For this project I selected an
artist who is frequently dubbed as one of the pioneers in feminist art, Judy Chicago— someone
that revels at being both “an artist and a troublemaker.” Her work incorporates various
mediums from painting, needlepoint, ceramics, to glass blown art which can be
described best as visual metaphors of female agency. According to her website “For
over five decades, Chicago has remained steadfast in her commitment to the
power of art as a vehicle for intellectual transformation and social change and
to women’s right to engage in the highest level of art production.”
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| Feminist Artist, Judy Chicago |
Born and raised by Marxist
parents which she claims “strongly influenced” much of her work. She attended
the Art Institute of Chicago at a young age before graduating from college and leaving
her full time job as a teacher to pursue her love of art. It was during the
early moments of the women’s lib movement of the 1970s where she founded the
first feminist art program in the United States with colleague Miriam Schapiro.
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| The Crowning Quilt, Judy Chicago, 1982. |
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| Birth Special Technique, Judy Chicago, 1984. |
Throughout
her career she’s dealt with the macho attitudes like “you can’t be an artist
and a woman to, that there was no such thing as female content or that women
didn’t have a different point of view” which in my opinion mimics closely with
the comments made by Naomi Wolf in her essay The Beauty Myth that “women are allowed a mind or a body but not
both.” It was out of these attitudes where Chicago trained in labor-intensive
skills such as auto-mechanics, welding and other male dominated trades, to
challenge the norms of her male dominated art scene of southern California.
Looking at this even further her experiences in her career kind of resonates
with the Graffiti Grrlz chapter on
female masculinity. Jessica Nydia Pabon-Colon writes that, “as a
concept, feminist masculinity can be as a performance in line with the work of
Hip Hop feminism—”to fuck with the grays” and boy does she.
Many of her collections I
found to be aesthetically pleasing but, I decided to focus on her most famous art
piece titled, The Dinner Party.
Permanently residing in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the
Brooklyn Museum, The Dinner Party
is a reinterpretation of The Last Supper
from “the point of view of those who’ve done the cooking throughout history.
This yonic design is hailed as a monumental work of
art for its powerful symbolism. It consists of
a large dining table, triangular in configuration, that employs numerous media,
including ceramics, china-painting, and an array of needle and fiber
techniques, to honor the history of women in Western Civilization. At the
centerpiece for each place setting lies a dinner plate in the shape of a
woman’s vulva. In taking on a semiotic analysis of this artwork one can draw on
the notions that it differs from the typical male gaze used in traditional art forms,
whereas The Dinner Party focuses primarily
on each dinner plate where life begins but, also where nourishment takes
places. Many art critics were either offended in the sexual nature of The Dinner Party or went on record saying they “don’t get it, it’s just plates
with vaginas on them.” Now, I have had the pleasure of viewing this piece
several times long before I even considered taking a women and gender studies
course. You can also see how this art piece responds to the ideals of
patriarchy in a religious context. Each side of the triangular table has
thirteen place settings in correspondence to Jesus and his thirteen
disciplines.
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| The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago, 1974-79. |
Works Cited:
Pabon-Colon, Jessica Nydia. “Graffiti Grrlz.”
Wolf, Naomi. “The Beauty Myth.”
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