Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party: A Framework for

Elizabeth Bradshaw

ART 4352: Women in Art

Dr. Elizabeth Lisot

December 10, 2016

Bradshaw 2

In the 1970s, Feminist art was a new, aesthetic movement emerging in popular culture.

Change in the late 1960s brought about this movement and one notable group of women created a shocking, new exhibition in the winter of 1972— (Fig.1)—an installation that not only introduced unknown female artists like Miriam Schapiro and Faith Wilding, but presented a community of artists who would initiate how Feminist art would be viewed and interpreted by academics and the public alike. One Womanhouse feminist in particular, , lived an interesting life that questioned the female role in Western civilization and led her to create, The

Dinner Party (Fig.2).

Womanhouse was a tour-de-force in the art world and an advancement for Feminist art.

Not only was its purpose to showcase female art students in the at the

California Institute of Arts (CIA), but it gave women control of their art and exhibition space to voice their emotion through a visual medium. Chicago and Schapiro also state in the catalogue another purpose “of the Program is to teach women to use power equipment, tools and building techniques.”1 Renovating and constructing Womanhouse for the upcoming exhibition was an emboldening job given to many females who were not permitted these tasks before entering the program at CIA. Painting and carpentry were regarded as laborious tasks for females in a newly, liberated society that was, at times, still male-dominated. Linda Nochlin concurs in her 1994 essay, these were the kind of trades and tasks not assigned regularly to females in spite of the progressing sociopolitical environment. “Womanhouse made it obvious that for many women, authority figures were masculine by definition and having teachers of one’s own sex who were

1 “Womanhouse Catalog Essay,” Womanhouse.net, accessed December 4, 2016, http://www.womanhouse.net/statement/. Bradshaw 3 openly conscious of their femininity was indeed a radical innovation.”2 Restoring the house on

Mariposa Street emboldened women and expanded their traditional roles. The exhibition awarded a sense of purpose to the female artist who saw beyond their “female abilities” that society had imposed on them. Womanhouse was a success for Chicago and Schapiro and it presented the opportunity to move forward with other ideas in Feminist art individually and broke new ground for feminist criticism and education.

The subject and historical context of female art was, at times, still tainted with a male- oriented focus on the female body during the early 20th Century. Instead of focus and discussion of the female voice and viewpoint, many women artist began writing articles to reverse this discriminatory dialogue. In a 1973 article in Womanspace Journal, Chicago and Schapiro asked the question, “What does it feel like to be a woman? To be formed around a central core and have a secret place which can be entered and which is also a passageway from which life emerges?”3 This was not only a profound statement because of its insightful and thought- provoking statement, but because its subject matter revolves around the female consciousness.

The question empowers the woman, giving her complete ownership of the conversation, taking it back from the male-dominated art critical thought and the sparse, if at all, conservative female discussion. The essay also defined a new perspective of female art going beyond Georgia

O’Keeffe’s imagery of erotic, female art.

Many social constructs were occurring at this politically charged time. With the end of the Vietnam War only three years before Chicago’s The Dinner Party, “questioning not just the

2 Linda Nochlin, “Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History,” in : The Linda Nochlin Reader, ed. Maura Reilly (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015), 197. 3 Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, “The Female Imagery,” Womanspace Journal 1, no. 3 (1973): 11. Bradshaw 4 entire position of women in the contemporary New Left and anti-Vietnam movements

(subordinate, exploited, sexually objectified) but the position of women within society in general”4 became the new, normative discourse. Lucy Lippard, an early advocate of Feminist art in the 1970s, understood what Womanhouse and The Dinner Party were declaring, supporting her own research on deconstruction and conceptual art. Female artists were protesting repression and sexual objectification with their art while reversing the narrative using the same New Left and anti-Vietnam movements. “A uniform density, an overall texture, often sensuously tactile and often repetitive to the point of obsession; the preponderance (sic) of circular forms and central focus…”5 Chicago’s installation came at an auspicious time in Feminist Art History.

The Dinner Party gives the audience a more discernable aesthetic, it emboldens the female gender because Chicago is empowering female, attributed skills that have frequently been perceived as inferior hobbies. Crafts, threading, and pottery are all highlighted in the installation.

