Analysis Of The Dinner Party By Judy Chicago

Out of the six chapters, I prefer to write about Chapter One and Two: The Duel and The Dinner. This book was very intriguing and helped in the understanding of the post-revolutionary America and the lives of the founding brothers and what they went through.

Postmodern American artist’s Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker critique and question grand narratives of gender, race and class through their work and art practice. Cindy Sherman, born 1954, is well renowned for her conceptual portraits of female characters and personas that question the representation of women, gender identity and the true (or untrue) nature of photography (Hattenstone 2011). Kara Walker, born 1969, is known for her black silhouettes that dance across gallery walls and most recently her sugar sphinx, A Subtlety, address America’s racist slavery past (Berry 2003). These practitioners differ in their practical application of different mediums, Sherman constructs characters and scenes of stereotypical female personas in her photographs where she operates as the actress, director, wardrobe assistant, set designer and cameraman (Machester 2001). Simone Hatenstone, writer for The Guardian, states “She 's a Hitchcock heroine, a busty Monroe, an abuse victim, a terrified centrefold, a corpse, a Caravaggio, a Botticelli, a mutilated hermaphrodite sex doll, a man in a balaclava, a surgically-enhanced Hamptons type, a cowgirl, a desperate clown, and we 've barely started.” (Hattenstone 2011).Whereas, Walker creates paper silhouettes that are installed into a gallery space, as writer Ian Berry describes,

A close look at this work of artistry, the design is the anatomy of a triangle and closely resembles a woman’s private area, the genitalia. That existence said, for way too long woman was meant to marry, have children, be a woman of the house, and adopt their husband’s rules. Clearly this would be a case of stereotyping.

Good Evening my fellow neighbors. Most of you know me and for the ones who do not, I am Mabel Dodge. I am the daughter from a family in Buffalo and had what was considered the best education for girls in the nineteenth- century. Instead of going to college, I got married, became a mother and soon, a widow. Later, I traveled abroad and soon married a Boston architect, Edwin Dodge who I later realized the passion I had was no more- so I divorced him. I became bored and began to crave art, the beauty and inspiration! A “salon” in Florence, Italy that I created for the purpose of attracting the most up- and- coming artists in Europe, had me become well known and even a muse for one of Gertrude Stein’s image poems. I reluctantly joined Edwin my husband at the time, who was eager to come back to the United States. I settled in an apartment on the lower Fifth Avenue which most of you have been in for my “evenings” of controversial debates.

Georgia O’Keeffe was born to the parents of Francis Calyxtus O’Keeffe and Ida (Totto) O’Keeffe on November 15, 1887 near Wisconsin. Georgia was the second oldest child and by the age of ten she knew she wanted to become an artist someday. Her first aspiration was doing abstracts. She was selective about what she painted, but often times she would paint to please others and not herself. Her paintings were thought of as sexual paintings because of the way they were drawn and painted in which she would say is one’s own opinion. Georgia O’Keeffe was best known for her flower canvas and southwestern landscapes. Her husband who is a famous photographer by the name of Alfred Stieglitz used to paint nice portraits of her. She was very fond of him, they both liked what each other did as far as how they were making ends meet, and he just didn’t want her to sell any of her paintings. He would often times tell people “No” so they wouldn’t buy any of her paintings because he wanted them all to himself. She had an interest in nature and used bright colors in her paintings.

Families are different today than they were fifty years ago. Not just regarding the social changes with gay couples, divorced couples, and single parents, but other changes around us have caused the family to evolve. The invention of the television, the internet, and even freezers and microwaves have changed how the family functions. Compounding changes in the world around us, the treatment of women as equals has also adjusted the dynamic in households. In the novel Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, the author pins the changing of our family culture, with regards specifically to mealtime, on the women’s liberation movement from the sixties. (126) Family mealtime has changed over the years, but there are multiple reasons for its perceived demise. The women’s liberation movement gave women the chance to leave the kitchen and enter the workforce, but changes to the family meal began before women started taking up careers alongside men. Food processing, personal electronics, and the way our society raises children, have all changed how we eat together.

While women have achieved equality along with political and social independence in many ways over the past century, contemporary feminist movements continue to blossom as gender expectations and stereotypes remain deeply embedded in our culture. Today and in the past, feminist notions about the social norms that limit women's possibilities have yearned for expression and have found this through various artistic outlets. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin, and the 1944 Film Gaslight are three artistic works that relay feminist themes in a unique way. These three works differ in certain aspects, but all ultimately embody the same underlying theme of the oppression and liberation.

