Judy Chicago reclaims womanhood

Judy Chicago is a feminist artist. In fact, if you listen to her, she is the feminist artist. "I came up with the term feminist art," says Chicago. Whether or not you believe her claim, there is little doubt that she embodies the term, and that her most famous work, the Dinner Party (see image), is the defining work of a feminist movement. But, according to Chicago the struggle did not end with the passing of a generation. Following a sold-out speech at Nasher Wednesday night, Chicago discussed gender and inequality and it's continued presence at-gasp!-Duke.

Feminism-a term that evokes the bra-burning, man-hating stereotype of the '60s. Students shy away from this self-definition, and while Chicago continues to refer to herself as such ("Does it bother me that feminism has been marginalized? Yes. Will I stop using it? No.") she sympathizes with the younger generations. "When I was in college, I got that message that what women did wasn't important. There were two female tenure professors in the art department- [and] one of them had a collection of art and I didn't want to see it. I didn't understand why anyone would put together a collection of women's art."

While Chicago may be long past her days as a student, she's been on campus enough to grasp the current state of sexual politics. Since 1999, Chicago has been spending semesters at schools throughout the country, teaching art to undergrads and discovering little has changed. In 2000, a semester at Duke revealed little different, "except at Duke it was more shocking because Duke is such a high level institution."

What Chicago did find, though, was a new idea of feminine power-sexuality. "I think the barrage of media has re-sexualized women and has left young women with a lot of confusion abut where their power lies, whether it lies within their sexuality or in their personhood," Chicago observes. "Valorizing the vulva, that's inherent power."

Despite new challenges, Chicago remains intent on realizing the original vision of equality she promoted in the 1970s in her most famous work, the Dinner Party. "Christine de Pisan in the 15th century in France wrote a book- arguing that women were strong. In the 17th century in Holland, Anna von Sherman wrote about how women were strong having never read Christine de Pisan. Woman after woman for 500 years arguing that women really are strong. I thought it would be really good if we learned about these women so we wouldn't have to be arguing the same thing. We could start out from the premise that we're strong," says Chicago of the installation that features a table with 39 plate settings illustrating women in history through the artistic representation of their vaginas, set on a floor listing the names of hundreds of others.

In 2007, the Dinner Party sets up house at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. "To permanently house it is a way of interceding history. So not everybody can see it, but a lot of people can go see it for a really long time," says Chicago of attaining her goal of permanent installation.

It's Chicago's hope that mothers (and fathers) will bring a whole new generation of females to learn positive examples from the past. Maybe one day, they'll even refer to themselves as feminists, or better yet, they won't have to.