Analysis of Womanhouse

           In 1971 instructors Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro assigned the students in the Feminist Art Program a project: to create installation art in a home about their experiences as women (Wilding). Womanhouse is a site specific installation art piece, meaning that the site, in this case the mansion, is central to the work, and that it would not serve the same purpose if the rooms were moved into a normal art gallery (Bishop).  In Installation Art: A Critical History Clair Bishop describes how Womanhouse represents a specific time in installation art history “with feminist art of the early-to-mid 1970’s in general, it could be argued that formal concerns were less significant than the politicized content” (36). Although the Feminist Art Program chose a significant art form at the time to create their project in, they focused all their attention into making it a political statement; that female artists could create art about the female experience and did not need to use male ideas to be considered a real artist.

The art produced in Womanhouse represents themes of womanhood, motherhood, and the role of a wife. Choosing these themes is significant in establishing Womanhouse as a protest piece, because these roles were not ones the women in the Feminist Art Program had fulfilled themselves. The women in the Feminist Art Program were college students, only one married, and only for around a year, none were mothers, and none were fulfilling a home caretaker role at this time (Balducci). This means that these themes are experiences the women would have knowledge on by observing the women in their lives: grandmothers, mothers, sisters, cousins, and friends. The ideas shown and performed in Womanhouse were meant to convey the female experience, not particularly their personal experiences, in order to convey that female artists can convey expressions of female experience and have it be just as good as art produced by men.  

Graduate student teaching assistant for the Feminist Art Program Faith Wilding describes the purpose of the Feminist Art Program was and what was being taught “The unspoken curriculum was learning to contend with manifestations of power: female, male, political, and social” (35). The fact that she uses the word “unspoken” to refer to the curriculum shows that the ideas being taught in the program were radical and complex, and were then translated into Womanhouse to create a message about the social and political standing of women. These ideas are conveyed through performance and installation art.

In a performance art piece that was written and performed by Faith Wilding (Chicago), Wilding rocked herself in an armchair that did not rock, while reciting a poem called “waiting” in which she described the events of a woman over her lifetime, she chanted “waiting to talk… waiting to be a pretty girl…waiting for my breasts to develop…waiting for my wedding day…waiting for my baby to come” (Womanhouse). The concept of this piece was that women do not have control of their own lives and follow a pre-determined script that they are “waiting” to fulfill. This performance art is a personification of the life of the woman that would live in this house. Most of the focus in the house is on the rooms themselves, using physical space as the mode to convey a message about certain challenges in the lives of women, but this performance uses pathos to give the perspective of an actual life of a woman, and give the audience a connection to her. This perspective is very indicative of the feminist movement of the time of getting women to take control of their own lives by putting them into the work place.

Fig. 1

(Chicago, Menstruation

Bathroom)

One of the most well known rooms in Womanhouse is the “Menstruation Bathroom” done by Judy Chicago. The menstruation bathroom is one of the most well known works because Judy Chicago did a re-installment of it in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, after Womanhouse was demolished (Balducci). As is shown in figure one, The “Menstruation Bathroom” was a stark white bathroom with a toilet, a shelf filled with feminine hygiene and cleaning products, and an over flowing trashcan with “used” pads and tampons. This piece is one of the most well known for being a controversial subject for men and women, because what is normally a private struggle for women was put on display. In the documentary Womanhouse men and women were interviewed and asked about what they thought of the menstruation bathroom, which brought up feelings of confusion, one man said “That’s very difficult to understand for me”(Womanhouse) and another said “a lot of the house is amusing, and this is not amusing”(Womanhouse). The discomfort and confusion from the men interviewed was a big contrast from a woman that was interviewed “That’s the kind of thing you hide behind a closed door… Having other people standing there looking at it with me, even though I expected to see it, it was shocking” (Womanhouse). The topic of menstruation was picked with the intent to use pathos to get a reaction out of the viewer, to the men the room was puzzling because they had never seen something like it before, but to the woman the room was an automatic association to her own menstruation and the concept of publicly discussing it made her uncomfortable. As the man points out some of the skits and rooms in Womanhouse were amusing and whimsical, and the emotions brought about by this room in context with these brings the viewer back to realizing the house is making a statement, even if not through humor.

Fig. 2 (Chicago, Three Women)

A performance titled “Three Women” took on political issues that women face, such as rape, which was included in the Womanhouse documentary. The performance begins as a satire, three women in gaudy outfits overplaying a stereotypical female role. The hippie role of “Rainbow” wearing a large rainbow afro, begins by talking about getting stoned, which amuses the audience. Then Rainbow begins to tell a graphic story about her being at a party when a group of men force fed her pills in the shower and then raped her. This graphic story is told calmly in a conversational setting (see figure 2) to enforce the commonality of rape and evoke emotion. The use of pathos is the most prevalent in this performance, the wide range of emotion causing the audience to confront the issue of rape that they would normally not talk about or consider an issue too sensitive to discuss.  

The struggle of female artists also came through to the public at the time. In the Womanhouse documentary by Johanna Demetrakas a woman that visited the house was interviewed and gave her opinion of it “It makes an impact on everybody that sees it that women are not just poor imitation men, you know? They have something specific to say and special to do and I think it’s very nice” (Womanhouse). This reading of the work by a woman at the time, who says she is an engineer and not an artist, shows that the identity of women as artists with “something specific to say and special to do” came through clearly in the work.            

In Cindy Nemser’s essay “Stereotypes and Women artists” she discusses the deeply harbored stereotypes of female art by male critics, and describes what she calls “phallic criticism” or art criticized with the assumption that male artists are better than female artists (161). Under this model of art criticism Nemser declares “the more “female” her art becomes, the more offensive it is” (162). The concept that art work that represents ideas of femininity is offensive to traditional male art critics definitely helps the Womanhouse protest to create controversy in the art world. Womanhouse was not significant purely because a group of female artists created an art piece as a group, but because they used concepts of femininity specifically to establish their identity as women and reject what the male art world deemed as correct.

Works Cited

Balducci, Temma. "Revisiting "Womanhouse": Welcome to the (Deconstructed) Dollhouse." Woman's Art Journal 27.2 (2006): 17-23. JSTOR. Web. 4 Jan. 2016.

Bishop, Claire. Installation Art: A Critical History. Millbank: Tate, 2005. Print.

Chicago, Judy, and Miriam Schapiro. Three Women. Digital image.Womanhouse. NYFA, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Chicago, Judy and Miriam Schapiro. Menstruation Bathroom. Digital image. Womanhouse. NYFA, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2016.

Chicago, Judy, and Miriam Schapiro. Womanhouse. Valencia, CA: Cal. Inst. of the Arts, 1972. Print.

Nemser, Cindy. “Stereotypes and Women Artists” Feminist Collage: Educating Women in the Visual Arts. New York. 1979. 156-166. Print.

Wilding, Faith. “The Feminist Art Programs at Fresno and CalArts, 1970-75.” The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994. 32-47. Print.

Womanhouse. Dir. Johanna Demetrakas. Women Make Movies, 1974. DVD.