In this paper, I will compare two artworks that share a similar theme of the portrayal of family meals. Also, I will evaluate a contemporary issue shown in artwork that relates to the theme of family meals. The first work of art, The Merry Family was painted by Jan Steen in 1668 and in this painting, it depicts the theme of the portrayal of a family meal in a joyous and amusing setting, but Steen was known for integrating subtle hints into his work. These hints warned the viewer about what is depicted in the painting. The second work of art, The Potato Eaters was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1885 and it depicts the portrayal of a family meal but in a more straightforward and somber setting. Van Gogh wanted to truthfully depict the people and their lives. My comparison of the two, chosen artwork will show how they may share a similar theme of the “portrayal of family meals” but differ in the meaning, tone and emotion being projected by the artists. I will also explore how this theme is expressed in modern artwork, particularly Eric McCandless’s What ‘Modern Family’ Says About Modern Families.

Chapter two, The Dinner, is centralized around two main issues: the nation’s debt and where to locate its new capitol. While the issues were concerns of essentially every individual with political say, the three main problem-solvers presented in this chapter are James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. These three individuals became involved with each other when Jefferson noticed Hamilton looing like an exhausted mess outside of George Washington’s office. Hamilton shared his concerns that his plan to solve the nation’s deficit had reached a stalemate in congress against James Madison’s faction. Jefferson then hosted a dinner between the three in an attempt to solve the stalemate because he feared a deadlock.

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Throughout her long career, O’Keefe covered a wide range of subjects including landscapes, flowers, bones and skyscrapers using different medias such as charcoal, watercolor and oil paint. Having contributed many pieces of iconic and original artwork, she is considered by many to be the “Mother of American Modernism”.

Terror and mockery come together in the portraits of Cindy Sherman on display at the Crocker Art Museum. Walking into the large, dimly lit ballroom, one may begin to feel a slight sense of trepidation as the viewer looks around to find nine sets of beady eyes watching one’s every move. Sherman produced her History Portraits during the late eighties and early nineties, nine of which are displayed at the museum. In her portraits she uses lush fabrics, lavish jewelry, and false body parts to decorate herself in these self-portraits. Her portraits have been know to cause discomfort in the viewers who find the general stereotypes, depicted in her portraits, amusing, yet confusing and terrorizing.

If I had a choice to invite any six famous people to a dinner party, I would choose to invite some of the key figures in the American Women’s Liberation movement. There have been many strong, knowledgeable women who have spoken out against the injustices that women have faced, but I have picked 6 women that I find to be remarkable.

Mary Cassatt is known world-wide for her impressing art in which she focuses mainly in the everyday life of women and children. She is an American artist born in Pennsylvania on May 22, 1844, but later relocates to Europe in 1866 to pursue to work in art. This was mainly due to her family’s and society’s objections to women in the field of art. There she met and befriended famous Impressionist Edgar Degas. Because of her close friendship with Degas, she grew courage to continue to do art in her own way. She continued to paint until she slowly began to lose her eyesight and later died in 1926. Cassatt was part of the Impressionist style movement, in which she painted portraits unlike many others who painted landscapes (biography.com). Her artwork

Judy Chicago (artist, author, feminist and educator) has a career that now spans five decades. In the late 1960s, her inquiry into the history of women began a result of her desire to expose the truth of women’s experiences, both past and present. She still continues on a crusade to change the perception of women from our history, “Women’s history and women’s art need to become part of our cultural and intellectual heritage.” (Chicago, 2011) Through our history women - their struggles, accomplishments and contribution to history, have been overlooked, downplayed and even completely written out of a male dominated society and culture. In anthropologist Sherry Ortner’s 1974 essay “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” she supports this view, writing “…woman is being identified with—or, if you will, seems to be a symbol of—something that every culture devalues,” (Ortner, 1974) Where Mendieta's work primarily came from a striving to belong and an understanding of where she came from, I feel that Chicago's aim was to find a place for all women, past and present in this world, starting with herself in the art world. Chicago did explore her peronal heritage in later works entitled 'Birth Project' and 'Holocaust Project'.

Arlene Raven’s approaches to art criticism were feminist. She discussed a diversity of concerns that included spirituality, sexuality, the representation of women in art, women as art-makers, ethnicity, language called post-feminism, and critics of the art world. In her essay