Symbolizing Environments- Womanhouse

“Womanhouse became both an environment that housed the work of women artists working out their own experiences and the ‘house’ of female reality into which one entered to experience the real facts of women’s lives, feelings, and concerns” –Judy Chicago

I know, I know, I have written quite a bit thus far about artwork from the 1970s, however, the artwork from the 1970s created during the feminist art movement present some of the most complex, intriguing and informative pieces to my personal interests in feminist art. Thus comes about Womanhouse. Created by 21 students from the feminist art program at the California Institute of the Arts and led by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, the house presents a real life representation of the constraints the suburban housewife face, “ideas and viewpoints first articulated in Betty Friedan’s 1963 The Feminine Mystique” (Raven, 51). The house, located in residential Hollywood, was an abandoned building, which was donated to the students and later torn down as planned by the city of Los Angeles. The seventeen-room mansion was transformed in only 6 weeks into a gallery that lasts just one month in 1972 between January 30^th and February 28^th but ultimately affected feminist art inevitably.

Sandy Orgel, Linen Closet

Each room became the site of a different installation discussing an aspect of the confinements of the 1950s housewife and woman. The rooms included the Nurturant Kitchen with plastic fried eggs and breasts mounted on the walls, Menstruation Bathroom with sterile white surroundings except for blood soaked pads, and Linen Closet with a nude mannequin stepping out from the shelves between linens. Each room became a complete environment which represented the everyday life of women.

Susan Frazier, Vicki Hodgetts, Robin Weltsch, Nurturant Kitchen

Womanhouse became the site of the public visualizations of women’s frustrations within the private sphere. Before the building was demolished, “Womanhouse made a widespread difference in feminist art making and in all subsequent American art. Entirely new aesthetic subjects that had until then remained in the distant shadows of suburban American homes burst into the public sphere through the installation and performance art of Womanhouse” (Raven, 48). The installation artwork provided the environment of understanding the overwhelming feelings experienced by women while the performance art aspect brought the ideas truly to life.

Judy Chicago, Menstruation Bathroom

The performance art pieces happened throughout the different rooms of the house and either related specifically to the area enacted, or brought about a new facet of private life. Judy Chicago’s play, for example, titled Cock and Cunt was performed in the living and outlined dialogue between a female and male about doing the dishes, touching on traditional gender roles. Other performance art pieces involved the students simply sitting in the rooms enacting a specific practice such as in Leah’s Room where one student sat in front of a mirror continuously applying make-up to her face “expressing, the artists said, ‘the pain of aging, of losing beauty, pain of competition with other women. We wanted to deal with the way women are intimidated by the culture to constantly maintain their beauty and the feeling of desperation and helplessness once this beauty is lost’” (Raven, 60).

The impact of Womanhouse was both immediate with viewers crying, laughing, empathizing with the performance art and installation pieces and long lasting as Womanhouse has continually influenced the art world. Womanhouse became such an important aspect of feminism because it “held the raw, explicit expression of an incipient feminist sensibility that has, to this day, provided a source and reference for a tradition of innovative and socially concerned contemporary art made by women” (Raven, 61).

Womanhouse has proven to be a conglomeration of performance and installation art that ultimately includes a wide range of artistic expressions, which, in my eyes, stands as one of the greatest feminist art accomplishments of the century. By turning the private public, it also created a visual expression of the pain and confinements women felt during the time and still to this day continue to feel. And although the house only stood for one month to the public, its legacy and impact on the world of feminism and art are obvious. This is one piece of work that makes me wish I could travel back in time to experience.

How would this experience today impact society? If Womanhouse was in some fashion recreated today, would it have a similar effect on the public?

Raven, Arlene. "Womanhouse.” The Power of Feminist Art. Ed. . Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1993. Print.

Images from:

http://artnews-catherine.blogspot.com/2009/08/feminist-art-judy-chigaco-and.html

http://art-history.concordia.ca/cujah/essay6.html

http://planetwavesweekly.com/dadatemp/1120212912.html