Judy Chicago, Los Angeles the cool years

par Philippe  -  3 Juillet 2018, 08:10

Judy Chicago, Los Angeles the cool years

Exhibition at the Villa Arson from July 1rst to November 4th 2018 with Marcia Hafif, John McCracken, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Pat O'Neil, Dewain Valentine, open every days except Thursday from 2pm to 7pm and from (July - August) and from 2pm to 6pm (September - June), 20 Stephen Liégeard avenue, 06105 Nice, Cedex 2, phone : 04.92.07.73.73, admission free.

 

When we speak about the career of the artist Judy Chicago everybody think about the Artforum advertising, the educative program for women at the women house (1971 - 1972) or the permanent installation "Dinner party" at the Brooklyn Museum (1974 - 1979). But few people know something about the art work before that period of time. Judy Chicago follows art studies at the UCLA (University of California Los Angeles) and begins to exhibit when several artistic movements like the Hard Edge, Light and Space, Finish Fetish, LA Pop Art take the power by rejecting the expressionism abstract and it's lyric gesture. This intellectual brainstorm on the West coast contrasts with the conservatism of the East coast. New -York and it's elites like with contempt because they estimate that the West coast artist are too hedonists.

Judy Chicago "Flight Hood" (1965 - 2011)

Judy Chicago "Flight Hood" (1965 - 2011)

This conservative analysis doesn't include all the elements like the specificity of this place. Contrary to New - York and his verticality the California is flat and ponctuated by sunsets and sunrises. Many European immigrants who have let down Europe have taken with them their own values and their utopias. The Californian artists use the material they can find in the military or space industry like plexiglass, lucite, vinyl, polyester or rubber. These materials mixing with spray painting appears as being the marker of this generation. In 1957 a curator William Hopps and an art critic Edward Kienholz open the "Ferus Gallery" who speedly becomes to be the laboratory of the Vanguard artists. They named themselves "Studs" and made a more joy full and erotic Pop Art despised by New -York but appreciate by Andy Warhol himself.

Judy Chicago "Feather Room" (1967 - 2018)

Judy Chicago "Feather Room" (1967 - 2018)

Among this intellectual brainstorm the Judy Chicago art work seems to be on the opposite of what happened. She follows the Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg way of painting like in serigraphy "Flash Back, version #2" (1965) and her sculptures "Sunset square" and "Ten Part Cylinders" (1966 - 1967) are clearly influenced by Robert Morris or Donald Judd. This minimalist filiation help her to be exhibited at the Jewish Museum of New - York in 1966 but Judy will take her distances with the minimalists. Her erotic installation "Rearrangeable Rainbow Block" (1965) (blocks, cylinders, cubes put on the ground) and "Feather Room" with real duke feather break the minimalism way of making. At the beginning of the 1970's she becomes to be a feminist activist and reject definitively the minimalism and it's patriarchate thinking.

Judy Chicago ''Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks" (1965)

Judy Chicago ''Rearrangeable Rainbow Blocks" (1965)

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