The Dinner Party (1979) by Judy Chicago

In 1979 US artist Judy Chicago exhibited her ground breaking and iconic (collaborative) installation The Dinner Party (1979). The work is viewed as the first epic feminist artwork.

The Dinner Party took over five years to complete, beginning in 1974, within an era of many challenges to the white male status quo, including a fervent call for women’s liberation. A consequence of this blossoming movement on culture was a rise in the assertive voices of female artists, parallel to the work of feminist academics rescuing significant women lost to a male-centric recording of history. The Dinner Party, in turn, would become the meeting place of  women’s creativity and the diverse brilliance of female lives, all finally and rightfully honoured.

Creating as a collaborative effort involving many volunteers, the installation comprises of a large triangular shaped table with place settings for thirty nine people. Each section measures nearly fifteen meters long, with thirteen place settings on each side of the work. Each place is dressed uniquely with a hand painted china plate decorated with a vulva motif and individually embroidered runner addressed to a mythical or historically significant woman. All of which was intended to promote not only the importance of female heritage, but also ‘women’s arts’, historically labelled as lesser art-forms worked by anonymous creators.

The installation caused much controversy in the art world not only for its emphasis on women, but also because a female artist had created a work reflecting (shockingly!) positive imagery of their genitalia.

Feminist theorists however highlighted the work for encouraging women artists in utilising their own voice and for the artist’s agency and empowered representation of the female both culturally and sexually. Chicago’s employment of the domestic setting also subverted traditional ideas of the female artist trapped within the private rather than public realm by creating a dinner party intended for the world.

The viewer is also invited to the party.

The work not only highlights ideas of female production but also challenges the very structures of a male-dominated culture. In this way, through the lives of Mary Shelly and Sappho or Sojourner Truth and Hatshepsut, as a few examples of the guests here, The Dinner Party is a statement of reclamation and celebration of ALL females.

“Because men have a history, it is difficult for them to imagine what it is like to grow up without one, or the sense of personal expansion that comes from discovering that we women have a worthy heritage“ Judy Chicago.