Judy Chicago and the Womanhouse: The year in Fresno was the first step
Chicago is an American feminist artist, art educator and writer. She is well known for her large collaborative art installation pieces which examine the role of women in history and culture. During the 1970s, Chicago founded the first feminist art program at California State University Fresno, formerly Fresno State College, and acted as a catalyst for Feminist art and art Education.
The October 1970 advertisement Judy Chicago placed in Artforum announcing both her one-woman show at California State University, Fullerton (Artforum ran the boxing ring photograph later that year), as well as her name change from Gerowitz (which belonged to her first husband) to Chicago; she wanted to be free of any kind of male-dominated nomenclature. Credit: Courtesy of Through the Flower Archives.
She had a supportive father who had liberal views towards women that were contrary to the period which was characterised by unequal pay for equal work and confined mothers to unpaid domestic servitude at home, this strongly influenced Chicago's beliefs. However, after both the tragic loss of her father and husband she felt disconnected to her hereditary and marital last names, Cohen and Gerowitz respectively. She reinvented herself from her social identity through the self-given moniker of Chicago.
Chicago’s feminist pedagogies were developed through her time studying at UCLA where she acquired both her undergraduate and graduate art degree. She mentions this in an interview for an article where she reflects on her teaching and interpretation of her pedagogy, where "one couldn't be a woman and an artist too" was a common concept. Womanhouse challenged this widely construed notion through a large collaborative feminist art installation exhibition and performance space.
In the fall of 1971, the feminist art programme was slated to occupy a new building. Through the lack of working studio space, the Fresno students and women artists from the local community broke into teams and found a 17-room, 75-year old neglected mansion at 533 N. Mariposa Ave, in a rundown section of Hollywood. They worked long hours daily on the house and learnt how to glaze windows, sand floors, and install lighting.
Similarly, when they were first setting up their studio together, Chicago felt like it was “a natural way for the women to learn to use tools, develop building skills, and gain confidence in themselves physically,” as well as build a sense of independence. She wanted them to feel as though they could take care of themselves as a few of them felt that they could not. Through these actions, the women were granted artistic freedom and independence that the society of the time did not allow them.
After its opening in 1972, Womanhouse first served as the venue for a local art conference of female artists; it then opened to the public a week later. The entrance was paved by a set of wide front steps, through which you enter into a space where the female body was literally embedded into the roles and duties of the home; from a spider-web like room full of hanging strings, to a bride thrown against a wall, a bathroom for menstruation and a living room that would be transformed into a weekend performative space.
The visitor may make their way to the Nurturant Kitchen by Susan Frazier, Vicki Hodgetts, Robin Weltsch, where the colored lighting is dim, creating a pink aura. Resembling a factory assembly line, plates of food were lined under lightbulbs to suggest the dehumanizing woman’s role as nurturer. The ceiling was covered with sculptured fried eggs that gradually transformed into breasts on the walls. Aprons were covered with female body parts that could be physically removed when done with housework. Indicating that a woman’s body is inextricably connected to her societal role.
Womanhouse turned out to be more important than Chicago and Schapiro ever imagined. It attracted ten thousand visitors, including artists, critics and historians which provoked wide media attention on a national scale. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to use consciousness-raising techniques to generate the content of the exhibition by building an environment where women’s standard social roles would be shown, subverted and exaggerated.
In Pollock’s Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity, the article examines the territory that was available to women and what they occupied as women in the male world; it explores sexuality, modernism and modernity that is organised by an organisation of gender difference. Comparably, in Womanhouse, the female artists verify this by displaying women’s conventional roles and experiences. Chicago’s text refers to this by expressing how men run the world and that, “women rarely have the experience of feeling that if they don’t take care of something, no one else will, except in the home.” This is further supported when some of the Womanhouse participants perceived that the teaching methodology evoked a psychological environment, where the space became emotionally charged from the explorations into their personal lives at home.
Chicago helped and worked with the Fresno women and this in turn helped her find new subject matter and a new idea of art. Womanhouse introduced perspectives and content about women’s lives that have been censored topics in society. The installation educates viewers about the invisible achievements of women and communicates that the personal is political. Many women who worked with Chicago continued her legacy through their own feminist teachings.
Chicago states that dignity can only be achieved through an equal sharing of responsibility and rewards between men and women. The then-current social reality was one that forced Chicago to live in a narrow stratum, oppressed by the unrealistic values perpetuated through media and art institutions. Chicago took on the responsibility to make a difference and claimed that, “the year in Fresno was the first step.”