Womanhouse
Womanhouse was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Program, and was the first public exhibition of art centered upon female empowerment. Chicago, Schapiro, their students, and women artists from the local community, including Faith Wilding, participated. Chicago and Schapiro encouraged their students to use consciousness-raising techniques to generate the content of the exhibition. Together, the students and professors worked to build an environment where women's conventional social roles could be shown, exaggerated, and subverted.
Only women were allowed to view the exhibition on its first day, after which the exhibition was open to all viewers. During the exhibition's duration, it received approximately 10,000 visitors.
Origins
The Feminist Art Program began at the California Institute of the Arts in 1971 after an experimental year at Fresno State College under the name 'Women's Art Program'. The students in the program were admitted as a group when Chicago and Schapiro were hired at Cal Arts after Chicago found that the Fresno State College Art department was reluctant to embrace her vision of a new kind of female-centered art. It was their intention to teach without the use of authoritarian rules or a unilateral flow of power from teacher to student.In 1971, the Feminist Art Program was slated to occupy a new building but found itself without adequate space at the start of the school year. The lack of appropriate studio space paved the way for a collaborative group project set to highlight the ideological and symbolic conflation of women and houses. The result of this project was the Womanhouse installation, built by the students in an abandoned Victorian house in Hollywood.
The program utilized a method of teaching that relied on group cooperation. Students would sit in a circle and share their thoughts on a selected topic of discussion. The circular teaching method was intended to provide a "nourishing environment for growth" and to promote a "circular, more womb-like" atmosphere. The goal of these discussions was for each woman to reach a higher level of self-perception, to validate their experiences, as well as the "search for subject matter" to incorporate into artwork and to address their individual aesthetic needs. However, many students fostered resentments towards Chicago and Schapiro, claiming they were suffering from their own power trips. Chicago insisted her students feelings were the result of their own internalized sexism and unconscious manifestations of their difficulties dealing with female authority figures.
The project's goals, as professed by Schapiro and Chicago, were to help students overcome some of the problems associated with being a woman. Many of the issues Chicago believed that the students needed to overcome were centered upon their lack of ability to perform traditionally masculine skills. Chicago pushed students to become familiar using equipment such as various tools, to become comfortable in their ability to be assertive, and to view themselves as a part of the work force not defined by their domestic roles. It was thought that by teaching women to use power tools and proper building techniques, they would gain confidence and subsequently challenge the gendered expectations. Schapiro and Chicago believed that women could achieve more if society did not limit them and expect less from women than men.
These techniques were to result in an "exclusively female environment" that included a greater community of female artists. The goal of this community was to expose the students to credited female artists not limited to Schapiro and Chicago.
Paula Harper, an art historian for the California Institute of Arts Feminist Art Program, is credited for suggesting the idea for Womanhouse. Schapiro supervised Womanhouse's dramatic works, while Chicago focused on other media. Their intention was to transform a domestic environment into one that fully expressed the experiences of women.
Womanhouse began in an old deserted mansion on a residential street in Hollywood and became an environment in which: “The age-old female activity of homemaking was taken to fantasy proportions. Womanhouse became the repository of the daydreams women have as they wash, bake, cook, sew, clean and iron their lives away." Before creating the art environments and pieces, the students had to do extensive reconstruction on the house, which had been empty for many years. They had to fix broken windows and furniture.
Construction and process
The group broke into teams in order to find a suitable location for their "dreams and fantasies".They found a 17-room, 75-year-old dilapidated mansion at 533 N. Mariposa Ave. in a rundown section of Hollywood. Members of the group knocked on doors to find the owner of the house, who one neighbor remarked would "certainly not be interested in the project."
After a visit to the Hall of Records, they found the owner to be Amanda Psalter. The group described their intentions for the house in a letter to the Psalter family. In response, the house was granted through a special lease agreement for the three-month duration of the project, after which it would be demolished. Construction spanned from November 1971 to January 1972.
The renovation included cleaning, painting, sanding floors, replacing windows, installing lights, and sanding, scraping, and wallpapering walls. New walls were built for practical and aesthetic reasons and women learned wallpapering techniques to refurbish one of the rooms. Eventually a crew was needed to paint the exterior of the house, install locks and advise the women on basic electrical wiring.
The women struggled as they began renovating the mansion during the winter, as the building did not have hot water, heat, or plumbing. Renovations included replacing 25 windows and replacing banisters that had been pulled out by vandals. They worked eight-hour days. To many of the women, these tasks were new and unfamiliar which resulted in a discontentment for many of the students. The women felt as though they were not presented with a program in which they could succeed. To cope with the frustration of learning new techniques while meeting stringent deadlines, the group held meetings to deal with any problems that arouse and sessions to raise group consciousness. Some former students now see this tension as a result of Chicago's authoritarian presence, feeling that she imposed her own goals on the group.
Here are some perspectives from participators when they recall the struggles of Womanhouse after 25 years later.
Camille Grey : “Put 30 women together and see what happens. A nightmare.”
Robin Mitchell: "It was simultaneously one of the best and worst experiences of my life.”
Mira Schor: "I left the Program after one year, because of my disagreements, and because I wanted to experience the school outside the confines of the Program. I have avoided group feminism since then.... However it was a unique privilege to attend feminist boot camp, it was a privilege to participate in the Feminist Program. I consider it a major formative experience in my development as an artist, teacher, and writer/editor.”
Nancy Youdelman: "Looking back 25 years later, I have mixed feeling about the Feminist Art Program – We had something really incredible and unique and somehow we could not get beyond personalities and create a lasting support system."
Participating artists
Chicago and Schapiro invited other local artists Sherry Brody, Carol Edison Mitchell and Wanda Westcoast to participate and to hang their work alongside that of the other women.Among the artists and CalArts students that collaborated were:
- Beth Bachenheimer
- Sherry Brody
- Judy Chicago
- Susan Frazier
- Camille Grey
- Paula Harper
- Vicky Hodgetts
- Kathy Huberland
- Judy Huddleston
- Janice Johnson
- Karen LeCocq
- Janice Lester
- Paula Longendyke
- Ann Mills
- Carol Edison Mitchell
- Robin Mitchell
- Sandra Orgel
- Jan Oxenberg
- Christine Rush
- Marsha Salisbury
- Miriam Schapiro
- Robin Schiff
- Mira Schor
- Robin Weltsch
- Wanda Westcoast
- Faith Wilding
- Shawnee Wollenmann
- Nancy Youdelman
Working collaboratively on Womanhouse, the students gained new skills while developing a deeper understanding of human and personal experiences. The students also provided tours of the exhibition, which gave them the opportunity to articulate their artwork while maintaining their personal vision when faced with criticism. Even though the exhibition provided the students with great satisfaction and team effort some of the artists didn’t feel any personal accomplishment, and were looking forward to going back to work on their individual projects.
The mansion contained a variety feminist installations, sculptures, performances and other forms of art. The artists creating Womanhouse did so, centralizing a white, cisgender, heterosexual and middle-class experience of womanhood in the early 70s. By transforming a "woman's space" into a radical feminist art, the artists truly made a statement. Here they spoke out about women's issues, as well as criticizing the patriarchy. This helped women artists and architects in the pursuit of recognition and acknowledgement on the same level as men. Using a mansion as their chosen setting furthered their statement.