I think Judy Chicago is the first person in feminist art and
I choose her “The Dinner Party” to ananlyze to try to improve my own work
The Dinner Party is an installation artwork based on 39
mythical and historical famous woman.
The
installation is triangular and there are 13 place setting on each of the three
sides of the table making 39 settings in all.
One side honors women from
Prehistory to the Roman Empire, the second side honors women from the
beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation and the last side from the
American Revolution to feminism.
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.
The white floor of triangular
porcelain tiles, called the Heritage Floor, is inscribed with the names of a
further 999 notable women each associated with one of the table place settings.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Party]
The triangular shape is a
symbol of the female. It is also
an equilateral triangle to represent equality. The patten in plate presented in
a special order that it start flat and end in higher relief. The special order
mean to represent modern woman’s gradual independence and equality.
Then let
me turn to the artist- Judy
Chicago. Her birth name is Judith Sylvia Cohen. She changed her last name to
Chicago where she was born because of her strong personality and thick Chicago
accent. The most important reason is she wants to something independent og
being connected to any man by marriage or heritage. The way she changed her
last name really inspired me that this female artist contraled her own art
formal and it is also the social part of production.
The Dinner Party is an installation and I have described the
shap. In technology, Judy used sculpture, embroidery, silkscreen to build it.
But in social, 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 . Judy found that many achievements of women ignored in history that
the history of literature and date are rarely record about these achievements.
So she want to change perception in women through The Dinner Party to ensure
the history of female will be real justice. Then women can get more respect and
protection.
Feminist themes:
Based on the first part of this paper,
The Dinner Party is created by a women and be created becase of women. Like I
mentioned before, the patten like vulva is just a symbol of femal body. The
work shouted: your body is a battlefield, let’s fight. In addition to the
shape, the technology of these patten also spical. In traditional, painting and
sculpture is often considered the mainstream art form and they belong to men.
Comparatively speaking, textile likes weaving, embroidery, sewing and ceramics
are craft and inferior art because they belong to women. The Dinner Party
extensive used these women’s art to rewrite the western cultural history by
male. Whether look at it in formally, artist gender, technology or meaning, The
Dinner Party is a downright feminist declaration.
Back to my own project. There are mamy
similarities between Jucy and I likes I also use women’s body like a symbol and
I am a lady. But my
work just show the status of women suffered now. From The Dinner Party, I
learned the importance of past time. Judy’s work related to past time to
present by examining the treatment of women in the past to connected the morden
city. I have research the feminist history, but my work just express a state
and I ignore the earlier history before feminists. I will begin to notice such
information.
