During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s two groups emerged within the Houston art scene. On one side of the spectrum you had the Houston Gorilla Girls who based themselves off of the global movement of Guerilla Girls, which had started in New York City. These girls strutted around in gorilla suits, in order to protect their identities, and fought for the rights of not only women artists but artists of color as well. They took out “hits” on many popular art galleries and even museums around Houston that they felt did not do enough to represent female artists, drawing mass publicity and attention. They were revolutionaries in their approach to the art scene, they were not happy with the way that women were being represented as there were so few …show more content…
This feminist art movement paved the way for numerous different art styles to emerge and gave women a more prominent stance within the art world. However during the 1980’s there was another shift and art dealers began showcasing more male artists again in order to revive the commercial economy of art, which marginalized female artists. This caused a new wave of feminism in art, with the emergence of the Guerilla Girls in New York and then eventually the Houston Gorilla Girls. The HGG wanted to intimidate the art galleries around Houston into exhibiting more female artists. They wanted to make them uncomfortable and show them something they probably hadn’t considered, that people do care about the representation of women and that these women in Gorilla masks would not stop until they achieved that fair representation. As stated previously, the guerilla girls not only wore the gorilla masks for the protection of their identity but also to give a feeling of unity and keep the galleries aloof to their activities while they were trying to figure out who was behind the gorilla masks. They wanted to be a faceless organization that sought to not only represents their own interests but the interests of women artists and artists of color that were not being treated as respected members within the art community. They wanted to be representative of the collective ideals and spirit of women all over the world and not just as their individual personalities. They wanted to let the world know that there was a sever lack of female representation and there needed to be a collective movement to change this. They placed blame on the art community as a whole often showcasing signs that read, “You are responsible” in bright neon colors, as not to be
Our names are Logan and Maggie Huff. We are contacting you regarding the fundraiser we have done for our niece Sophia Huff. We both started the fundraiser for Sophia however; the funds were released to Logan, Brigham’s brother. As you know, you have been receiving numerous messages from Brigham Huff. We have also been the recipient of many harassing and obscene messages. We have responded appropriately to those messages and we would like to share with you our story.
The film is centered on a group known as the Women’s Army. It is a group comprised of women who seek to eradicate the ever-present inequalities between males and females. They end up going on marches, networking with different radio shows and meeting together in order to find ways to educate women and the general public about the hypocritical nature of the government and its role in the social and economic status of women. In the beginning of the film we see men catcalling women as they walk down the street, harassing them while riding the subways, and even attempting to rape them in broad daylight. This highlights the impact of societies ideology about gender
Inspired by the women's movement and rebelling against the male-dominated art scene of the 1960s,
Despite this being an art program, the women were also being challenged to write about themselves and create works that expressed their feelings and experiences as women. Some of the bold statements that the program was known for are the “cunt cheerleading” where some of the women would dress as cheerleaders and have the letters on their uniforms collectively spell out “CUNT.” Most of the artwork the program featured had to do with the female body and the misguided perceptions of it. They created bold, sometimes crude works of art that received a lot of attention, which I assume was the purpose in order to bring awareness to this movement. These kinds of radical and audacious works fueled a lot of conversations between women and men, but were
In the lecture titled “Dismantling Injustice”, the speaker talked about the relationship between risk and empathy, in that artists take incredible risks by putting themselves out there, yet they need to understand someone else’s experiences and empathize with those who hold different opinions than them. In order to explain the risks they take, the speaker gave many examples of artists working to fight against injustice. One example was the Guerrilla Girls: a sarcastic group that aimed to bring awareness to social injustices such as sexism and racism. In order to do this, this group of women wore gorilla masks around New York City, posting stickers on art galleries that didn’t feature a high amount of female artists, and creating billboards with facts on how
In the twenty first century there are a few men in this world that admits when you think of artist, you don’t typically think of women. Women rights and racism play a strong role when it comes to African American female artist. For decades’ African American woman have always had a permanent double bull’s eye on their back. Their skin and gender was their worst enemy. In the 1700 century women rights movements started to rise. But if you look up women right movements starting in the 1700 century, the face of women rights is predominantly white women. Between books and the internet, they show that it was mostly white women who helped woman rights. If we still struggle to shine light on African American Women now in the 21st century, you cannot
The intersection of social movements and Art is one that can be observed throughout the civil right movements of America in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The sixties in America saw a substantial cultural and social change through activism against the Vietnam war, women’s right and against the segregation of the African - American communities. Art became a prominent method of activism to advocate the civil rights movement. It was a way to express self-identity as well as the struggle that people went through and by means of visual imagery a way to show political ideals and forms of resistance. To examine how a specific movement can have a profound effects on the visual art, this essay will focus on the black art movement of the 1960s and
The Guerilla Girls are a women’s activist art group. They are masked women who came together to make change in the world of art and women’s involvement in society. GG emerged in 1985 and still are active today in New York after 30 years of the emergence of the group. The Guerilla Girls used posters with real statistics to show awareness of sexism in the art world and the discrimination of women in politics as well as in the mass media. The Guerrilla Girls spread awareness of sexism in art, discrimination in politics and the mass media through their workshops, performances, and posters.
