The Dinner Party
 |
|
| Artist | Judy Chicago |
|---|---|
| Year | 1979 |
| Type | Mixed media |
| Location | Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Owner | Brooklyn Museum |
The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago depicting place settings for 39 mythical and historical famous women. It was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and was first exhibited in 1979. Subsequently, despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues in 6 countries on 3 continents to a viewing audience of 1 million. Since 2007 it has been on permanent exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, United States of America.
Contents |
[edit] About the work
 |
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011) |
The Dinner Party was created by artist Judy Chicago, with the assistance of numerous volunteers, with the goal to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."
The table is triangular and measures 14.63 m (forty-eight feet) on each side.[1] Each place setting features a table runner embroidered with the woman's name and images or symbols relating to her accomplishments, with a napkin, utensils, a glass or goblet, and a plate. Many of the plates feature a butterfly- or flowerlike sculpture as a vulva symbol. A collaborative effort of female and male artisans, The Dinner Party celebrates traditional female accomplishments such as textile arts (weaving, embroidery, sewing) and china painting, which have been framed as craft or domestic art, as opposed to the more culturally valued, male-dominated fine arts. The white floor of triangular porcelain tiles is inscribed with the names of a further 999 notable women[1].
The Dinner Party was donated by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation to the Brooklyn Museum, where it is now permanently housed within the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which opened in March 2007.
"The Dinner Party elevates female achievement in Western history to a heroic scale traditionally reserved for men."
[edit] Details of the Making
The completed Dinner Party took six years and 250,000 dollars to complete, not including volunteer labor.[2] The work began modestly as "Twenty-Five Women Who Were Eaten Alive", a way in which Chicago could use her "butterfly-vagina" imagery and interest in china painting in a high-art setting.[2]
Chicago soon expanded it to include the thirty-nine final women arranged in three groups of thirteen. The triangular shape has significance because it has long been a symbol of the female. It is also an equilateral triangle to represent equality. The number thirteen represents the number of people who were present at the Last Supper, an important comparison for Chicago, as the only people involved there were men.[2] Chicago developed the work on her own for the first three years before bringing in others. Over the next three years, over 400 people contributed to the creation of the work, most of them volunteers. About 125 were called "members of the project", suggesting long-term efforts, and a small group was closely involved with the project for the final three years, including ceramicists, needleworkers, and researchers.[2] The project was organized according to what has been called "benevolent hierarchy" and "non-hierarchical leadership", as Chicago designed most aspects of the work and had the final control over decisions made.[2]
The 39 plates themselves start flat and begin to emerge in higher relief towards the very end of the chronology, meant to represent modern woman's gradual independence and equality, though it is still not totally free of societal expectations.[3] The work also uses supplementary written information such as banners, timelines, and a three-book exhibition publication to provide background information on each woman included and the process of making the work.[3]
[edit] Response
[edit] Immediate critical response (1980-1981)
The Dinner Party prompted many varied opinions. Feminist critic Lucy Lippard stated, "My own initial experience was strongly emotional… The longer I spent with the piece, the more I became addicted to its intricate detail and hidden meanings", and defended the work as an excellent example of the feminist effort.[2] These reactions are echoed by other critics, and the work was glorified by many.[4]
Just as adamant, however, were the immediate critiques of the work. Hilton Kramer, for example, argued, "The Dinner Party reiterates its theme with an insistence and vulgarity more appropriate, perhaps, to an advertising campaign than to a work of art".[5] He called the work not only a kitsch object but also "crass and solemn and singleminded", "very bad art,… failed art,… art so mired in the pieties of a cause that it quite fails to acquire any independent artistic life of its own".[5]
Maureen Mullarkey also criticized the work, calling it preachy and untrue to the women it claims to represent.[5] She especially disagreed with the sentiment she labels "turn ‘em upside down and they all look alike", an essentializing of all women which does not respect the feminist cause.[5] Mullarkey also called the hierarchical aspect of the work into question, claiming that Chicago took advantage of her female volunteers.[6] Similarly, Roberta Smith stated that "its historical import and social significance may be greater than its aesthetic value".[7]
Mullarkey focused on several particular plates in her critique of the work, specifically Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, and Georgia O’Keeffe, using these women as examples of why Chicago's work was disrespectful to the women it depicts. She states that Dickinson's "multi-tiered pink lace crotch" was opposite the woman it was meant to symbolize because of Dickinson's extreme privacy.[6] Woolf's inclusion ignores her frustration at the public's curiosity about the gender of writers, and O’Keeffe had similar thoughts, denying that her work had any gendered or sexual meaning.[6]
[edit] Larger retrospective response
Critics such as Mullarkey have returned to The Dinner Party in later years and stated that their opinions have not changed. Many later responses to the work, however, have been more moderate or accepting, even if only by giving the work value based on its continued importance.
Amelia Jones, for example, places the work in the context of both art history and the evolution of feminist ideas to explain critical responses of the work.[8] She discusses Hilton Kramer's objection to the piece as an extension of Modernist ideas about art, stating, "the piece blatantly subverts modernist value systems, which privilege the ‘pure’ aesthetic object over the debased sentimentality of the domestic and popular arts" .[8] Jones also addresses some critics’ argument that The Dinner Party is not high art because of its huge popularity and public appeal. Where Kramer saw the work's popularity as a sign that it was of a lesser quality, Lippard and Chicago herself thought that its capability of speaking to a larger audience should be considered a positive attribute.[8]
The "butterfly vagina" imagery continues to be both highly criticized and esteemed. Many conservatives criticized the work for reasons summed up by Congressman Robert K. Dornan in his statement that it was "ceramic 3-D pornography", but some feminists also found the imagery problematic because of its essentializing, passive nature.[8] However, the work fits into the feminist movement of the 1970s which glorified and focused on the female body. Other feminists have disagreed with the main idea of this work because it shows a universal female experience, which many argue does not exist. For example, lesbians and women of ethnicities other than white and European are not well represented in the work.[8]
Jones presents the argument regarding the collaborative nature of the project. Many critics attacked Chicago for claiming that the work was a collaboration when instead she was in control of the work. Chicago, however, had never claimed that the work would be this kind of ideal collaboration and always took full responsibility for the piece.[8]
Artist Cornelia Parker nominated it as a work she would like to see "binned", saying, "Too many vaginas for my liking. I find it all about Judy Chicago's ego rather than the poor women she's supposed to be elevating – we're all reduced to vaginas, which is a bit depressing. It's almost like the biggest piece of victim art you've ever seen. And it takes up so much space! I quite like the idea of trying to fit it in some tiny bin – not a very feminist gesture but I don't think the piece is either."[9]
[edit] Controversy
[edit] Controversy at the University of the District of Columbia
In 1990, The Dinner Party was considered for permanent housing at the University of the District of Columbia. It was part of a plan to bring in revenue for the school, as it had proved to be very successful.[10] The work was to be donated as a gift to the school, with the understanding that one of the school's buildings would be repaired to house it. The money for these repairs had already been allocated and did not come from the school's working budget.[10] However, misunderstandings about the monetary situation were emphasized and perpetuated by media sources.[10] Eventually, the plans were cancelled owing to threats to affect the school's working budget.[10]
[edit] Women represented in the place settings
The first wing of the triangular table has place settings for female figures from the goddesses of prehistory through to Hypatia at the time of the Roman Empire. This section covers the emergence and decline of the Classical world.
The second wing begins with Marcella and covers the rise of Christianity. It concludes with Anna van Schurman in the seventeenth century at the time of the Reformation.
The third wing represents the Age of Revolution. It begins with Anne Hutchinson and moves through the twentieth century to the final places paying tribute to Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keeffe.
The 39 women with places at the table are:
Wing I: From Prehistory to the Roman Empire
1. Primordial Goddess
2. Fertility goddess
3. Ishtar
4. Kali
5. Snake Goddess
6. Sophia
7. Amazon
8. Hatshepsut
9. Judith
10. Sappho
11. Aspasia
12. Boudica
13. Hypatia
Wing II: From the Beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation
14. Marcella
15. Saint Bridget
16. Theodora of Byzantium
17. Hrosvitha
18. Trotula of Salerno
19. Eleanor of Aquitaine
20. Hildegard of Bingen
21. Petronilla de Meath
22. Christine de Pisan
23. Isabella d'Este
24. Elizabeth I of England
25. Artemisia Gentileschi
26. Anna van Schurman
Wing III: From the American to the Women's Revolution
27. Anne Hutchinson
28. Sacajawea
29. Caroline Herschel
30. Mary Wollstonecraft
31. Sojourner Truth
32. Susan B. Anthony
33. Elizabeth Blackwell
34. Emily Dickinson
35. Ethel Smyth
36. Margaret Sanger
37. Natalie Barney
38. Virginia Woolf
39. Georgia O'Keeffe
[edit] Women represented in the Heritage Floor
The Heritage Floor, which rests underneath the table, features the names of 999 women inscribed on handmade floor tilings.
[edit] Further reading
- Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: A Symbol of our Heritage. New York: Anchor (1979). ISBN 0385145675
- Chicago, Judy. Through The Flower: My Struggle as A Woman Artist. Lincoln: Authors Choice Press (2006). ISBN 0595380468
- Jones, Amelia. Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party in Feminist Art History. Berkeley: University of California Press (1996). ISBN 0520205650
[edit] Documentary films
- Right Out of History: Judy Chicago, Phoenix Learning Group (2008) (DVD)
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Chicago, 10.
- ^ a b c d e f Lippard, Lucy. "Judy Chicago's Dinner Party." Art in America 68 (April 1980): 114-126.
- ^ a b Koplos, Janet. "The Dinner Party Revisited." Art in America 91.5 (May 2003): 75-77.
- ^ Caldwell, Susan H. "Experiencing The Dinner Party." Woman's Art Journal 1.2 (Autumn 1980-Winter 1981): 35-37.
- ^ a b c d Kramer, Hilton. "Art: Judy Chicago's Dinner Party Comes to Brooklyn Museum." The New York Times. October 17, 1980.
- ^ a b c Mullarkey, Maureen. "The Dinner Party is a Church Supper: Judy Chicago at the Brooklyn Museum." Commonweal Foundation, 1981.
- ^ Smith, Roberta. "Art Review: For a Paean to Heroic Women, a Place at History's Table." New York Times. September 20, 2002.
- ^ a b c d e f Jones, Amelia. "The ‘Sexual Politics’ of The Dinner Party: A Critical Context." Reclaiming Female Agency. Eds. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 409-433.
- ^ Michael Landy: modern art is rubbish…, Hermione Hoby, The Observer, Sunday 17 January 2010
- ^ a b c d Lippard, Lucy R. "Uninvited Guests: How Washington Lost The Dinner Party." Art in America 79 (Dec 1991): 39-49.
[edit] References
- Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. London: Merrell (2007). ISBN 1858943701
[edit] External links
- The Dinner Party exhibition website from the Brooklyn Museum, including a searchable database of all the women represented.
- The Dinner Party from Chicago's non-proift organization, Through the Flower.
[edit] Videos
- CAFKA.TV's coverage of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the permanent home of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party on YouTube 28 March 2007
- Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum on YouTube Video tour of the work and part of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art by James Kalm . 28 March 2007. Accessed September 2009.
