Volume 28, Number 7 · April 30, 1981
Strictly from Hunger
By John Richardson
The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage
by Judy Chicago
Anchor Press/Doubleday, 255 pp., $12.95 (paper)
Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework
by Judy Chicago, by Susan Hill
Anchor Press/Doubleday, 288 pp., $15.95 (paper)
The Complete Dinner Party: The Dinner Party and Embroidering Our Heritage
Anchor Press/Doubleday, boxed set, $28.90 (paper)
By sponsoring, in 1977, the first serious historical exhibit of women artists (1550-1950), the Brooklyn and Los Angeles museums did art history and the women's movement an immense service. The organizers, Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, presented their material in the light of modern scholarship, and if their indispensable catalogue [1] shows slight signs of feminist bias—why not? At least they were careful not to jeopardize their cause by making rash claims. As well as assembling a corpus of largely unfamiliar works, the exhibition was a milestone because it opened up new territory and encouraged women to take pride in an artistic heritage that virtually none of them had known existed. For better or worse, however, this admirable show did not make more than a small dent in the swinish male conviction that, with a very few exceptions, women are only marginally better painters than they are composers or bull-fighters.
Review, 4034 words
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