Art can be expressed in many forms but one of the best has got to be political art, as it expresses art in a relevant form for many to understand, it doesn’t require knowledge in history. It puts out a statement in a bold way so that people may better understand what is trying to be expressed. Many artists use art in topics like reproductive rights, equality, gun control, human rights, the environment and war to express desire for change. One of the most outspoken political artists is Barbara Kruger, who has had her work installed in many well-known museums. Kruger has become even more known because of her relevance using art to criticize well-known public figures like Kim Kardashian and George W. Bush, she has also been a proud supporter of reproductive rights. One of her most known works is “Your body is a battleground” which was printed in 1989 in her support for the “March for Women’s Lives”. To show the positive and negatives sides of the inner struggle, the good and the evil. She has a reputation of supporting feminism ideas but she hasn’t stopped there, she’s even had her work put on display in the Hirshhorn Museum. She has gotten the attention of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times because of her distinctive contemporary works. The beauty of her art is that it relates to many, her art ranges from domestic violence to compulsive shopping and everything in-between, it is also really easy
Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz were the alias names created by the original founders of the Guerilla Girls. Their true identity still remains a secret up to this day. Many new members joined them throughout the years but only a handful continued to stay anonymous while others began working in other professions. The Guerilla Girls would gather together for meetings every so often to criticize the art world. Kahlo described the meetings as “empowering” and says, “the more we laughed and made fun of the art world, the better we felt.” They hung posters to shame other sexist artist. Their first poster was in April 1985, directed towards the galleries with mainly male dominance art. Since then, their posters and campaign became well known that people
The eighties were a decade of fear, particularly in New York City. The twenty-four-hour news cycle was brand new and was delivered proudly to an already demoralized nation by CNN. We seemed to be drowning in crack cocaine, satanic ritual killings, the game Dungeons & Dragons was stealing our children’s souls and Ozzy Osbourne was making our kids commit suicide. The seventies had brought us NYC heroes like Frank Serpico and the law enforcement team of David Greenberg and Robert Hantz, also known locally as ‘Batman and Robin.’ At a time when the city desperately needed heroes, these real life cops spawned movies inspired by their crime fighting exploits. Later, Greenberg and Hantz would each be arrested for separate crimes. Sometimes we create
Lady Macbeth is a character in Macbeth, which is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare. Lady Macbeth is married to Macbeth, who was the thane and viciously became king. Lady Macbeth had the ambition and desire to do anything she could to make her husband the king. She deliberatively planned many wicked ways to murder the King and other mortals that may get in the way. Due to Lady Macbeth’s actions and the deterioration of her mental condition, she clearly suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
Rebellion can be defined as the resistance or defiance of any authority, control or tradition. There are many forms of rebellion present in contemporary society ranging from protests, graffiti, advertising, art, and music. The list goes on as the does the various issues contemporary society often rebels against. Rebellion against government, authority and institutions occurs regularly across the globe due to problems such as corruption, sexism, racism and many more. Feminist art group, The Guerrilla Girls, face many of these problems in society and art museums. Their poster Naked Through the Ages particularly targets the Metropolitan Museum of Art as they question the sexism present on the gallery walls. Another radically rebellious art group
In 1971, Linda Nochlin issued her article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? This idea of aesthetic genius, says Nochlin, is fiction. Art is rarely produced entirely by the artist for the idea of personal expression. Few identifiers in contemporary art have been as fraught as the term feminist art. What does it mean, who defines it, and how does it relate to past accomplishments of the feminist movement?
The study of why women artists have systematically been erased from history and why currently the exhibition of women's art is not valued as much as the male artists' continues. There have been many theories behind the eradication of women artists from history. At the beginning of the Women's Liberation Movement, an art historian by the name of Linda Nochlin published an article called, "Why have there been no great women artists?" In here article, she addressed her own question offering one of the first consciously feminist challenges to the established canons of art history. Her query proved to be a rallying cry for women artists in the fervent days of the Women's Liberation movement and offered fragments of a manifesto to women artists, and others, intent on reexamining and ultimately restructuring the discipline (Morse, 1992). Nochlin argues that contemporary feminists contend that there is a different "greatness" between men's art and women's art. This view of art undermines the general discipline. It categorizes its value in order to give it a higher classification among gender. Many women are trying to delve back into history and recapture any trace of artistic women in order to document and arrange their