 The Dinner Party: 1974-1979
Judy Chicago
Chicago
turned her attention to the subject of women‘s history to
create her best-known work, The Dinner Party, executed with the
participation of hundreds of volunteers. She conceptualized the
project as a reinterpretation of the Last Supper where „women
would be the honored guests.“ Triangular in configuration,
The Dinner Party is made up of an immense open table, covered with
white cloths and set with 39 place settings, each of which commemorates
an important historical woman. The whole installation rests on a
porcelain surface called the Heritage Floor which is inscribed with
the names of 999 additional women of historical significance.
Ultimately, The Dinner Party evolved into a monumental symbolic
interpretation of the history of women in Western civilization,
from Paleolithic to modern times. For the plate designs, Chicago
developed symbols for each „guest“ based on flowers,
butterflies, vulvae, and historical motifs. In the needlework designs
of the table cloths, she created a context for each plate through
visual reference to the person‘s life and times. By combining
a distinctly female image system with the techniques of women‘s
cultural production and domestic labor, Chicago created work that
both embodied and portrayed the powerful history of women‘s
achievements. This monumental multimedia project has been seen by
more than one million viewers, and has been displayed in fifteen
exhibitions in six different countries. The Dinner Party is currently
on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
http://www.uuloudoun.org/DinnerParty.html
http://www.judychicago.com/
|
