Judy Chicago, Dinner Party

With the renewed interest in representation that the Pop artists and Superrealists introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, artists once again began to embrace the persuasive powers of art to communicate with a wide audience. In the 1970s, many artists began to investigate the social dynamics of power and privilege, especially in relation to gender, although racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation issues have also figured prominently in the art of recent decades. Women artists played a significant role in the feminist movement, which sought equal rights for women in contemporary society and focused attention on the subservient place of women in societies throughout history. Spearheading the feminist art movement of the 1970s were Judy Chicago (b. 1939) and Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015).

A major goal of Chicago native Judy Cohen, who took the name of Judy Chicago, was to educate the public about women’s role in history and the fine arts and to establish respect for women and their art. Chicago sought to forge a new kind of art expressing women’s experiences and to find a way to make that art accessible to a large audience. In the early 1970s, Chicago began planning an ambitious piece, The Dinner Party, using craft techniques traditionally practiced by women to celebrate the achievements and contributions that women had made throughout history.

She originally conceived the work as a feminist Last Supper for 13 “honored guests,” as in the biblical account of Christ’s passion, but at Chicago’s table, the guests are women instead of men. Because Chicago had uncovered to many worthy women in the course of her research, she tripled the number of guests and placed table settings for 39 women around a triangular table 48 feet long on each side.

The Dinner Party rests on a triangular white tile floor inscribed with the names of 999 additional women of achievement to signify that the accomplishments of the 39 honored guests rest on a foundation that other women had laid.

Each woman’s place has identical eating utensils and a goblet but features a unique oversized porcelain plate and a long place mat or table runner covered with imagery reflecting significant facts about that woman’s life and culture. The plates range from simple concave shapes with china-painted imagery to dishes whose sculptured three-dimensional designs almost seem to struggle to free themselves. The designs on each plate incorporate both butterfly and vulval motifs – the butterfly as the ancient symbol of liberation and the vulva as the symbol of female sexuality. Each table runner combines traditional needlework techniques, including needlepoint, embroidery, crochet, beading, patchwork, and appliqué.^[1]