What is the purpose of your artwork?
The Dinner Party is an installation piece created by Judy Chicago over five years (1974-1979); it is considered the first epic feminist artwork. The primary purpose behind this complex artistic work was to end the recurrent cycle of omission, wherein women were written out of the historical record (The Art Story n.d.). With the help of more than a hundred volunteers and artisans, both male and female, Chicago managed to carry out a monumental synthesis of decorative and fine arts. Thus, she created a symbolic tribute to women’s role in history (McGonigle 2019). The artist was driven by the idea to redefine the correct representation of females and their experience in the current society. It was a new feminist perspective on the historical canon, which encouraged rethinking the historic accomplishments of women to confront the male-dominated nature of historiography.
What is the media of your artwork? What role does the media play in your artwork?
The Dinner Party is a massive multi-media installation, which emphasizes the perplexing nature of the artist’s idea. The installation includes ceramic, porcelain, and textile media that create such versatile pieces. It is made up of “a three-winged, open, triangular-shaped table, set within a dark room, amid six colorful tapestry banners” (McGonigle 2019, 52). The media plays a fundamental role in introducing the art piece in the context of the biased view of what is the female and male type of media. Media serves as another crucial aspect of Chicago’s work because she tried to illustrate that the use of different kinds of media was typically associated with women identified as handicrafts or domestic arts. Fine arts instead were viewed as the leading type dominated by male artists. Therefore, Chicago reformulated the concept of low-grade female art.
What elements or principles of art are used in this artwork?
Chicago’s installation is built of a large triangular ceremonial banquet table containing thirty-nine place settings. Each of them celebrates a significant female figure in history. The place settings include skillfully embroidered runners, gold chalices and flatware, napkins with gold edges, and hand-painted china porcelain plates depicting vulva and butterfly forms. The table is settled on the “heritage floor,” including 2304 white triangular luster-glazed tiles and 999 names of women inscribed in gold cursive script (The Art Story n.d.). The floor represents symbolic support for the dinner table. The additional component is rotating “Herstory” exhibitions that outline the roles of the 1038 women honored by this piece.
What does your artwork imply about when it was made?
The Dinner Party is an artwork that was created five years. The early 1970s shaped the transformative period for women’s role in society. The year 1970 was a critical “turning point of the Women’s Liberation Movement” (McGonigle 2019, 54). The second wave of feminism was initiated by Simone de Beauvoir in her 1949 publication, The Second Sex. The period from the 1950s to the 1960s was a challenging time for female artists since there was no place for women in art. It was a male-dominated industry, as well as many others at that time. However, in the 1970s, the women’s movement permeated the art world and established a new era of feminist art.
What can it teach us about the past?
Chicago’s piece was one such artwork that fought for women’s role in art and history by accelerating females’ significance. Before the movement, female art was never regarded as high art, which is why women were never noted and included in the canon of art history. The Dinner Party is a phenomenal work that commemorates female historical figures and attempts to transform female art into a high-grade dimension. It was a significant shift that helped women gain their power and redefine themselves in the society in which they lived, worked, and created.
References
McGonigle, Noreen. 2019. “Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party: Contextualizing the Critical Reaction.” Art Journal 1 (5): 51–60. Web.
The Art Story. n.d. Identity Politics (website). Web.