Guerrilla Girls: Protesting the Art World With a Primate Punch—Part I
by Hayward Hawks Marcus
USA
Who could have predicted that I would one day interview artist Frida Kahlo? Not via Ouija board, mind you, but by telephone. And while I didn’t ask, I doubt she was wearing her gorilla mask.
Before anyone asks, this Frida Kahlo is a founding member of the Guerilla Girls, New York City’s female, gorilla-masked, artist avengers, who lead a perpetual battle for parity within the world of High Art.
Forming in 1985 to protest an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, where the number of male to female artists ran 148 to 17, the Guerrilla Girls referred to themselves as “The Conscience of the Art World.” With pseudonyms of deceased female artists, they cloaked their identities inside gorilla masks to keep the public focused on their actions, not their personalities, to protect their own art careers, and, I suppose, to give their appearance the same humorous slant as their work.
With satire and some surprising statistics, they cut through the misconceptions that the art world of today finally plays fair with all artists, regardless of gender and skin color. Even in 2007, some 35 years after the launch of Ms. Magazine and a burgeoning idealistic belief that sexism and racism in the arts would right itself within a few decades, the paucity of art exhibited by non-whites and non-males stands as an egregious sign that underrepresented artists must still fight for that valued real estate on the walls of galleries, museums, and art collectors worldwide.
Today, there are three factions of the Guerrilla Girls, all working for the same causes through different avenues: Guerrilla Girls, GuerrillaGirlsBroadband, and Guerrilla Girls On Tour. Since their inception, they have created more than 90 books, actions, posters, billboards and magazine projects around issues of art, politics and culture throughout the world, most with a witty panache that flips a furry finger at those who would toss epithets of “humorless feminism.”
A jaunt through their website brought some laughs along with some dismal statistics about females and minorities in the arts today. I asked Kahlo if she and her group were surprised by how little things seemed to have changed.
“Well it is better than it’s ever been,” she says, with some hesitancy. “But it’s bad in a different way. Certainly at the emerging level, women and people of color are part of every discourse there is about art. However, there’s tokenism, and who would have thought that tokenism would happen? Rather than showing the vast multitudes of women and artists of color, you find the same ones shown over and over. So you have to ask the question: Is tokenism a solution or is it part of the problem? Anyone who’s ever done any work in any civil rights field knows that you have to be vigilant, and that in every generation, exclusion takes another face. Right now, for women and artists of color, it’s a no-brainer––they’re part of the discourse of art. But, if you go up the ladder to the level of museum shows, auction resales, history books, there’s a crushing glass ceiling. (Underrepresented artists) don’t get past a certain point, especially in the art market. There are a few women whose work sells for almost as much as men, but mostly on that level, their work sells maybe ten cents to the (guy’s) dollar. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, and sometimes it’s hard to feel that’s a real disadvantage––you sell something for $400,000 versus a guy with the same reputation, same background, same collectibility who sells a similar piece for $14 million dollars. Well $400,000 is a lot of money, but if you compare it to the $14 million that the guy gets, it’s a pathetic comparison. So, the means of production are not equally offered as they are to men, and certainly not offered to artists of color like they’re offered to white men. They still are culturally privileged in the art market, and over time, that’s a problem.”
When asked who, in her opinion, is primarily responsible for the lack of work by women and artists of color within the halls of private and public museums, Kahlo replies, “You know, museums are large institutions, and I’m sure they would pass the buck inside the museum if you were to ask. It’s an amalgam of curators, directors, public trustees. They don’t even think about (tokenism). It’s business as usual. You know, some prejudice is conscious, and some is unconscious, but it’s prejudice all the same. To truly eradicate it you have to be aware of the conscious and unconscious.”
Bristling at my suggestion that some psychologists and others have insinuated that the underrepresented artists are themselves somehow complicit in their own absence within the art world, Kahlo says, “I think that’s, in a way, blaming the victim. I think there are women and artists of color that have grown disgusted with the art system and then formed their own alternatives. Sort of the impetus behind the National Museum for Women in the Arts. There are other people who want a piece of the pie and will blow up the institution to get a piece of it. I think to blame the people who are excluded for being excluded, or for not working hard enough to be included, is blaming them for the prejudice they have nothing to do with.”
Beyond U.S. boundaries, steps for changing the demographics of skewed art collections on public view are beginning to take place, according to Kahlo. At the Reina Sofia National Art Centre of Spain, a government-run major museum of modern art, there are hardly any women artists. However, in 2005, the Manifesto Arco petition was drawn up and signed by a litany of curators, art professors, art professionals and artists, demanding that the museum buy and exhibit more art by women—something that Kahlo and others believe must happen if the museum is truly going to represent Spanish culture.
The government-run Tate Museum in London is also trying to balance the numbers. “They’re starting to think about this in Western Europe, as art has always been a reflection of their culture, an important reflection, more so than here in the United States. Their government takes it seriously,” she explains. “Our government doesn’t really care about art. I think people are beginning to realize that if government supports art, it should care about what art reflects, and how can you tell the story of your culture without the voices of everyone in it? I think Europe is a bit behind in thinking about feminism in art. However, in the end, they may be a little more responsible about changing it because art is something their government supports.”
Many U.S. museums are not government-run—the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art among them. How these institutions make decisions about who gets purchased, which artists get wall space and special exhibitions, remains safely beyond the public cry for a socially responsible representation. When taxpayer money is involved, though, it might behoove these public museums to be a tad more considerate in their duties to the citizenry.
“One government-run museum...the National Gallery, should look out because they have a really lousy record of women in their collection,” Kahlo warns. “If you look at museum shows at the National Gallery, there have been very, very few women artists over the last five years.” An edgy tone in her voice makes me wonder if the Washington, D.C. museum isn’t next on their hit list for a humorous send-up.
