A survey of Judy Chicago’s work from 1965 to 1972—made in Los Angeles and Fresno State College, where, in 1970, she developed the first feminist art program in the United States—is now on view at Jeffrey Deitch.

This [exhibition, JUDY CHICAGO—LOS ANGELES,] has enormous meaning to me because we’re not only doing a comprehensive show of different aspects of my early work—painting, sculpture, fireworks, installations—and all of that has never really been put together before, but you’re also doing it in a Frank Gehry-designed building. Gehry was my first landlord in Santa Monica, and his sister married my first gallerist. Frank was not particularly interested in women artists at that time—I don’t know if he ever was…

And, as you know, I had a really difficult time in the first two decades of my career. Some of the sculptures that are going to be in the show are being reconstructed because I had to destroy them: I just couldn’t afford to store that much work. I stored some early work, fortunately, which the Getty curators unearthed for Pacific Standard Time—that began the process of people looking at my early work…

Even though I had a really difficult time in the L.A. arts scene—which was very inhospitable to women—still, L.A. nurtured me, and I feel like the foundations of my work are in what I did in that first decade and a half of professional practice in California: the development of my formal language, my color systems, my approach to and interest in a wide variety of materials…

Also, doing this show is bringing a lot of memories back, some of which were simply too painful for me to deal with at the time. Had I really acknowledged them or dealt with them, I probably would have given up. I had such a hard time and faced so much rejection and misunderstanding. Still, when I went to auto-body school, I learned for the first time that making art involved making physical objects, and I learned a sense of craft that I never had—about how you do things. I had a teacher at the auto-body school who said to me: “Judy, there’s no such thing as perfection. There’s only the illusion of perfection, and I’m going to teach you how to achieve that.” — Judy Chicago, interview with Jeffrey Deitch, Purple 32

JUDY CHICAGO—LOS ANGELES

Through November 2.

Jeffrey Deitch

925 North Orange Drive, Los Angeles.

Judy Chicago, from top: Immolation, 1972, from Women and Smoke, photograph by Donald Woodman, ARS, New York, printed 2019, ChromaLuxe metal print on aluminum; Birth Hood, 1965-2011, spray paint on hood of Corvair, courtesy of Salon 94 Gallery, New York, ADAGP 2018; Trinity, 1965/2019, Matthews polyurethane paint on stainless steel; Orange Atmosphere, 1968, courtesy of Through the Flower Archives; Pale Green Domes with Solid Core, 1968, sprayed acrylic lacquer on successive formed clear acrylic domes, courtesy of Salon 94 Gallery and the Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, photograph by Woodman, ARS, New York; Sky Flesh, 1971, sprayed acrylic lacquer on acrylic; Pink Atmosphere, 1971, Cal State Fullerton, photograph by Woodman, ARS, New York, printed 2019, ChromaLuxe metal print on aluminum; Pasadena Lifesavers Red Series #2, 1969–1970, sprayed acrylic lacquer on acrylic, photograph by Woodman, ARS, New York; Flight Hood, 1965/2011, spray paint on hood of Corvair, courtesy of Salon 94 Gallery, ADAGP 2018. Images courtesy and © the artist, the photographers, the publishers, and Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles.