Guerilla Girls - Superheroines of the artworld

[sunlit_music]

Check out the Guerilla Girls website at www.guerillagirls.com/index.shtml. So who are the Guerilla Girls? They're true tricksters, activists, artists, and *hilarious*. You gotta love artists/activists who wear gorilla masks, and take on the names of deceased female artists. The mythology and comics geek in me loved this declaration:

we declare ourselves feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman, and the Lone Ranger.

I LOL'ed at the last sentence of their answer in one of their interviews:

Q:Why did you write the Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art? Aren't there already lots of books out there about women artists?

The work of feminist art historians over the last 30 years has shown how the means of art production in western cultures was denied to all but white male artists until well into the 20th century. Still there have always been creative and adventurous women who bucked the system and lived creative lives of their own invention. Some achieved success while alive, only to later be written out the history books. Others were unacknowledged in their own lifetime, only to be discovered after death.

In Bedside Companion we wanted to tell the stories of these courageous women artists and also to make fun of the standard art history canon for ignoring them. Another goal was to write the first humorous art history book, mean to be read in the bathroom, and intended to make readers laugh, not put them to sleep. It's also thin, with sharp edges and can be used as a weapon!

Nothing seems to stop them in exposing sexism, racism and corruption in the art world and in politics. They've brought about changes in the art world for female artists and artists from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Comments

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to find that book. It sounds great!

[sunlit-music.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm thinking of buying that book too. There's a excerpt from the book on the Guerilla Girls' website at: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/books/robusti.shtml