atmosphere, Pasadena Museum (now Norton Simon Museum), 1972

This new Atmosphere will take place on the college football field, which prompted Donald to quip: "Judy is going to blow up a football field", a funny but appropriate comment because one might say that my original Atmospheres were  intended to soften and feminize the environment, one that - as I mentioned - was not particularly hospitable to women artists. Finally, in February, I will have tandem solo shows at Jancar Gallery in L.A's Chinatown and Nye & Brown, a new gallery in Culver City. 

Even before Pacific Standard Time officially begins, I will have work in a show about car culture that opens at Nye & Brown on Sept. 10th. Years ago, Donald and I brought some of my early work to New Mexico. Because of the difficulties I had faced as a woman artist, I destroyed quite a bit of that work or put it into storage, hoping that a time would come when it would be appreciated. In preparation for PST, we went through it all and discovered that I had started two more Car Hoods, then left them unfinished. So I decided to complete them, thereby bringing back some early images that my male professors at UCLA had absolutely hated. The moral of this story is that artists should always trust their instincts because Bigamy Hood and Flight Hood demonstrate a nascent feminist imagery (ironically mounted on car hoods, paradigms of male culture) that didn't re-occur in my work for many years, and then only after a conscious effort to re-connect with my own impulses as a woman.

Left: Judy Chicago, Bigamy Hood, 1965/2011  Right: Judy Chicago, Flight Hood, 1965/2011

For those people who are interested in knowing more about the work I did during the first twenty years of my career and also, developing an understanding of what the L.A. art scene was like for women, on Sunday, October 23rd at 1PM, I am offering a private tour of the Getty show for a $500 per person tax-deductible donation to Through the Flower. In this tour, which will be limited to a maximum of 10 people, in addition to discussing some of the work and the artists who created them (many of whom I know), I will talk about the decidedly macho atmosphere of the southern California art scene in the 1960's and early 70's and how I managed to make a place for myself in the face of that extremely challenging atmosphere, one which (as I mentioned), I attempted to change. 

Best regards,