Chicago uses these materials popularized in late 19th Century Victorian England to highlight women’s accomplishments that were normally overshadowed or thought of as secondary pursuits. She is elevating these trades in her work to honor women, their accomplishments, and their thankless labor. A major criticism of the domestic theme of The Dinner Party is the juxtaposition of utilizing high art with low art in the same work. Chicago was hesitant to use craft arts as a medium, understanding the conventional disdain for them by scholars and art historians and was unsettled of how it would be received. She discusses the decision in her published diary, “Stuffed and dimensional fabric work is always so tacky, and I’m not sure we

4 Linda Nochlin, “Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History,” 189. 5 Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, “Feminist Art in North America and Great Britain,” in Women, Art, and Society, ed. Whitney Chadwick, (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 358. Bradshaw 5 make it work.”6 The piece has been described as elementary, tasteless, and cheap by many critics, but the domestic themes Chicago used in The Dinner Party serve a purpose. Clement

Greenburg, argues the installation is not a showcase of talent, but describes The Dinner Party as low art. “Kitsch is all that formalist, modernist art history is not…it is associated with women’s tastes and with domestic crafts.”7 Jones views Chicago’s The Dinner Party not as an obvious marriage of two arts, high and low, but instead an introduction of craft art into the world of high- art, shattering the stereotypes of what defines Modernism proving again to art scholars and critics that Feminist art is revolutionary and is attempting to shatter the status quo. She reiterates in her 1995 essay:

Chicago’s integration of media associated with women’s labor in the domestic sphere (needlework, ceramics, and china painting) into this monumental artwork produces an explosive collision between aesthetics (the public domain of the high art museum) and domestic kitsch (the private domain of women’s space, the home).8

Besides the role of the arts and craft played in the construction of The Dinner Party, Chicago was also criticized because of her methods of utilizing volunteers for the project. Some critics such as Rabinovitz maintain she took on a more masculine charge “by emphasizing her role as an authority figure and encouraging “volunteerism,” Chicago emulated the societal and art school practices that many feminists have fought.”9 This was a lesson she learned to not repeat in her subsequent exhibition, The Birth Project (Fig. 3).

6 Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (New York: Anchor, 1979), 45. 7 Clement Greenburg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961) 10. 8 Amelia Jones, “The “Sexual Politics” of The Dinner Party,” in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 410. 9 Lauren Rabinovitz, “Issues of Feminists Aesthetics: Judy Chicago and Joyce Wieland,” Woman’s Art Journal 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1980/Winter 1981): 38-41. Bradshaw 6

Benefiting from the scolding criticism of her use of volunteers in The Dinner Party,

Chicago wanted to atone for the exploitation she initiated. With The Birth Project, Chicago took lessons in embroidery, quilting, and other sewing techniques. “She has created needlework canvases with birthing themes for women to work on, in their own environment, but under her artistic control: small embroidered pieces, larger needlepoint tapestries, even large quilts.”10

Although the exhibition did not receive the prominence or notoriety as The Dinner Party did,

Chicago used this exhibition as a vehicle to showcase her evolution as an artist by educating herself in the arts and crafts, taking sewing lessons. As a result, the piece became accessible to females in their everyday lives. Whether it could be viewed at a women’s health clinic, a small gallery space, or a public library, The Birth Project was exhibited in alternative locations not regularly seen in the traditional, art environment, giving females a new perspective of Feminist art, while providing female artists new avenues in ways to present their work.

Even though critics saw Chicago’s volunteer use in The Dinner Party as exploitation,

Chicago regarded it as completely different; it was a communal effort of women supporting each other who shared like interests in support of a project for the greater good. The Dinner Party was an altruistic, feminist project created en masse on the historical basis of female support networks.

Gerda Lerner, in her 1994 book, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, first called these female networks, affinity clusters. “Because of their isolation from intellectual life and because of the societal censure of learned women, such women were particularly dependent of finding supportive individuals or support networks.”11 Affinity clusters, or affinity groups, were

10 Joan Marx, “The Birth Project: Another Judy Chicago Five Year Idea,” Women Artists News 8, no. 4 (May/June 1983): 18. 11 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen- Seventy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 226. Bradshaw 7 primarily started when females needed an outlet for intellectual conversation that were without the presence of male suppression. Men dominated the university and clergy professions, thus women throughout history, within the convent, courts, and salons, formed social groups where they shared curiosities and interests in philosophy, literature, and religion away from a male- dominated environment. As women were discouraged from intellectual curiosity, bourgeois women whose fathers and brothers supported their education still felt academically suppressed.

“They sometimes enjoyed the benevolence of their families and, if they were lucky, a father who was willing to provide them with the education that was prohibited by the larger society.”12 High society and blue-blooded women found it easier to have a salon of like-mindedness without male opinions. These soirées in 17th Century England quickly evolved into a female social and education movement aptly named, Bluestocking . The historically infamous social meetings began as attempts to discuss fine arts and literature but also served as an outlet to escape male gambling and entertainment. In the same manner as Bluestocking Feminists seeking to reclaim their independence through their intellectual assemblies, The Dinner Party sought to reclaim female ownership of a craft little celebrated and highly patronized, by working with female volunteers who were skilled in sewing and embroidery; Chicago believed she accomplished this goal.

