Goddess with Flares, from the portfolio "On Fire"

Judy Chicago's Atmospheres are pyrotechnic performances that temporarily alter and animate the landscape through explosions of brilliant color. A pathbreaking feminist artist, Chicago developed the Atmospheres in the late 1960s, in response to prominent male artists who favored a vocabulary of cutting, digging, and displacement when working in the land. By contrast, Chicago uses colored smoke and flares, "never to dominate but rather to transform--not to overpower, but to change . . ." Upon creating the first Atmosphere, she observed, "the whole world was feminized--if only for a moment."

After Chicago launched the country's first feminist art program at Fresno State College in 1970, her Atmospheres shifted towards woman-centric imagery, with students participating as performers. Their bodies painted in vivid color, the women ritualistically acted out primal scenes of inventing fire and igniting spiritual energy.