NANCY BECHTOL (myportfolio.com)

Look to present day, reflect also on art history. Why is art so DANGEROUS?

Guerrilla Girls art exhibit is witty, eye-opening

this is an excerpt quote from the long-standing feminists who battle for equality for women in museums, galleries, and life:: I remain in solidarity.

May 3, 2022

by Janelle Vonasek

Published in: Art Collections, College of Arts & Scienc

The Guerrilla Girls have exhibited their artwork worldwide and have been invited into many museums to give their assessment of equality. Two more posters show how they like to use bold humor in their messaging. Photo by Janelle Vonasek/UND Today.

The group’s first color poster probably remains its best-known. Produced in 1989, it included their first “weenie count” taken at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In response to the overwhelming number of female nudes shown in the museum, the poster asks: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”

It goes on to say: “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.”

The text is tucked next to an image of the Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painting of one of the most famous female nudes in Western art history — this time, however, a gorilla head is placed over the woman’s face.

That’s Guerrilla Girls humor, and viewers have come to expect it in the artists’ messaging. Though the topic is always serious, their artwork has evolved from its original straightforward facts and numbers to a more witty and snarky style that both entertains and makes its audience stop and think.