Who are the Guerrilla Girls?

Guerrilla Girls are an all female collective who remain anonymous by wearing gorilla masks and naming themselves after famous dead women. In 1998 the Guerrilla Girls’ new book, The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, they wrote:

The group famously began in reaction to MoMA’s An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture 1984 exhibition. Although the exhibition was supposed to represent the top artists in the world, out of the 169 artists shown only 13 were women. To add insult to injury the curator, Kynaston McShine, stated in interviews that “any artist who wasn’t in the show should rethink ‘his’ career.”

A group of artists protested outside on the opening night. However, they noticed the onlookers weren’t interested in their message, so a year later Guerrilla Girls formed with the aim of finding new ways to revolt using street art.

Although Guerrilla Girls began as an activist group, they have gradually been embraced by the artworld and have shown their work in galleries such as MoMa and Tate Modern. This is how they reconcile their popularity with their work:

The original of Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? was produced in 1989 after members of the group walked through the Met and counted the ratio of female artists to female nudes. What they discovered was that ‘less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female’.

The figure in the image is taken from Odalisque and Slave painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In order to reach their audience, the group rented advertising space on the New York buses. However, soon after ‘the bus company cancelled [their] lease, saying that the image … was too suggestive and that the figure appeared to have more than a fan in her hand.’ 

Guerrilla Girls’ 1986 Report Card lists 17 Galleries, comparing the figures of female artists exhibited between 1985-6 and 1986-7 in their recognisably bold monochrome style. This poster, and others from their portfolio Guerrilla Girls Talk Back, borrow elements from advertising and fly-posting. Many of these posters were pasted up on New York’s streets at night, following in the tradition of street-artists and activists.

Another motif used by the Guerrilla Girls, is this girly handwritten letter, Dearest Art Collector 1986. The pink paper and sad faced flower appear only to enhance their sarcasm. They have used this template for other public letters, most of which sign off with ‘We know that you feel terrible about this and will rectify the situation immediately’. As usual the joke is on the art collector.