This wonderful book serves as a kind of user's manual to that iconic work of feminist art that once inspired an 87-minute debate in the U.S. House of Representatives over whether it was art or pornography. The Dinner Party, a monumental triangular table, and the Heritage Floor on which the table rests, represents 1,038 women in history-39 by unique large ceramic plates and runners with another 999 names inscribed on the floor's ceramic tiles. Seen by more than a million visitors as a travelling exhibition in the beginning of the 1980s and again in the 1990s, it is today the principal destination of almost a quarter of the Brooklyn Museum's visitors each year.In this new book, Chicago explains in exquisite detail the art work surrounding the 1,038 women's names memorialized by The Dinner Party and how the art expresses the fight for women's rights from antiquity to todayOrganized to mirror the exhibition, each section is divided into four chronological wings, rather than chapters, and includes a short description of the woman represented and a photograph of her plate and place setting. Surrounding the photographs are summaries of the other women whose 999 names are inscribed on the ceramic tile floor ("Heritage Floor") on which the triangular table rests. Many of the plates photograph well, particularly those for Sappho and Virginia Woolf, and handmade runners are spectacular. In this volume, published to coincide with her 75th birthday, Judy Chicago offers a vibrant visual and textual encyclopedia of female achievement."Thirty-five years after the debut exhibition of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, this book highlights this monumental installation piece of feminist art. It takes a fresh look at the piece, which sought to right the omission of women artists from art history books. The artwork is described in detail in three chronological sections, beginning with prehistory and ending with the woman's revolution of the 1970s. All of the women--from the central piece to the names listed on the floor tiles--are included for their contributions. Essays cover the biography of Judy Chicago, describe how the work arrived at the museum, and offer an art historian's perspective on its place in history and the feminist movement. The piece, controversial for its depiction of a vulva form in each plate, was shown 16 times in six countries, with over a million viewers. This book is a fitting tribute.
When Judy Chicago's multimedia exhibit The Dinner Party opened in the late 1970s, it was almost as shocking to the art world and to society at large as the first exhibit of Impressionists nearly a century before. And like that art, it stretched the limits of artistic vision and expression, soon becoming a landmark in art history. A symbolically rich and complex visual chronicle of the achievements of more than 1,000 women in Western civilization, The Dinner Party has been seen by nearly a million viewers worldwide. Judy Chicago's earlier books about the exhibit are now collector's items. In this new work, the artist takes you on a personal tour of The Dinner Party, discussing it genesis, aesthetic and historical meaning, now and for the future. Many new illustrations highlight this account, which celebrates the work's reemergence in an exhibition at the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center in Los Angeles.
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