Guerilla Girls

Introduction

The feminist art activism troupe Guerilla Girls have celebrated thirty years of making a ruckus in the conservative boy’s club of the art world. Their message is one of demanding equality in representation and participation in the art community of museums, publications, and support. Confronting the delusions of Patriarchy, the Guerilla Girls emphasize that a little bit of progress towards equality is hardly progress at all. Their brash, confident, humorous, and consistent approach has helped shift the ground of the art industry, making room for the waves of female artistic culmination.

Faceless Nudes

The art world has been one of the strongholds of sexism, regarding women as appropriate subjects for art, but limiting the possibilities for their participation practicing art. Begun in 1984, Guerilla Girls hide their faces behind guerilla masks for a twofold purpose; 1) to hide their identities so that their careers do not suffer the backlash of their activism, and 2) to make themselves symbols for the faceless nature of women in art. Now celebrating three decades of feminist mischief, the Guerilla Girls have expanded their impact, and solidified their message. These activists consider themselves crusaders for justice, asserting, “We’re feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman” (Guerilla Girls). Through parody, confrontation, and emphasizing that which the industry would seek to ignore, the Guerilla Girls poke a stick in the eye of the prestigious art industry. The catch is if the industry admits there is a stick in their eye they will be forced to confront why it is there. So the activists use many approaches to poke:

• We reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair.

• Just in the last several years, we’ve appeared at over 90 universities and museums, as well as The New York Times, Interview, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Bitch, and Artforum; on NPR, the BBC and CBC; and in many art and feminist texts.

• We are authors of stickers, billboards, many, many posters and street projects, and several books.

• We’re part of Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women Campaign in the UK; we're brainstorming with Greenpeace.

• We’ve unveiled anti-film industry billboards in Hollywood just in time for the Oscars, and created a large scale installation for the Venice Biennale, and street projects for Krakow, Istanbul, Mexico City and Montreal. (Guerilla Girls)

• Dubbing themselves the ‘conscience of the art world’, in 1985 the Guerrilla Girls began a poster campaign that targeted museums, dealers, curators, critics and artists who they felt were actively responsible for, or complicit in, the exclusion of women and non-white artists from mainstream exhibitions and publications. (Manchester)

Feminist Need Continues

Sexual and racial discrimination has been a key aspect of the art industry, like so many prestigious institutions kept a boy’s club by both passive and offensive means. The Guerilla Girls have helped break down this barrier by first drawing attention to the fact that it is there. This began with “They formed in response to the International Survey of Painting and Sculpture held in 1984 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition included the work of 169 artists, less than 10% of whom were women” (Manchester). The Guerrilla Girls asks the awkward question of why their were so few women in the show.

A common belief amongst the art world and the boy’s club behind the network of publications, education, museums, and funding which keeps it running straight is that women are not as good artists as men. However, this is a result of the limitations of Patriarchal delusion, and not reality. Even with evidence to the contrary, and social standards changing some male artists are still confidently expressing this opinion today. 75 year old German artist Georg Baselitz was quoted in 2013 as saying, “Women don’t paint very well. It’s a fact” (Clark). This reveals why the Guerilla Girls are still working harder than ever thirty years after the beginning of their education and punking campaigns.

Since their early days of , organizing protest like, and Barbara Krueger, the Guerilla Girls have become organized and interconnected with feminist activism. Their work has finally become vetted by the very museums they fought against, as in “Last Year, the Whitney Museum of American Art acquired the group’s portfolio of 88 posters and ephemera from 1985 to 2012, documenting the number of women and minorities represented in galleries and institution, including the Whitney itself” (Ryzik). This represents the shift that has been occurring in the high brow art world in the last thirty and honors the validity of the low brow movement-not that they need the affirmation. The Guerilla Girls assert, “Galleries ask to represent us…But we’re not interested in being part of the market and producing a precious commodity. You can buy our posters online for $20” (Brockes). While this is true, and another benefit of the Internet, the fact that the Guerilla girls are in museums at least helps raise the percentages.

The shift of the age is towards a more DIY attitude which has changed the application of value to art. To this shift, the Whitney’s curator for prints, David Kiehl, who helped make the acquisition affirmed, “To me, they are art world royalty” (Ryzik). This reflects the fact that what is radical in hindsight (like Warhol) is often embraced from that safe distance. After all, many women who worked in the art industry in the 1980s shared the frustration of the animalized activists. Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) director, Olga Viso, recently acquired the entire Guerilla Girls portfolio, and is organizing a show to feature them. She shares, “’I remember feeling such pride that there were female artst out there giving voice to these concerns that we were sensing and feeling’…adding that coming of age with the Guerrilla Girls ‘totally shaped who I am and the artists I worked with’” (Ryzik). At the time the Guerrilla Girls were beginning this they could have had no real idea just how much their message resonated with their culture. After all, the delusion of male supremacy is an unhealthy burden to men as well as women, promoting so many false ideas and behaviors which divide people on so many levels. Devaluing and inhibiting the contribution of half of all of humanity cannot help but put a burden on the other half.

