Sexual politics
Within the politically charged debates of the feminist art movement, Judy Chicago's Dinner Party has been a focal point of controversy. A monumental table in the form of an equilateral triangle, The Dinner Party honors 1,038 women in Western history, 39 if whom are represented at the table itself by elaborate needlework runners and ceramic plates with centralized, often vulvar, motifs. When the piece was first shown, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979, it drew the largest audience in that museum's history. Although it was praised by many feminists, it also engendered vehemently negative responses, from mainstream art critics and feminist commentators alike. . The essays in this volume, which is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, provide a major reevaluation of The Dinner Party and the debates that it has prompted, placing it within the broader context of art history and theory. Presenting works dating from the early 1960s to the present by other feminist artists, the book explores important issues raised in feminist art history and practice over the last thirty-five years. The works included make clear that The Dinner Party was produced within, and takes its meanings from, a historical matrix in which explorations of female sexuality, ideals of beauty, domesticity, violence against women, the questioning of male authority, the diversity of female experience, and other concerns have served as means of addressing issues of identity, oppression, and personal and social power. Through its examination of the reception of The Dinner Party, both in the United States and abroad, Sexual Politics also traces the development of feminist art theory.