The Dinner Party

The day of Alexi's awesome recital, while he was preparing, I was left to my own devices and made my first-ever visit to the Brooklyn Museum. I had forgotten that Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party is housed there. Having come of age in the 70s, I was of course familiar with the work and had seen many photos of it. Nothing had prepared me for experiencing it in person, however. I was worried that it would be didactic, one-dimensional, dated, and maybe not that interesting to look at. Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong: Beautiful and very moving. The scale was grander than I expected, and the "craft"– especially the ceramics– more sophisticated. The "vulvar and butterfly forms," as the museum website describes the plates, are blatantly, audaciously vulvar and glorious in their variety and cultural references... and not without a dose of humor. The emphasis on erasing the distinction between high art and folk art or craft was radical. But even were it not a work of major historical and political significance, it would be a great work of art.