The Guerrilla Girls were able to spread their message affirmatively in part because they employed humor, as those who remain activists must do to stay energized. Of this, Gloria Steinem affirmed, “I think they’re the perfect protest group because they have humor” (Ryzik). One example of this humor is a poster they made on the many advantages of being a woman artist, “Working without the pressure of success; knowing your career might pick up after you’re 80; getting your picture in the art magazines wearing a gorilla suit” (Ryzik). This humor keeps the artists involved as well as sending a message. After all, after thirty years of activism, museums which once showed 10% of women artists now show 20% (Brockes). There is still a ways to go, but in response to that need many female artists have begun opening their own galleries, utilizing the connectivity of the Internet, and finding creative ways to show their work outside of the traditional framework.

Keeping the Fire of Justice Alive

Over time there have been around 60 members of the activist collective, with only a few remaining consistent the entire time. Each member calls themselves one famous female artist from history to maintain anonymity but also have a calling card. Kollwitz and Kahlo are two original members of the group, and share;

“I mean, we didn’t have a plan,” says Kahlo. “We were just pissed off.” The monkey masks came about after a spelling mix-up around guerrilla/gorilla, and so the avant-garde protest was born, a satirical gesture that was also a way for the women to protect themselves and their careers from reprisals. (“The art world was a small clubby place, and we thought our careers would be hurt,” says Kollwitz.) (Brockes)

Last year at their retrospective the Guerilla Girls began to emphasize the classism which has eroded the foundation of art appreciation. While the trend is slowly changing, it is still “the billionaire art collectors who drive the art market and often sit on the boards of the major museums, giving them a say in what art gets bought and shown” (Brockes). Not only does this practice inhibit the majority of the populace from supporting/collecting art it also places too much power of choice in the hands of a few billionaires. To the Guerilla Girls point out, “ you think about it, that’s kind of a conflict of interest…We accept that art is outrageously and that all these hugely wealthy people are the ones buying…What we don’t understand is that they are also controlling the institutions” (Brockes). The underground/low brow art movement has become more empowered and supported to circumvent this, but overall a greater harmony would benefit the entire art industry and the public.

Recently commenting on this system on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the Guerilla Girls remained unfazed in their mission for equality. One gorilla masked activist said, every aesthetic decision, Frida points out, reflects a value system, and if the values are determined by wealthy men, then art museums are not truly representative. Unless all the voices of our culture are in the history of art, it’s not really a history of art—it’s a history of power. (Broucher)

Ultimately, classism is one of the strongest reinforcements of all oppression and prejudice, and after thirty years of poking the stick at the eye of the man the Guerilla Girls have finally come to the heart of the issue (Bollen).

Conclusion

The net of culture which art is one expression is a complex matrix of values and the means of expressing them. At any juncture discrimination exists one can be sure there is a monetary connection masquerading as some value or skill. Highlighting this in the art world is one of the many focuses of this tenacious and effective activist group the Guerrilla Girls. Coming at the art world from every angle while remaining in the shadows, their guerrilla approach has highlighted the corruption at the root of the industry which unjustly influences who will be seen, sold, and why. The contribution of women throughout history is not under question but by those who persist in having blinders on to the value of different approaches and voices in celebrating the complexity inherent in the species.

Works Cited

Bollen, Christopher. “Guerrilla Girls.” Interview, 23 Mar. 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/guerrilla-girls

Brockes, Emma. “The Guerrilla Girls: 30 years of punking art world sexism.” The Guardian, 29 Apr. 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/29/the-guerrilla-girls-interview-art-world-sexism

Broucher, Brian. “The Guerrilla Girls Call Out Art World Moneymakers on Stephen Colbert’s Show.” ArtNet, 14 Jan. 2016. Retrieved from: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guerrilla-girls-on-colbert-show-407777

Clar, Nick. “What’s the biggest problem with women artists? None of them can actually paint, says Georg Baselitz.” The Independent, 6 Feb. 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/what-s-the-biggest-problem-with-women-artists-none-of-them-can-actually-paint-says-georg-baselitz-8484019.html

Guerilla Girls. “Guerrilla Girls: Reinventing the ‘F’ Word: Feminism.” Guerrillagirls.com, 2016. Retrieved from: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/#open

Manchester, Elizabeth. “Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum? 1989.” Tate.org, 1989. Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the-met-museum-p78793/text-summary

Ryzik, Melena. “The Guerrilla Girls, After 3 decades, still rattling art world cages.” The New York Times, 5 Aug. 2015. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/arts/design/the-guerrilla-girls-after-3-decades-still-rattling-art-world-cages.html?_r=0