Guerrilla Girls - Guerrilla Girls

Copyright 2020 by Guerrilla Girls. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN 9781452175843 (epub, mobi) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Guerrilla Girls (Group of artists), author.
Title: Guerrilla Girls : the art of behaving badly / Guerrilla Girls.
Description: San Francisco, California : Chronicle Books, [2020] | Includes index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020015720 | ISBN 9781452175812 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Guerrilla Girls (Group of artists)-- Themes, motives. | Political art--Pictorial works.
Classification: LCC N6512.5.G83 A4 2020 | DDC 704/.042--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015720
Chronicle books and gifts are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, literacy programs, and other organizations. | Political art--Pictorial works.
Classification: LCC N6512.5.G83 A4 2020 | DDC 704/.042--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020015720
Chronicle books and gifts are available at special quantity discounts to corporations, professional associations, literacy programs, and other organizations.

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www.chroniclebooks.com : Photograph by Lori Grinker 1985 Lori Grinker/Contact Press Images. More about the Guerrilla Girls:
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instagram.com/guerrillagirls | #guerrillagirls Special thanks to all Guerrilla Girls past and present (and future), Xabier Arakistain, Manu Arregui, Art in Ad Places, Artists and Homeless Collaborative, Muge zbay Aydoan, Angela Bailey, Mirka Balazy, Nia Belton, Avis Berman, Tamar Bessinger, Melanie Boucher, Leonie Bradbury, Brainstormers, Michael Brand, Carol Brode, Judith Brodsky, A.A. Bronson, Tina Brown, Tanya Brugrera, Michelle Brunnick, Deborah Buck, Sarah Burney, Maris Bustamante, Natalie Butterfield, Laura Castagnini, Theo Cheng, Melissa Chiu, Marco Daniel, Louise Dry, Michle Didier, Kaleta Doolin, Anita Dube, Jonathan Durham, Yilmaz Dziewior, Susan Faludi, Lourdes Fernndez, Christian Fillipone, Tom Finkelpearl, Noah Fisher, For Freedoms, Julia Friedrich, Coco Fusco, Roger Gastman, Eliza Gluckman, Blake Gopnik, Sarah Urist Green, Amy Harrison, Paolo Herkenhoff, Lynn Hershman, Phoebe Hoban, Claire Hsu, Laura Hurtado, The Illuminator, Emma Jameson, Misa Jeffries, Megan Johnston, Karen Jones, Caitlin Kirkpatrick, Yeewan Koon, Kathryn Kramer, Daniela Labra, Martha Lauzen, Carrie Lederer, Robert Lewetzky, Albert Litewka, Clea Litewka, Dan Mandel, Rosa Martinez, Vikki McInnes, Lourdes Mendez, Claudine Meredith-Gougon, Ivo Mesquita, Monica Meyer, Kerry Morgan, Robin Morgan, Camille Morineau, Rebecca Morrill, Frances Morris, Tom Muller, Helen Nesbit, Occupy Museums, Ferris Olin, Yoko Ono, Neysa Page-Lieberman, Joanne Paradise, Adriano Pedroso, Lucrezia Perrig, Sarah Peter, David Platzker, Mark Pomeroy, Josefina Posch, Artemis Potamianou, Jennifer Ramkalawon, Helena Reckitt, Marcia Reed, Maura Reilly, Chris Rogy, Casey Ruble, Melena Ryzik, Dimitri Salmon, Lora Sariaslan, Elke Schmidt, Elmas Senol, Max Schumann, Sarah Sigmund, Peter Silverman, Kira Sjberg, Kit-Yin Snyder, Nicole Soukup, Gloria Steinem, Kim Stephens, Hanna Styrmisdttir, John Tain, Maija Tanninen, Francis Terpak, Maite Vissault, Olga Viso, Joan Vorderbruggen, Margaret Washington, Jay Wegman, Valerie Westcott, Roos Wijnen, Fred Wilson, Wendy Wolf, Nayia Yiakoumaki, Lynn Zelevansky Dedicated to each amazing member of the Guerrilla Girls, 1985 to today; to our friends and supporters worldwide; and to everyone who uses art to create change. #resist

Flyer MoMA protest, 1984 (photo by Clarissa Sligh); Future NYC Historical Marker commemorating Guerrilla Girls Imagine youre artists pissed off that almost all the opportunities in the art world go to white men. Imagine you go to a protest outside the Museum of Modern Art after it opens an international exhibition in 1984 with 169 artists but only 13 women and 8 artists of color.

You see immediately no museum goer even cares! Imagine you have an aha moment and realize there HAS to be a better way an in-your-face, unforgettable way to break through peoples preconceptions and prove to them that the art system isnt a meritocracy where museums, galleries, critics and collectors always know best. Imagine you dream up a new kind of street poster to wake people up to the pathetically low number of women artists shown in galleries and museums. You call a meeting, decide to be anonymous and name yourselves Guerrilla Girls. You pass the hat around to print the first posters. Within weeks youre sneaking around New York in the middle of the night, carrying stacks of posters and buckets of glue. Your work ignites a public argument about racism and sexism in the artworld.

What follows? Two hundred posters, billboards, street banners, video projections, exhibitions, performances, workshops and books not just about the lack of gender and ethnic diversity in art, but also in film, politics and pop culture. You get thousands of messages from people all over the world, aged 8 to 80, saying your crazy kind of activism is a model for them. Over 60 individuals become members of the Guerrilla Girls. Some stay for months, some for decades, a few for just a single meeting. Theyre cis, lesbian and transgender; diverse in age, sexual orientation and class; and from many ethnic backgrounds South Asian, African American, Latinx and European, and so on. Each takes on the name of a dead woman artist as a pseudonym.

These days we feel in our gut that something important has changed. No longer can anyone claim that the history of art and culture can be written without including all the diverse voices of that culture. But museums, galleries and art collecting are still dominated and controlled by big money and white men. For the history of art to be more than the story of wealth and power, that must change. Our work is not finished. We invite you to look through these pages, get mad and keep up the fight.

Creative complaining works! Photo by Jack Mitchell, 1990 Press release for the first two Guerrilla Girls posters, 1985 The powers that be in the artworld claimed discrimination wasnt their fault, so we pointed fingers at all of them for contributing to a biased system. Our first two posters targeted fellow artists and their galleries, accompanied by a press release. Next, we went after museums, critics and the

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