Judy Chicago & Feminist Content

Judy Chicago created art with content and meaning at a time when content and meaning were being scorned. It's no surprise to me that the art with content and meaning is the more survivable. In retrospect it's nice to have some idea what people were thinking in a certain time.

In the 70s - when the historically disenfranchised were finding and creating unique modes of expression - the mainstream art world was saying that there was nothing to say.

__________________Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, now at home in the Brooklyn Museum, addresses Female agency and the problem of erasure throughout most of recorded history. I am acutely aware of exceptional women who have been "forgotten" (on purpose) and the effect that that can have on women's identity. I especially appreciate the Dinner Party and that it does have a home in Brooklyn, where I can visit (I've been there once so far, and expect to return).

From Women, Art and Society (Whitney Chadwick):

In 1981, Griselda Pollock and Roszika Parker argued that the iconography of Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, specifically it's vaginal imagery, was retrograde because it set itself up for exploitation: It is easily retrieved and co-opted by a male culture because [it does] not rupture radically meanings and connotations of women in art as body, as sexual, as nature, as object for male possession."

____________________So it's interesting to see how the art is perceived nearly 30 years later. At the time, I think the "vaginal" imagery seemed more "shocking". In retrospect, and actually seeing all of the plates - the art is not as sexual as it may sound. Many of the plates look more like flowers than vulvas. Just as much phallic art does not look so much penile, as suggestive of the form.

To Pollock's and Parker's that the art be "easily retrieved and co-opted by a male culture", for one thing, I don't think that is the case (with this - but I agree that it easily can be with more obviously sexual art), but for another, with the main gist of the art being about women's history and lost contributions, if the art is such that it can be integrated into male culture and art history - then all the better. Not only will Judy Chicago and feminism have it's place in history, so will many of the women who are represented with place settings.

There are such great references on so many levels - women having a place at the table (often denied) while women having been the ones to set the table and create the atmosphere, often taken for granted, often anonymously. That it was a group project with many women involved is also an important part of the piece, what with that being how women have often worked historically.

Recently, Through the Flower.org, another group of women working with Judy Chicago, has created a K-12 curriculum to help teachers use the Dinner Party as a learning vehicle. Much of this has all come about within the last 5 years. For quite awhile in between - the Dinner Party was in some sort of historical limbo (and in storage).

You never know how something in the present will be perceived in the future. Though whether a major museum anoints something as worthy is one huge part, and whether it is taught in schools in another. That women's art is represented to the extent that that they are in Museums is due the efforts of many, many women pushing for that - yet the under-representation sadly persists.

I love the Guerrilla Girls poster that reads, "When Racism and Sexism are no longer fashionable, What will your Art Collection be Worth". So far, white male art still has a stranglehold on most of the American art world. When I visited the MOMA a few months ago, I thought is was ridiculous how many Piscassos were hanging compared to the number of pieces by women. I would definitely rather see more art by women - I would not miss not seeing many of the Picassos. As the same GG poster states, one of those Jasper Johns (or Picassos) for 17.7 million would buy one each of app. 65-75 well known women artist's art. I would guess that there were something like 10 times as many Picassos (not to mention all of the other male art) as there was art by women.

I agree with Griselda Pollock, that male art should not be perceived as gender-free, while women's art is considered the "other", as if male art represented people and female art only represented women. If there is any sense of equality, the view of the world by women should be represented equally with the art by men. Museum directors (even some women ones) still hold on to the idea that the art by men is the influential art, while the art by women is not. But that is so, only as long as they make it so.