This year the
anonymous group of women
who call themselves
the Guerrilla Girls
are celebrating their
30th anniversary
of questioning and disrupting
art world practices,
asking important questions
about whose work gets seen
in art institutions and why.
In 1985, the Guerrilla Girls
put out this public service
message, calling attention
to the paucity of solo shows
by women artists in
New York's art museums.
And this year, they
updated this list,
showing only modest improvement.
There's still deeply
entrenched discrimination
across the board in
arts institutions,
and the Guerrilla
Girls have been
steadfast in calling it out.
I have tremendous
respect for what they do.
And for me, they
fall into a category
of truly inspirational
artists who take risks,
are supremely
awesome, unapologetic,
and who happen to be women.
I'm going to call them
Fierce Women of Art.
They make a wide range
of work, and we're only
going to touch on a tiny
portion of it today.
But I feel the need to
single out and celebrate
some of the most inspirationally
brazen women who've made art
in the last several decades.
Today, I'm going to
talk about five of them.
First up, the aforementioned
Guerrilla Girls.
This art collective got
together after the Museum
of Modern Art in New York had
a survey exhibition in 1984
of what they considered
to be the most
important art of the time.
Out of 169 artists,
only 13 were women.
And all the artists were white
and from Europe or the US.
Picketing was organized
outside the museum,
but it seemed to make no
impression on visitors.
So they decided to try
some different tactics.
The group made posters
and stickers to plaster
around the city that displayed
cold, hard statistics
demonstrating that unambiguous
gender imbalance in museums
and galleries.
In 1989, they conducted what
they call a weenie count
at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
They compared the number of
nude males to nude females
in the art on display.
They shared their results
on a billboard made
through the Public Art Fund
and updated their findings
in 2005 and 2012.
Their efforts extend
beyond gender concerns.
And their work has
also brought attention
to racial inequality in
the art world and beyond.
Playing upon the
word "guerrilla"--
as in freedom fighter--
and its homonym "gorilla"--
the animal-- the group members
wear masks when in public,
each choosing the name of a
woman artist of the past to go
by.
It injects humor
in their activism
but also works to protect
their individual careers.
And as founding member
Frida Kahlo once said,
"If you're in a situation where
you're a little afraid to speak
up, put a mask on.
You won't believe what
comes out of your mouth."
As their statistics
continue to show,
this is an issue that
has not gone away--
making their work of using,
quote, "facts, humor,
and fake fur to
embarrass and transform
the powers that be as relevant
and important as ever."
Corita Kent was a sister of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary
in Los Angeles and taught
art in the 1950s and '60s
at Immaculate Heart College.
During that time she forged her
own printmaking aesthetic while
also inspiring and opening the
minds of her students, peers,
and scads of others.
Even before Warhol,
Sister Corita
was experimenting with silk
screening and iconography
of advertising.
She made posters,
serigraphs, banners,
and murals that combined her
interest in faith, literature,
and activism-- creating
dynamic, powerful images that
asked the critical
questions of her time.
Her work was highly political,
addressing the Vietnam
War and civil rights.
And her banners and
posters could often
be seen at rallies
in the '60s and '70s.
She left the order
in 1968, but remained
a member of the Catholic
church and continued
making work until her death.
Her brand of activism was bold
and unflinching, but wholly
positive and inclusive.
Rare is the figure who
can inspire and engage
such wide audiences and
present a kind of idealism that
is intelligent and unrelenting.
Lynda Benglis came to the
fore in the late 1960s
with her poured pieces, hybrids
of painting and sculpture
made by her pouring latex and
foam directly onto the floor.
These bright, bold,
and central works
one-upped the gestures of
the abstract expressionists
and also ran counter
to the rigid minimalism
that was currently
reigning supreme.
But she became famous not
just for her pioneering work
but also for a legendary ad
she put in the November 1974
issue of "Artforum" magazine.
Before that, she'd already
begun to cheekily reference
the male domination
of the art world
by including a
picture of herself
as a child wearing a
traditional Greek boys
costume on her announcement
card for a 1973 exhibition.
Then in April of
'74, you see her
in an ad in "Artforum"
for another show,
wearing aviators and leaning
against her silver Porsche.
A card announcing her show
at Paula Cooper Gallery
in May of '74 includes
this photograph
of Benglis taken
by Annie Leibovitz.
But the real kicker was
the November "Artforum" ad
which she purchased herself,
called a centerfold,
and considered a work of art.
