Is *this* what a feminist looks like?
Having a Sunday where I managed to get out of bed before 1 p.m., I made my first trip to the Brooklyn Museum, as I was particularly excited about an exhibit that just opened a few days before called Global Feminisms. The centerpiece of this exhibit was "The Dinner Party", an installation by Judy Chicago.
After waiting in a line for close to half an hour with a confident patience, my ultimate assessment of this particular piece was: 20 vaginas on 20 plates does not a feminist art work make. How disappointing. The idea behind it interested me because it seemed like some physical realization of the first act in Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls, where various women through different periods of history show up to eat and get drunk and ultimately get into arguments over their conflicting personal opinions of "women's liberation" and "feminism" in their own cultures and times. In her piece, Chicago crafted a large triangular-shaped table, where places were set for about 20 women she felt deserved a "seat at the table" (Sappho, Elizabeth I, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Sanger, Hildegaard, Hatshepsut), with a little booklet summarizing each woman's accomplishments…in about 15 words or less. And each plate presented us with a different colored, shaped, sized vagina.
I think what disappointed me on this was that the best praise that sprang to mind for me was "Neat". What a neat idea. But to what purpose? This exhibit didn't introduce me to any women from history any one in attendance wouldn't be at least vaguely familiar with, and that palm-sized booklet didn't teach me anything new about them. It simply reminded me these women existed, and they certainly had vaginas (as if their genitalia was te most important thing about them). Tossing around vaginas and calling it feminist, and showcasing women who have received the fame they deserve (as opposed to maybe making a table for 20 women who deserve recognition they haven't received), seemed perhaps like an interesting thesis for a Feminist art major, but hardly deserving of the focal point of a special exhibit at a major museum. Not to be petty, but it seemed to miss the whole point of what feminist art could be, or might achieve, or what even what it is: feminist art, although it of course (just like any art) can't be and shouldn't be strictly defined, is definitely not a formula of "Focus on women + accomplishment + vaginas". That just seems too…easy. And untrue.
I very much enjoyed the hours I spent with the other pieces in the exhibit though, precisely because I couldn't see the artists' intentions coming at me a mile away; and the very fact that such a variety of work could all be considered "Feminisms" (there's so much in pluralizing the term!) emphasizes the complexity beyond Chicago's elementary formula.
In a video piece, we see a beautiful woman behind a camera, instructing beautiful naked men to pose for her, while they in turn ask her to show them a little bit more leg, to lift the skirt a little more; as this goes on, the men's states of both discomfort and arousal seem to battle with each other as the "male gaze" is turned to them. But what truly registered for me in this piece was how, though the men gave orders too, it was that camera which seemed to give the woman all the power...then again, who was filming her?
One artist, dressed as a male Hassidic Jewish "character", pulls out a breast from beneath her clothes, confusing any sort of immediate recognition a viewer would have with that costume: not only do we expect our gender to be costumed, but our religions as well, and what a shock for that to be disrupted. Another video piece, entitled Love, is a cheeky montage of well-known movie clips showcasing how love ends in the movies: with women shooting to kill.
But it was an installation piece behind tent fabric, where the temperature was kept chilly, there played a constant record of quiet, slow chanting, and a single light shined on a brown papier mache outline of the artist's body lying in a shallow pool of water, that seemed to deserve and demand the attention lauded upon "The Dinner Party". There was nothing but Death in the image and the sensations, and yet it was so peaceful, and so mesmerizing, and, somehow, yes, a Feminism. This body, a Woman's body- which with its Womanliness immediately tells the outside world everything they think they need to know about it- has come to death, just like any body ultimately will. I think that what the piece is meant to ask is: Does a corpse have a gender? Is it only death that frees a body (be it male, female, or trans) from a Political Body to a Biological one? And why, disturbingly so, does that all seem so comforting?
It was this piece, which so wisely worked to evoke a feeling from its audience, and not murmurs of recognition or some sort of visual contentment of The Dinner Partry, in which I found a true companion to the play Top Girls which Chicago was so clearly inspired, if a little misguided, by. It wasn’t a parade of historical figures which had been Churchill's point, but rather the feeling at the end of her play- captured again in the Death piece- of a little girl witnessing her mother and aunt in an argument over the conflict between family and marriage and career and realizing that, oh, this is her lot in life, hiding in a corner of the living room and whispering in the dark: "Frightening. Frightening."
Note: It has come to my attention (thanks, dear) that "The Dinner Party" premiered in 1979 and is not, as I had assumed, a recent piece. This does, admittedly, change things a little. Although now I question its place in what was described on the museum's "Statement of Purpose" as strictly contemporary feminsit art- listed with the very specific date of "after 1990." Is that "after 1990- except for our centerpiece"? Weak.
Unless of course its meant to be slightly dated, and to show how women coming together can evolve even what it means to be Feminist, in just thirty years. They've all come to the table, so to speak, and left it behind. Alright then. That I can "get".
