Column:
Guerrilla Girls fight sexism one museum at a time
Published Oct. 9, 2009
People are running around in masks and pseudonyms trying to right the wrongs in the world. Are they superheroes? They're known as the Guerrilla Girls and their tastes are little bit more high-brow than comic books.
For those of you who haven't heard, the Guerrilla Girls are a group of feminists whose mission is to "expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture" through the use of "facts, humor and outrageous visuals," according to their Web site. Oh, and they do all these things while wearing gorilla masks.
That's right, gorilla masks, and they often take on names, such as Frida Khalo and Käthe Kollwitz. This group started out focusing on the gender disparities in the art business and museums. One of their first publicity events was a poster asking, "Do women have to be naked to get into U.S. museums?" referencing the noticeable under-representation of female artists in art museums contrasted with the ubiquity of the naked female figure.
By the Guerrilla count, 83 percent of the nudes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were women compared to only 3 percent of the artists. The poster had this thought-provocateur hanging over one of those nudes wearing a gorilla mask. The figure came compliments of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' "Grand Odalisque," thus the distortion had the double-whammy of challenging sexism and orientalism simultaneously.
Even with this popularity, the Guerrilla Girls make all appearances and actions anonymously, under the guise of their gorilla masks. Why? Well, it's not as if there is a lack of women artists in the world, just a lack in the museums, so some believe this exclusion is based solely on sexism and gender stereotyping.
By acting and speaking anonymously, they suggest the identity of the artist isn't so important. Would it matter if "Grand Odalisque" were really a self-portrait? Would the value of classics be changed if their authorship turned out to be wrong? How would we feel differently if Yoko Ono had been the Beatle an unknown named John Lennon had corrupted?
This subtle point suggested by ironically jarring gorilla masks is perhaps the most important lesson one can learn from the Guerrilla Girls. I'm not downplaying the importance of identity or advocating an abandonment of one's roots, but it's all too easy to give too much credence to a well-known name. It's just as easy to brush aside work by a name you've never heard. But what's the sense in this? When did notoriety become exchangeable for quality, or obscurity become synonymous with inferiority? When we rely on names for our evaluations, we will always come up short. It's thinking like this that gives us a museum where only 3 percent of the artists represented are women.
Out of all the artists out there, people are so quick to judge by the appearance of the artist rather than the appearance of the art. When we judge just by names and initial appearances before we dig into content and substance, we wind up like these museums, with wall after wall of dead white guys. And frankly, white walls are pretty bland.