It included an unforgettable
photograph of Benglis nude,
holding a large double-headed
dildo between her legs.
Google it.
The image was shocking
and hugely divisive,
causing resignations from
two of the magazine's editors
who considered it pornographic.
Love it or hate it,
the picture made
fun of the machismo
of the art and artists
who ruled the market, while
also subverting the male gaze.
Benglis owned it.
And for me, this
image represents
her absolutely taking command
of her sexuality, her career,
and her public image.
The controversy has
abated, but the picture
is still remarkably
powerful-- although difficult
to find in libraries
due to theft.
For many artists, this kind
of act could subsume a career.
But Benglis has continued to
make ever-new and innovative
work throughout her career.
Her decades-long exploration
of biomorphism and materiality
has earned her
enormous influence,
and the impact of her
work is strong today.
In 1989, the National
Gallery of Art in Beijing
hosted a show called
"China Avant-Garde",
which was the
country's first ever,
government-sponsored
exhibition of experimental art.
The show opened on
February 5 at 9:00 AM
and was closed down by
3:00 PM on the same day
after one of the artists
whose work was included
in the show, Xiao Lu,
walked into the galleries,
took out a pellet gun,
and fired two shots
into her installation.
Made in collaboration
with the artist Tang Song,
the piece consisted of
two telephone booths
with a male figure in one, a
female figure in the other,
and a red telephone dangling
off its receiver in between.
Titled "Dialogue", the piece was
clearly about a lack thereof.
And Xiao Lu's performative
act of shooting on it,
while she claimed it was
personal and not politically
motivated, resounded strongly
as an act of rebellion
at a time, post-cultural
revolution,
when the government
was just beginning
to loosen its control and
censorship of artistic output.
She was lauded as a hero of the
cultural and political vanguard
just as tensions were rising
toward the pro-democracy
demonstrations and
subsequent massacre that
would take place in Tiananmen
Square just months later.
Few if any other
women artists in China
have achieved this
kind of a notoriety,
even as the market for
contemporary Chinese art
has expanded and provided
international platforms
for a number of male
artists from China.
Xiao Lu has continued
to make work since 1989,
although with considerably
less attention--
exploring controversial
issues through works
like "Sperm", which documents
her quest for a sperm
donor and a doctor who would
artificially inseminate her as
well as her ultimate failure.
Another work titled "Wedding"
documents her performance
of marrying herself-- arriving
by a coffin in a wedding gown,
slipping rings onto both ring
fingers, and releasing a dove.
Xiao Lu's brand of activism
is intensely personal
but resonates strongly
within a culture
constrained by censorship
and largely dominated by men.
Kara Walker burst
onto the New York art
scene in the mid-1990s
with her installations
of large-scale, cut-paper
silhouettes that bring to life
imagined narratives of the
pre-Civil War American South.
Her characters and
scenery represent
exaggerated stereotypes drawn
from historical depictions
of the time, presenting
grotesque and violent tableaus
of plantation life.
Her diverse body
of work expanded
to include drawing, painting,
projection, and video.
But her focus and
work has remained
steadfastly trained on
histories of slavery;
discrimination; and
what she has called
her ever-present,
never-ending war with race.
In 2014, Walker created
her largest work to date,
call "A Subtlety" in a former
sugar factory in Brooklyn.
Within the space, she installed
a colossal sphinx-like female
sculpture coated in
sugar, surrounded
by smaller molasses-coated
figures of little boys
carrying bananas and baskets.
Its subtitle tells
you all you need
to know-- "the Marvelous
Sugar Baby, an Homage
to the unpaid and overworked
Artisans who have refined
our Sweet from the to the
Kitchens of the New World
on the Occasion of the
demolition of the Domino Sugar
Refining Plant".
It's Walker's unsubtlety in
many cases that captivates us.
Recapitulating painful
stereotypes in order
to critique them.
Her works are deliberately
provocative and often
difficult to look at,
but they effectively
get at the very worst
of America's past
as well as its present.
Walker's work reminds
me again and again
of that Faulkner line.
"The past isn't dead.
It isn't even past."
Her work is a stalwart
testimony to that.
There are many more artists I
admire regardless of gender.
And I'm definitely
aware that there
are other disparities
in the art world
that prevent artists
from rising to the top.
But who are the fierce
artists you admire?
Let's talk about
it in the comments.
