On Judy Chicago’s ‘Forever de Young’

Dodie Bellamy at Artforum:

GIDDY FROM SIPPING FLUTES of the de Young Museum’s prosecco, my friend Karen and I quickly realized that from the VIP section, the view of Judy Chicago’s smoke sculpture, Forever de Young, was going to suck. Since we were standing to the side of the huge pyramid-shaped scaffolding that was holding the canisters of colored pigments that would be “released” into the air, we knew we would not be able to see the whole picture. We scanned for a better vantage point but were cordoned off, and the rest of the crowd formed a dense mass that looked impossible to insert ourselves into. So we hunkered down with museum patrons and low-level journalists, and waited, as the de Young instructed us, for Chicago to “pull the trigger at just the right moment” and set the extravaganza in motion.

Until I got here, I wasn’t sure the event was going to happen. Last March, Chicago’s Living Smoke performance in Palm Desert was cancelled because of environmental concerns.

more here.