Scared of Female Imagery as a Symbol of Power? -Judy Chicago

A detailed Summary of Scared of Female Imagery as a Symbol of Power? -Judy Chicago

Scared of Female Imagery as a Symbol of Power?

The content of this class has made me aware of a lot actually. Before this class I never looked at what sex a painter was when I looked at his or her paintings. I just looked at all paintings equally, to see which ones I liked and which ones I didn't like. I just thought that there were more male artists than female artists. I never knew that under the surface there was so much sexism in art. But now I know that female artists were and are still being repressed. Why is it so hard for women to get credit for their art? Why do people just assume that because the artist is a woman, her art is not as good as her male colleagues?

When Judy Chicago opened her monumental piece of art, The Dinner Party, to the public in 1978 at the San Francisco Museum, there were many different opinions about her "art". It was a beautiful work of art, a large triangular table, stretching 48 feet on each side and set on a raised platform. It was covered with 2,3000 hand-cast tiles, on which are written the names of 999 significant women in history. The triangle was selected as the earliest symbol of female power and the sign of the goddess. Each side of the equilateral triangle holds thirteen

place settings. The thirty-nine women selected for this honor range from early goddess's, noted feminists of the early fifteenth century through the present, to the diverse achievements of women in the twentieth century. Each of the place settings consists of a porcelain plate designed by Chicago to reflect the special achievements and experiences of these historic figures. The designs of all the plates are based on the central, vaginal imagery so critical to Chicago's creative sensitivity to art and beauty. I think that using the vaginal imagery on every plate was a very wonderful and unique idea. This work of art was all about women and the one thing that women have that men don't is a vagina. No man can ever take that from any woman. It unites all women together. It is how the Doctor separates the males from the females at birth. It is how all women are separated from men and she chose to portray this as her art.

Just reading how much thought and effort went into this gigantic piece of artwork is amazing. I am now aware of the struggles that all artists go though, especially women, just to publish a piece of themselves. Before I took this class, I would go to a museum and just look at all the pretty pictures. But now I realize that there is so much more behind those pictures. So much effort, creativity, time, and so much of that artist is put into every little part of that single work. There are hundreds of years of women artists who struggled in the past so that another woman of today may have an easier time of doing what she loves and sharing it with the world. I think that every woman artist from the past has influenced and is a part of every work of art that we see today in the present.

I know that it was even harder for women of many years past to get their art published or to even have their works considered "art". We have come a long way and are no longer bound by the confining and limiting gender stereotypes of earlier periods. Contemporary women artists have created art in a broad range of tech

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Approximate Word count = 1378
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts