"The dinner party" revisited: with the Brooklyn Museum's acquisition of Judy Chicago's 1970s feminist icon, the author gives the piece a new critical look - Art & Politics II - Critical Essay

Art in America, May, 2003 by Janet Koplos

Caroline Herschel's runner represents the heavens, and her plate, which begins the rise in relief, has an eye at the center. This combination is one of The Dinner Party's clearest visual conveyances of the subject's role (astronomer). Some settings have a curious contrast between the plate and the cloth that Chicago reportedly meant to suggest the woman's tension with her times (4): the front edge of Mary Wollstonecraft's runner is embellished with pretty floral ornaments on satin below a banner reading "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," while above the plate are naive scenes of her life executed in stumpwork (stuffed embroidery popular in her day). The plate itself is deeply contoured in green, yellow and red, with one "wing" raised; it has a completely different emotional effect.

But the totality of the installation never makes its case persuasively as artistic form. The triangular arrangement--variously explained as an ancient symbol for female or as an equilateral symbolizing equality--does not convey its meaning. It could as easily be interpreted formally, as a Minimalist motif out of Chicago's "Primary Structures" background. And the problem of the empty center persists as a design flaw. The runner surfaces on the inside of the triangle are often important--Wollstonecraft's, for instance, shows her death in childbirth--but the layout makes them difficult or impossible to see. Chicago has an explanation for that (it emblematizes how women's histories have been obscured), as she has an explanation for everything in this highly plotted work. (5) The disposition of names across the floor does not read, as intended, as streams, and the choice of Palmer penmanship for the inscriptions weakens the overall intensity with its round, childlike innocuousness. The work's serial narrative style eschews climax. The effect, in the end, is a little fussy, everything too pretty and tight. One might ascribe this to the contributions of amateur volunteers, but Chicago pointedly claims responsibility for all artistic decisions. (6) The Dinner Party is a massive study project, not a great work of art, but for its role in developing the awareness, pride and ambition of late-20th-century American women--artists and nonartists alike--it will always be a landmark.

(1.) The Hindu goddess Kali is the sole non-Westerner at the table.

(2.) For accounts of the initial presentation of The Dinner Party and the work's political tribulations and attempts to find a home, see A.i.A. articles Apr. '80, Dec. '91, Jan. '97 and June '00, and "Artworld" reports June and Nov. '02.

(3.) Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, New York, Penguin Books, 1996, p. 10.

(4.) Ibid., p. 9.

(5.) She has written extensively about the details of the symbols in her books The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (New York, Anchor Books, 1979), Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (with Susan Hill; New York, Anchor Books, 1980) and The Dinner Party (see note 3).

(6.) The Dinner Party, p. 9.