- Artist or Maker
- Judy Chicago
United States, Illinois, Chicago, active Los Angeles, born 1939 - Title
- Pastel Domes #1
- Date Made
- 1968; table refabricated 2012 to artist’s original specifications
- Medium
- Sprayed acrylic lacquer on clear acrylic domes
- Dimensions
- Domes: 5 × 10 in. (12.7 × 25.4 cm) each; overall: 38 × 30 × 30 in. (96.5 × 76.2 × 76.2 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2012.49a-e
- Collecting Area
- Modern Art
- Curatorial Notes
Immediately after receiving her MFA in 1964, Judy Chicago went to auto body school, where she was the only woman among some 250 men. She did this not only to learn spray-painting techniques but also to prove her “‘seriousness’ to the male art world.” At auto body school, she “discovered the idea of merging color and surface [and] was hooked.” Chicago moved from painting metal to painting flat and then molded acrylic surfaces, which fused chemically with the automotive lacquers; for her, this fusion became like skin. Pastel Domes #1 is one of a group of dome sculptures she made between 1968 and 1971 that—even as they echo the repeated geometric forms of contemporaneous Minimalism—evoke subtle female tropes. Chicago considered a group of three to be the primary family unit, and likened the rounded forms to breasts or bellies.
Exhibition label: Light, Space, Surface: Works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021, Carol S. Eliel.
- Selected Bibliography
- Eliel, Carol, editor. Light, Space, Surface: Art from Southern California. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books, 2021.
