Guerrilla Girls Rhetorical Analysis

The Guerrilla Girls, a collective of anonymous female artists, who challenge the public to think through their art work. Hiding behind the names of famous female artist and gorilla mask these women seek justice and equality for female artist. By producing posters, books, and performances, the Guerrilla Girls reach for the goal of exposing acts of sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film, and culture at large. The group’s method of exaggerating the rhetorical strategies used to propagate the normalcy of male domination in the art world translate well to their critiques of popular and political culture, and that this method is an important aspect of feminist discourse today. The deep history of the Guerrilla Girls and the ideas behind

each other their work, as well as the ways in which they have convert the topic of art in order to provide a compelling critique of societal views and attitude towards women. The Guerrilla Girls incorporate aspects of current feminist focus such as that of race, class, or gender. The group used a variety of new tactics to reach a wider audience through social media, television, and art. The Guerrilla Girls’ strategies aim farther to promote real change to what was known as contemporary feminism, especially for women artist but also for anyone who looks at art or images in popular culture. They used things like posters to inform viewers about continuing inequality between genders by using appropriating images that are easily recognizable to a wide audience.
It is also important to remember that the Guerrilla Girls’ work calls attention to societal views on race, polities, and other topics. At an attempt to address the core nature of feminism. However, the group’s primary concern is women and their role in museum culture and art. Throughout history women have made advancements in many areas, including art. There are more than enough examples to show that men have always and are still the dominant artist in the world of art by a huge margin. In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition entitled An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, this exhibition was supposed to be a summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world at the time. Sadly, only a mere sixteen of the one hundred and sixty-nine artists in the show were women. The curator said that any artist who was not in the show should rethink their career in art. This of course raised some curiosity and anger among several women artists. They began to do research on the representation of women in different galleries and museums. The came across some interesting findings that were quite upsetting. More importantly it was enough to inspire the Guerrilla Girls’ first posters. The posters goal was to expose the inconsistencies of art dealers, collectors, and critics.
Since the Guerrilla Girl’s event, the world in particularly the art world has continued in show the dominance of men across the board. In exhibitions, women were still vastly underrepresented. In 2004, the Museum of Modern Art in New York featured over four hundred and ten works on its gallery floors where both painting and sculpture are exhibited. Only sixteen out of the bunch of those works were by women. As one can tell the problem continues as it did many years ago. This of course sparked the Guerrilla Girls attention. So, they responded with a poster from their March 2012 exhibition at Columbia College in Chicago. On the poster, the Guerrilla Girls mentioned that the ninety percent of the artists whose work is exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern galleries were male. Sadly it wasn’t only museums, but galleries as well that have failed to feature the likes of female artists. Similar exhibitions happened across the globe, forcing the Guerrilla Girls hand. They made known through poster and letters in countries other than the United States, that this was unfair treatment and that it needed to be changed.
The Guerrilla Girls tactics are worth noting as they are agents of change among the feminist movement. Amazingly their work had been translated into more than ten different languages and praised by various figures in the art community. One of the Guerrilla Girls’ primary modes of communicating their message is through exaggeration by mimicking the standard that is established by institutions, in order to call attention to the societal issues. Anne Demo briefly points to this in her essay when discussing the Guerrilla Girls and their name stating, “Reclamation of the term ‘girl,’ as well as all things girlish, demonstrates how mimicry functions as a strategy of incongruity.” By using this label that has a negative connotation behind it, calls attention to the ways in which women do not represent the ideas that the title has. They were once asked if labeling themselves ‘girls’ went against their beliefs and idea when it came to feminist politics, Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo stated, “Calling a grown woman a girl can imply she’s not complete, mature, or grown up. But we decided to reclaim the world ‘girl,’ so it couldn’t be used against us.” The Guerrilla Girls’ idea of representations of what is feminine in the art world as well as in popular culture continues in their posters.
Imagine walking to work or class and seeing a billboard with the following headline, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met.

Museum?” and underneath, “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” What kind of feelings would this invoke to both male and female viewers? The poster Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? (Figure 1) was the Guerrilla Girls’ response in 1989 from the Public Art Fund in New York to design a billboard that would attract the general audience. The text being more than eye grabbing enough for the public it is followed by a reclining nude woman wearing a gorilla mask with surprisingly and in a way humorist large teeth. The woman in the billboard is an appropriation of Grand Odalisque (Figure 2) painted by Augusta Dominique Ingres in 1814. The gorilla mask that the woman is wearing is very similar to that which is worn by the Guerrilla Girls whenever the choice to make an appearance in public to help hide their identities. The advertisement for the exclusion in exhibiting practices sadly appeared on busses instead of billboards that it was originally planned to be on. The Public Art Fund rejected the design stating that the message behind it wasn’t clear enough. The Guerrilla Girls rented ad space on New York busses to have the poster make its way around the city. The company canceled the running of the ad due to the image of the Odalisque and that it was too suggestive for the public because of the fan in the figures hand that many suggested that it looked like an erect

penis.
This piece exaggerates but also exposes the role of women in the art world through the appropriation of a well-regarded historical work and through the colors of the poster. “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” uses the image of Ingres’ Odalisque (Figure 2) to comment on the long history of the female nude in Western art as a subjugating theme, with a man’s perspective or the ‘male gaze’ being the prevailing viewpoint in art. John Berger describes this history and its impact on women, saying, “In one category of European oil painting women were the principal, ever-recurring subject. That category is the nude. In the nudes of European painting we can discover some of the criteria and conventions by which women have been seen and judged as sights.” Nudity, Berger posits, is related not only to two-dimensional paintings but also to lived sexuality. The man’s gaze is active, whereas the pose of the nude is typically passive, turning toward the viewer with a downcast or indirect glance from the subject, allowing the viewer to examine the feminine physique as he pleases. The nude facing the viewer is significant, “The act of looking,” they say, “is commonly regarded as awarding more power to the person who is looking than to the person who is the object of the look.”
The Guerrilla girls, covering the face of the nude figure with a face full of aggression that slightly looks at the viewer changes who has the power of the gaze. The covering of the face could symbolize a number of different things. One of these possibilities is because female artist isn’t known to most museum goers so they don’t have a voice or more importantly a face. The poster also uses what is typically known as feminine colors, pink and yellow, but uses highly saturated hues instead of the more calm and muted tones associated with peacefully reclining women. This can easily be related to the term girl; the bright yellow background and pink text is an action of reclamation. Paired with a snarling gorilla head, the colors become impact and attention grabbing. Such mimicry is, as Demo says, “exposing the harms of norms without being reduced to them.” This poster does more than just expose the harms of the norms it as mentioned before looks to reclaim them. It takes the female nude, this exposure if often used as a form of pleasure to the eye. Instead the Guerrilla Girls make it a nude figure of power, by accompanying it with text that makes a statement and giving it the fast of one of the most powerful beast in the wild. One might think this could be talking about how women are a powerful beast in the world or in art.