The 'Dinner Party' of 1979 is heralded as one of the most influential feminist art works ever. Chicago is a feminist icon, establishing feminism in America, and influentialy the world. 'Dinner Party' acknowledges the people (women) who were not physically present at the Last Supper, she refers to the them (the ewomen) as the ones who did the cooking throughout history.
The visual imagery is obvious, the 'V' formation and all the place setings, through flowers, or embroidery, all ellude to female genitalia, which bought Chicago ridicule and criticism.
Nearly thirty years later, her work has been seen by around a million people, and is now on permanent display at the Brookly Museum of Art.
'Red Flag' was an iconic piece of feminist art. The 'self portrait' of Judy Chicago (from the waist down) shows her removing a bloody Tampax from her vagina. 'Vaginal Iconology', as Barbara Rose termed it, 'Red Flag' was part of the Woman House project which explores the experience of menstration, which is ultimately only experienced by women. This piece was produced as a photo-lithograph which elludes to "high art" thus giving permission to the piece. Lke her 'Dinner Party' it elludes to the presence of women, but also thier absence in art. Chicago saw it as an opportunity to give women the right to make art about being a woman. As Lisa Tickner states in her article 'Body Politics', art of women in the 1970's was about reclaiming their/womens bodies for themselves. Chicago, Tickner says, is exploring the dichtomony between the secrecy of menstration and its 'gauzy packaged denial on the other hand'. Chicago uses the work of Giorgia O'Keffe and Barbara Hepworth as evidence for the reoccurrance of the "centralized void" which is central to her work.
Gustav Klimt 1862-1918
Austrian painter and graphic artist. he was part of the Avant-Garde and influenced by Impressionism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau.
In 1897 with a group of friends he split from the establishment and formed the Vienna Sezession, who held independent avant-garde exhibitions.
His position as leader of the avant-garde was confirmed while he was working on a commission for the Vienna University. Reception was hostile, and it was branded pornographic, and he abandoned the piece.
He was deeply fascinated by the allure and beauty of womanhood, which he addresses in both his portraits and subject pictures. His figures are naturalistically painted, but he elludes to eroticism of the woman through decorative backgrounds and sensual painting. This is a common method to register the erotic without explicitly depicting it.
His work was particularly influential on Oscar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.
Edvard Munch
Barbara Hepworth
Judith Berstein
Balthus
Leonor Fini
Carolee Schneeman
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