Feminist criticism of The Dinner Party is centered around female imagery, but Jones asserts the conversation is centered around the idea that, “women were biologically driven to produce imagery that mimicked the structure of their own sexual anatomy.”13 Not all female

12 Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation (New York: Merrell, 2007), 13. 13 Amelia Jones, “The “Sexual Politics” of The Dinner Party,” in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 414. Bradshaw 8 artist paint an expression that is one-dimensional. Chicago focuses on female imagery because of what it embodies in the female—their essence, their being—symbolized by the flower or the butterfly representing a metamorphosis evident in her earlier works. Chicago and Schapiro defend this in their 1973 article:

The visual symbology that we have been describing must not be seen in a simplistic sense as “vaginal or womb art”. Rather, we are suggesting that women artists have used the central cavity which defines them as women as the framework for an imagery which allows for the complete reversal of the way in which women are seen by the culture.14

Female artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Lee Bontecou support this theory with their respective works, Grey Line with Black, Blue and Yellow (Fig. 4), and Untitled (Fig. 5) portraying centralized imagery. This interpretation of female genitalia evolving from object to subject through a woman’s eyes attempts to enlighten and embolden the female audience. Centralized imagery gives ownership to the female and is central part of The Dinner Party and the Feminist

Art movement, and gave birth to Chicago’s own coined term, cunt imagery. While most critics praised, many deemed it boring, absurd, even disgusting. As John Perreault stated:

It is an important work; it is a key work. Certain conservative journalistic critics may call it kitsch to their dying day, may puritanically rage against its sexual imagery, may imply over and over again that it can’t be good art because it’s too popular; but I know it’s great. I was profoundly moved.15

Even with the discourse surrounding it, The Dinner Party has stayed relevant to Feminism and has been a mouthpiece for female artists and the .

Much criticism has been hurled at The Dinner Party. Literature since the exhibition opening has been disapproving as much as it has been praised, but Chicago’s piece is a symbolic

14 Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, “The Female Imagery,” Womanspace Journal, 1 no. 3 (1973): 14. 15 Jones, “The “Sexual Politics” of The Dinner Party,” 409.

Bradshaw 9 history of female accomplishments and struggles, an homage to women and Feminism. An ambitious goal with thirty-nine place settings, six entry panels, hundreds of volunteers, and the inclusion of over one thousand names, the project was monumental and took five years to accomplish. Chicago’s vision continues to engage audiences, and maintains it purpose as an interpretive history of female achievements through a framework of women’s liberation.

Bradshaw 10

Bibliography

Broude, Norma and Garrard, Mary D. “Feminist Art in North America and Great Britain,” in Women, Art, and Society, edited by Whitney Chadwick, 355-377. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012.

Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party. New York: Anchor, 1979.

Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. New York: Merrell, 2007.

Chicago, Judy and Schapiro, Miriam. “The Female Imagery.” Womanspace Journal 1, no. 3 (1973): 11-14.

Greenburg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” in Art and Culture: Critical Essays, 3-33. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961.

Jones, Amelia. “The “Sexual Politics” of The Dinner Party.” in Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist Art History After Postmodernism, edited by Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, 409-434. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen- Seventy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Marx, Joan. “The Birth Project: Another Judy Chicago Five Year Idea.” Women Artists News 8, no. 4 (May/June 1983): 18.

Nochlin, Linda. “Starting from Scratch: The Beginnings of Feminist Art History,” in Women Artists: The Linda Nochlin Reader, edited by Maura Reilly. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2015.

Rabinovitz, Lauren. “Issues of Feminists Aesthetics: Judy Chicago and Joyce Wieland.” Woman’s Art Journal 1, no. 2 (Autumn 1980/Winter 1981): 38-41.

“Womanhouse Catalog Essay,” Womanhouse.net. Accessed December 4, 2016. http://www.womanhouse.net/statement/.

Bradshaw 11

Images

Fig. 1: Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, Womanhouse. 1972, mixed media, installation. California Institute of the Arts. Los Angeles, California.

Fig. 2: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party. 1974-1979, Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 576 x 576 in. , Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. Brooklyn, New York.

Bradshaw 12

Images (Continued)

Fig. 3: Judy Chicago, The Birth Project (Creation of the World PP2, Exhibition Unit 45, 1984, 10 3/4 x 15 in.). 1985, mixed media, various sizes. Albuquerque Museum. Albuquerque, NM.

Fig. 4: Georgia O’Keeffe, Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow. 1923, oil on canvas, 48 x 30 in. The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Houston, Texas.

Bradshaw 13

Images (Continued)

Fig. 5: Lee Bontecou, Untitled. 1960, steel, canvas, and copper wire, 72 x 72 x18 in. The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois.