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Womanhouse

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Womanhouse (30 January - 28 February, 1972) was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program. Chicago, Schapiro, their students and women artists from the local community participated. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to use consciousness-raising techniques to generate the content of the exhibition. Each woman was given a room or space of her own in a 17-room abandoned house in Hollywood,CA that was soon to be demolished.[clarification needed] [1]

Only women were allowed to view the exhibition on its first day, after which the exhibition was open to all viewers. Chicago observed that on the first day, responses to the artwork were heightened, and on subsequent days responses were muted.[citation needed] During the exhibition's duration, it received approximately 10,000 visitors.[1]

Concept of Womanhouse

Chicago and Schapiro's teaching is based on group operation where twenty-one young women artists were elected to join this exclusively female class. The way of teaching is circular, "more womb-like," describes Schapiro.[2] The primary concern was to provide a nourishing environment for growth. In the group, laws are based on mutual aesthetic consent to encourage and support artistic needs of the group.[clarification needed] There are some unwritten laws regarding the appropriateness of subject matter for art making: dolls, pillows, cosmetics, sanitary napkins, silk stockings, underwear, children's toys, washbasins, toasters, frying pans, refrigerator, door handles, shower caps, quilts, and satin bedspread.[clarification needed] The content of the project Womanhouse was to reverse this mythical thinking.

The initial idea to create Womanhouse was Paula Harper's,[2] she helped to conceptualize the project at the beginning. Later, the conception of Womanhouse continued as a topic for discussion in one of the class meetings. During the discussion, students asked what it would be like to work out one of their closest associative memories, the home, which as a culture of women have been identified with for centuries.[citation needed] It has been the place where women struggled to please others.[citation needed] The students wondered what the home would be like if they pleased no one but themselves as women and began the project.[citation needed]

The relationship between biology and social roles formed the foundation of Womanhouse. Most of the rooms replicated areas of the house while at the same time challenged the activity of that room and the meaning of that activity to women's self-image through creative exaggeration.

A 47-minute documentary film was made in 1974 about the project by Johanna Demetrakas, and is now available on video. Its European distribution is assured by le peuple qui manque

Artists

Among the artists and CalArts students that collaborated were[3]:

References

  • Harper, Paula, The First Feminist Art Program: A View from the 1980s, Signs, vol. 10, no. 4, summer, 1985, p. 762-781.
  • Raven, Arlene, "Womanhouse," The Power of Feminist Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1994, p. 161-172.
  • Schapiro, Miriam, The Education of Women as Artists: Project Womanhouse, Art Journal, vol. 31, no.3, Spring, 1972, p. 268-270.

References

  1. ^ Meyer, Laura (2011). Sondra Hale and Terry Wolverton (ed.). From Site to Vision: The Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture,. Los Angeles: OTIS School of Art and Design. p. 91.
  2. ^ Schapiro, Miriam, The Education of Women as Artists: Project Womanhouse, Art Journal, vol. 31, no.3, Spring, 1972, p. 268-270
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