Visiting the National Gallery’s website to see for myself, I took two random samplings from a portion of the artists listed in their collection. From eight hundred artists, I counted the percentage of female names at about 8%. To put this figure in perspective, just up the street, in the U.S. Senate, the percentage of female senators now stands at 16%. The National Gallery’s Chief of Press and Public Information responded willingly when I asked for statistics on female and minority artists and exhibitions, but unfortunately could not provide any in time for this publication.
All photos courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls
About the Author
Native Californian and Monterey Bay resident, Hayward Hawks Marcus, has written for several west coast magazines, the online literary salon, Fresh Yarn, as well as plays, screenplays and a budding first novel.
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Comments (6)
I really enjoyed the "flipping the furry finger" reference. Great article!
Posted by Randy Peyser | April 19, 2007 8:30 AM
Great article, I am looking forward to Part 11.
Pete Marc
Posted by Pete Marc | April 19, 2007 10:16 AM
This piece raises the fascinating question of whether underrepresentation of female artists has inflicted a loss of a unique and important perspective in painting and plastic art.
Like the feminine perspective, which the WIP claims to be underrepresented in journalism, is there a comparable artistic frame of reference or imprint that is displayed in women's art that can and should be better understood?
Posted by Will Peters | April 19, 2007 10:24 AM
What a wonderful way to protest and what a wonderful to tell us about it. Marcus's style makes the "Girls" extrememly accessable. She seems to share both their irreverance and their humor - a good thing too as we need more not only in the art world but in general!
The WIP scores!
PS: Wish I could read the "Thin thinner thinest" graphic more clearly...
Posted by Richard Green | April 19, 2007 3:36 PM
"This piece raises the fascinating question of whether underrepresentation of female artists has inflicted a loss of a unique and important perspective in painting and plastic art."
I think that when any artist doesn't reach the public, we lose access to that voice. That's what I find exciting about the internet––the potential to create new audiences for artists. I found Remedios Varo and Tamara de Lempicka (both female 20th century artists) via the web, and I doubt I would have known them otherwise. I feel both are just as deserving of museum space as their male contemporaries.
Do women have a particular voice and perspective unto themselves? I think we have shared female experiences that a male artist may never consider, and would likely not spring as an artistic theme or statement in his work. However, whether there is an "imprint" in women's art, is probably hard to prove, although I'm certain that art critics and historians will have a try.
Just this morning, a friend sent a link to Miranda July's book promo site, and I think the site itself says oodles about meshing new tech and old tech, and might not be something a guy would think of doing (I'll let you go there yourself to see). But maybe they would, who knows? Probably it speaks more about who Ms July is, than about women artists in general. Check it out, it's humorous.
I've read that artists are far more likely to feel and act androgynously, that artistic males are often a bit more "feminine" and vice versa. Of course, these definitions of masculinity and femininity can be squirrelly to pin down. But, if this is true, then it weakens the imprint theory a bit.
The point of the piece, for me, is about looking at prejudice and fairness today, especially when, just a few decades ago, we expected the world would play fair by now. We all have prejudice, I think. If one says "a work of genius..." to me, the genius that springs to mind is always male, at least at first, just as "nurse" is always female. I believe this is because I can't recall a single woman described as a genius when I was growing up (plenty of nurses, though!). I think generations of female and minority artists have been trying to bust away from a self-smothering belief of innate stupidity and lack of talent in order to gain the confidence needed to push themselves into public arenas. And we haven't even touched on the issue of class and access to education, which may play an even bigger role in how far artists get.
BTW, "Miranda July's book promo site" is a hyperlink. It's not showing in my comment preview as such.
Posted by Hayward Hawks Marcus | April 19, 2007 5:04 PM
I applaud the writer of the article to finally write about something that was and has always been the apple of discord. I have learned about Guerilla Girls from English magazines, and have seen the exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London. The sad truth is that I've seen many paintings at the National Gallery in London and New York, not to mention other small galleries, but I cannot recall one single female artist without consulting books on art or the website. Sad, don't you think? What is worse, the reason for that is not that I didn't like any of the pictures, but because this was once-in-a-life opportunity for these women to be showcased in the gallery of such renown.
A very important message for art connoissuers is that the times of Michelangello, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Degas have by long passed us. Those were the times when a woman was not fit to be an artist, because she had a more deserving job in the house, and the ones who did try to tend to their talents were misfits because they dared rebel against the man-made society. Times have changed and so should art standards.I quite agree that due to fear of being rejected, few women probably approach galleries on their own, which could mean that we are so brainwashed we can't even consider being put up on a wall. Still, it's worth a try. Nobody can guarantee that you won't be rejected, but for every rejection there will be another opportunity and eventually it will pay off to be persistent. But if we only paint or write to satisfy our muse and don't show it to anybody, how can the world know how good we are. So head up and don't be discouraged by one single rejection, especially coming from the male world. If we have a look at some doodles famous painters created,and yet they are set as standard in art schools all over the world, one cannost pause to think who the people who play demigods are. What does it take to be able to assess if a painting deserves to be exhibited? And why should people be prejudiced when seeing a wonderful picture painted by a woman? I'm afraid that art still is a man's world, but together we might be able to achieve something. In Slovenia we have only one female painter that counts for something mentioned in the books of art - Ivana Kobilica, an impressionist, and even her name goes unnoticed. In the States you at least have Frida Kahlo or Peggy Guggenheim. In Europe you have to reach deep down to find a name that will be remembered, but it is up to us all to change that.
Posted by Viktorija Plavčak | May 5, 2007 5:12 AM