Artwork Description
Judy Chicago – Sublime Environment from the On Fire Suite
Dimensions: 20 x 24″ paper / 13.25 x 20″ plate
Year: 2013/2018
Medium: pigment print on paper
Edition: ed. 10
Judy Chicago’s “Sublime Environment from the On Fire Suite,” a large scale installation was created with 25 tons of dry ice, and encompassed an approximately 30 x 80 ft. environment of 10 pyramidal ziggurat structures, each standing 8 ft. tall with 91 blocks of dry ice, each block weighing 50 lbs. The ziggurats slowly dissolved into thick clouds of ethereal fog over the duration of the installation. At dusk, Chicago and her team illuminated the ice with bright pink road flares, re-creating the artist’s 1968 performance piece, “Disappearing Environments.”
“Disappearing Environments” was originally staged in 1968 by Judy Chicago, Eric Orr, and Lloyd Hamrol in a large shopping center in Century City, CA. In the midst of what the artists felt was an increasingly consumer oriented landscape of large and imposing structures, the piece presented a critique of the rise of consumerism and its subsequent commercial development. At a time of a raised interest in Feminist art, the piece also contained undertones of a feminist critique, its dissolving square blocks suggesting the potential of a disappearing patriarchal society.