In DCat's lecture today, we looked at feminist art of the early 70's.
Woman House pretty much scares the shit out of me.

Allow me to share my notes:

• Created in 1971-1972 by a group of students and teachers at CalArts, including Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro.
• Abandoned Hollywood mansion was renovated/redecorated by women, relating to women's concerns.
• Each room reflected on the roles/experiences of women, and each room's meaning was challenged and interrogated.
• Work was catalyzed by the writings of Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique.
• Included staged performance art, including Faith Wilding's "Waiting", in which she posed as a subsurvient, vigilant woman, and recited things for which women wait: prom dates, puberty, Mr. Right, bathroom lines, etc.
• Another performance involved a girl ceaselessly applying on makeup, it had commentary on the pain of aging, losing beauty, and the tiresome chore of making up for men, based on the writings of Colette.
• Nurturant Kitchen grappled with the idea that women are ceaselessly giving of themselves to nurture others, by means of cooking or nursing, etc. The ceiling is covered with fried eggs, and as one's eye follows downward, they turn into pendulous breasts on the wall. The entire room is painted pink.
• Sandra Orgal - Linen Closet features a female mannequin trapped and partitioned by shelves.
• Camille Grey - Lipstick Bathroom is painted a bold firetruck red, like lipstick. Also has menstrual associations.
• Finally, the piece d'resistance, Judy Chicago's Menstruation Bathroom is a silent and pristine room, painted white and otherwise spotless, save under the cabinet, where one will find a wastebasket filled with used tampons and other accoutrements of the unmentionable functions through which a woman must suffer. Judy Chicago commented on how women must cope with their "unmistakable marks of animality".
   

... tomorrow we continue with the work of Judy Chicago and the feminist art movement.