And while it does totally negate my claim that Churchill "obviously" inspired Chicago, I still stand just as firmly behind my belief that Top Girls beats Dinner Party with, like, a stick.
After waiting in a line for close to half an hour with a confident patience, my ultimate assessment of this particular piece was: 20 vaginas on 20 plates does not a feminist art work make. How disappointing. The idea behind it interested me because it seemed like some physical realization of the first act in Caryl Churchill's play Top Girls, where various women through different periods of history show up to eat and get drunk and ultimately get into arguments over their conflicting personal opinions of "women's liberation" and "feminism" in their own cultures and times. In her piece, Chicago crafted a large triangular-shaped table, where places were set for about 20 women she felt deserved a "seat at the table" (Sappho, Elizabeth I, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Sanger, Hildegaard, Hatshepsut), with a little booklet summarizing each woman's accomplishments…in about 15 words or less. And each plate presented us with a different colored, shaped, sized vagina.
I think what disappointed me on this was that the best praise that sprang to mind for me was "Neat". What a neat idea. But to what purpose? This exhibit didn't introduce me to any women from history any one in attendance wouldn't be at least vaguely familiar with, and that palm-sized booklet didn't teach me anything new about them. It simply reminded me these women existed, and they certainly had vaginas (as if their genitalia was te most important thing about them). Tossing around vaginas and calling it feminist, and showcasing women who have received the fame they deserve (as opposed to maybe making a table for 20 women who deserve recognition they haven't received), seemed perhaps like an interesting thesis for a Feminist art major, but hardly deserving of the focal point of a special exhibit at a major museum. Not to be petty, but it seemed to miss the whole point of what feminist art could be, or might achieve, or what even what it is: feminist art, although it of course (just like any art) can't be and shouldn't be strictly defined, is definitely not a formula of "Focus on women + accomplishment + vaginas". That just seems too…easy. And untrue.
I very much enjoyed the hours I spent with the other pieces in the exhibit though, precisely because I couldn't see the artists' intentions coming at me a mile away; and the very fact that such a variety of work could all be considered "Feminisms" (there's so much in pluralizing the term!) emphasizes the complexity beyond Chicago's elementary formula.
In a video piece, we see a beautiful woman behind a camera, instructing beautiful naked men to pose for her, while they in turn ask her to show them a little bit more leg, to lift the skirt a little more; as this goes on, the men's states of both discomfort and arousal seem to battle with each other as the "male gaze" is turned to them. But what truly registered for me in this piece was how, though the men gave orders too, it was that camera which seemed to give the woman all the power...then again, who was filming her?
One artist, dressed as a male Hassidic Jewish "character", pulls out a breast from beneath her clothes, confusing any sort of immediate recognition a viewer would have with that costume: not only do we expect our gender to be costumed, but our religions as well, and what a shock for that to be disrupted. Another video piece, entitled Love, is a cheeky montage of well-known movie clips showcasing how love ends in the movies: with women shooting to kill.
But it was an installation piece behind tent fabric, where the temperature was kept chilly, there played a constant record of quiet, slow chanting, and a single light shined on a brown papier mache outline of the artist's body lying in a shallow pool of water, that seemed to deserve and demand the attention lauded upon "The Dinner Party". There was nothing but Death in the image and the sensations, and yet it was so peaceful, and so mesmerizing, and, somehow, yes, a Feminism. This body, a Woman's body- which with its Womanliness immediately tells the outside world everything they think they need to know about it- has come to death, just like any body ultimately will. I think that what the piece is meant to ask is: Does a corpse have a gender? Is it only death that frees a body (be it male, female, or trans) from a Political Body to a Biological one? And why, disturbingly so, does that all seem so comforting?
It was this piece, which so wisely worked to evoke a feeling from its audience, and not murmurs of recognition or some sort of visual contentment of The Dinner Partry, in which I found a true companion to the play Top Girls which Chicago was so clearly inspired, if a little misguided, by. It wasn’t a parade of historical figures which had been Churchill's point, but rather the feeling at the end of her play- captured again in the Death piece- of a little girl witnessing her mother and aunt in an argument over the conflict between family and marriage and career and realizing that, oh, this is her lot in life, hiding in a corner of the living room and whispering in the dark: "Frightening. Frightening."
Note: It has come to my attention (thanks, dear) that "The Dinner Party" premiered in 1979 and is not, as I had assumed, a recent piece. This does, admittedly, change things a little. Although now I question its place in what was described on the museum's "Statement of Purpose" as strictly contemporary feminsit art- listed with the very specific date of "after 1990." Is that "after 1990- except for our centerpiece"? Weak.
Unless of course its meant to be slightly dated, and to show how women coming together can evolve even what it means to be Feminist, in just thirty years. They've all come to the table, so to speak, and left it behind. Alright then. That I can "get".
And while it does totally negate my claim that Churchill "obviously" inspired Chicago, I still stand just as firmly behind my belief that Top Girls beats Dinner Party with, like, a stick.