Judy Chicago, the Dinner Party, & Le Tigre

I remember hearing about Judy Chicago in a previous class, but I can't remember if it was an art class or a women's studies class. Anyway, she was one of the first established and self-proclaimed "feminist artists," and she was also a total bad ass. Anyone who's familiar with feminist art has heard of Judy Chicago, so it feels like a pretty good place to start.


Her most famous project was the Dinner Party, which was basically a triangle-shaped table with 39 table settings; all of the table settings were for for mythical or historical women who were famous for one reason or another. According to wikipedia, "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 naming of different notable women sort of reminds me of the Le Tigre song, Hot Topic, because they do the same thing, although they're naming more modern, radical feminist and queer artists/performers and obviously doing it in a less formal way. However, I think the idea of giving "shout-outs" to traditionally marginalized artists is similar.

I think that the Dinner Party is rad in it's celebration of historical female bad asses, but it's definitely a second-wave piece (of course, because it was made in the '70's by a white woman), and in that way is not free of universalizing or erasing qualities. Chicago disproportionately represents white, straight, typically-abled, middle- or upper-class cis-women in her work and in this piece, which is unfortunately a pretty typical quality of any second-wave feminist art, writing, or theory. However, one cool thing about it is that even though it's considered "fine art" and is housed in a musuem, it was more capable of being widely recieved by and accessible to the general public than other "fine art" of the time because it went against the period's stuffy modernist tendencies in utilizing a variety of materials as well as more blatantly political, feminist symbolism.

-h