Guerrilla Girls Bring Radical Message

As Museum curator Emmie Donadio began her introduction to the talk given by Frida Kahlo in the Kevin P. Mahaney ’84 Center for the Arts last Thursday, she amended the cursory warning to turn off cell phones with the consolation, “There’s a good chance you won’t be able to hear them anyway.” While her remark was received with amusement in the audience, it also seemed to make sense. After all, we had spent the time after filing into the dance theater jamming to throwback pop songs and looking at a collage of women in ferocious gorilla masks. Frida Kahlo is one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous collective that took the art world by storm in the ‘80s with its brash, statistics- and sarcasm-laden posters demanding an end to sexism and discrimination.

It was something of a surprise, then, when Frida Kahlo took the stage. Dressed all in black, from low boots to ever-present gorilla mask, Kahlo was soft-spoken, almost quiet. This mildness, of course, did not translate to content of her lecture. Beginning with a series of sexist quotes from luminaries such as Pythagoras, Martin Luther, and Renoir and ending with the advice to “Use the f-word – feminism,” Kahlo’s talk was delivered in the same pithy, humor-laded style as the Guerrilla Girls’ posters. Particularly amusing was her discussion of the Guerrilla Girls’ upcoming book The Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How It Was Cured; the book explores the historical pathologizing of female sexuality.

The bulk of Kahlo’s presentation was dedicated to a survey of the Guerrilla Girls’ history, explaining the way in which their tactics and message have shifted as the group gained first an audience and then acceptance in the broader art community.  Over time, their posters have moved from being wheat pasted to the streets around museums to being framed within them. While admitting that it’s a “thrill to criticize an institution on its own walls,” Kahlo nonetheless acknowledged that maintaining resistance while working within a system can be a challenge. “What do you do,” she asked, “when the system you’ve spent your entire life attacking suddenly embraces you?”

This is a particularly salient question to have asked at the College. There is something seemingly incongruous about seeing the Guerrilla Girls’ inflammatory posters tidily framed and hanging on the quiet gray-green walls of the college museum. Nonetheless, Guerrilla Girls: Art In Action is consonant with other ongoing efforts by the museum to call into question both what kinds of art are suitable for Middlebury audiences as well as how art is defined more generally.

“Knowing that an exhibition of performance art was coming to the museum this spring and that the Performance exhibition would be concurrent to some extent with the Guerrilla Girls’ show – and also that next spring we would be presenting an exhibition of work by graffiti or street artists,” Assistant Director and Chief Curator Emmie Donadio said. “I wanted … to explore the broader parameters of 20th century and contemporary art practice.”

This question was explored in great detail by the course “Art, Performance and Activism,” taught last J-term by Donadio. The twelve members of the class worked over the month to whittle down the 82 pieces in the Guerrilla Girls’ Compleat Portfolio: 1985-2008 to the 13 posters and ephemera pieces that appear in the exhibition. While revolving around the Guerrilla Girls, the course also worked to thoroughly contextualize their work.

“[The course] was designed to some extent to survey the topic of object-less art,” Donadio said. “That means art as a form of activity rather than a means of producing objects.”

In pursuit of this goal, students researched and presented on topics ranging from Dada to the Judson Memorial Church to the NEA 4. The course and exhibit were also strongly influenced by an exploration of the 1970s feminist movement, particularly within the art world.

“Linda Hershman Leeson’s  video !WAR (Women-Art-Revolution), which we watched in class, turned out to be one of the best ‘finds’ for an introduction to the Guerrilla Girls in the context of feminist art action of the last half-century,” Donadio said.

A theme that emerged strongly from both of these sources – object art and feminism – was the importance of collaboration. While the intrusion of the spring semester made on-going collective work on the exhibit difficult, the class nonetheless strove to make sure that each member’s voice would be present in it’s final form.

“Each student did research on one of the selected posters and wrote a wall text to accompany it,” Donadio said. “The idea was to present each work in its particular historical context.” Each student also created a visual response to their piece; these were then compiled, along with background information on the Guerrilla Girls, into a zine that accompanies the exhibit. The importance of collaboration was also recognized as extending beyond the efforts of the class.

“We had a lot of ideas for interactive features for the exhibition,” Donadio said. “All of the students seemed eager to engage the public and invite them to comment.” Hopefully Kahlo’s talk last Thursday has helped to kick-start this conversation. Those involved with the exhibit emphasized that the issues of sexism and discrimination addressed in the Guerrilla Girls’ work are very much ongoing.

“It’s exhausting to look at art prices for male artists and female artists today,” Maisie Ogata ’14 said. “Shouldn’t we help demonstrate to the viewer that we have not reached full equality between male and female artists?” As Kahlo emphasized near the end of her talk, the Guerrilla Girls are not the only voices capable of criticizing the status quo. “People who want to do work like this don’t need us,” she remarked, putting the ball squarely in our court.