The Dinner Party
"The Dinner Party" (produced, 1974-79; first exhibited, 1979) is an important work of feminist art by Judy Chicago (born 1939). It has been held by the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, New York) since 2002, and is on permanent display in their Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art collection since 2002, and exhibited since 2007.
The work features a large triangular table, lifesize, with 39 elaborately designed place settings for important women of history and myth. The conceit is of a dinner party among these 39 women -- as an ahistorical imaginary event, it has some fantastic connotations. The shape (triangular, i.e., vulvar), materials (cloth, embroidery, porcelain), domesticity of the piece (a meal) -- all tie in feminine imagery and art, while the scale, ornateness, formality, and grandiosity place women and their work on a similarly exalted footing with men.
Description: "The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, is presented as the centerpiece around which the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is organized. The Dinner Party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table. This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Herstory Gallery exhibitions relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table."[1]
Notes
- This exhibit is fucking AWESOME. -- LQ, 2011/01/08 (last seen in 2007 shortly after opening).
References
- ↑ "The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago", Brooklyn Museum (visited 2011/01/08).
Further reading
- The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago (exhibition book). Revised edition 1996, ISBN 0-14-024437-9.
- Images from the exhibition, at throughtheflower.org