Judy Chicago’s Rainbow Pickett (1965): Finally Looking, Hoping to See

In her 1975 autobiography, Through the Flower, American artist Judy Chicago recalls a disturbing incident: in 1965, a prominent male curator visited her shared studio space and refused to look at a work that would later appear in a groundbreaking New York exhibition. Although she refrains from naming specifics, the hints are clear: the man who refused to look at her art was Walter Hopps, then curator and director of the Pasadena Art Museum; the work was Rainbow Pickett (1965); and the New York show was Primary Structures (1966) at the Jewish Museum. Chicago reports years later that this exchange “broke [her] heart.” Ever since Hopps’s stilted encounter with Rainbow Pickett in Chicago’s studio, a tradition of overlooking has haunted the work, ranging from misspellings of its title to incorrectly listed materials to a dearth of critique. What secrets remain to be discovered in the generosity of a slow study? Can an attentive and deep looking allow the work to finally be seen? In this paper, I hope to offer Rainbow Pickett this long-deserved consideration. First, I will address and attempt to remedy the displacement of the work’s materials and materiality in its viewing. I will then analyze Rainbow Pickett’s relationship to space and time. Finally, I will close with a renewed apprehension of Hopps’s fateful interaction with Chicago. In the arc of this paper, I will raise questions of nesting multiple selves in movements between private and public spaces and seek to complicate traditional Minimalist perceptions of wholeness.