Description
"[A] tart, funny, lurid little bomb of a book. It's all p.c., of course, but not at all predictable, and a lot of righteous information gets dispersed in record time." -- BUST Magazine
We were Guerillas before we were Gorillas. From the beginning, the press wanted publicity photos. We needed a disguise. No one remembers, for sure, how we got our fur, but one story is that at an early meeting, an original Girl, a bad speller, wrote 'Gorilla' instead of 'Guerilla.' It was an enlightening mistake. It gave us our mask-ulinity.
Ever wonder about the abundance of naked male statues in the Classical section of your favorite museum? Did you know medieval convents were hotbeds of female artistic expression? And how did those "bad boy" artists of the twentieth century make it even harder for a girl to get a break? Thanks to the Guerrilla Girls, those masked feminists whose mission it is to break the white male stronghold over the art world, art history--as we know it--is history. Taking you back through the ages, the Guerrilla Girls demonstrate how males (particularly white males) have dominated the art scene, and discouraged, belittled, or obscured women's involvement. Their skeptical and hilarious interpretations of "popular" theory are augmented by the newest research and the expertise of prominent feminist art historians. "Believe-it-or-not" quotations from some of the "experts" are sprinkled throughout, as are the Guerrilla Girls' signature masterpieces: reproductions of famous art works, slightly "altered" for historic accuracy and vindication.
This colorful reinterpretation of classic and modern art, as outrageous as it is visually arresting, is a much-needed corrective to traditional art history, and an unabashed celebration of female artists.
About the Author
The Guerrilla Girls are feminist masked avengers in the tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Wonder Woman and Batman. We use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose sexism, racism and corruption in politics, art, film and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative in visual culture by revealing the understory, the subtext, the forgotten, the overlooked, the understated and the downright unfair. Our work has been passed around the world by our tireless supporters, who use us as a model for doing their own crazy kind of activism.In the last few years, the Guerrilla Girls have appeared at over 100 universities and museums around the world. We created a large scale installation for the Venice Biennale, brainstormed with Greenpeace, and participated in Amnesty International's Stop Violence Against Women Campaign in the UK. In 2006, we unveiled our latest anti-film industry billboard in Hollywood just in time for the Oscars, appeared at the Tate Modern, London, and created large scale projects for Istanbul and Mexico City. In 2007 we dissed the Museum of Modern Art at its own Feminist Futures Symposium, examined the museums of Washington DC in a full page in the Washington Post, and exhibited large-scale posters and banners in Athens, Rotterdam, Bilbao, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Shanghai. In 2008-9, we did actions at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, Los Angeles, Bronx Museum, New York, Ireland and Montreal.The Guerrilla Girls’ work has appeared in The New York Times, The London Times, The New Yorker, and Bitch; on NPR, the BBC and the CBC; and in many art and feminist texts. We are the authors of stickers, billboards, posters and other projects, and several books including The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes and The Guerrilla Girls’ Art Museum Activity Book. Our latest book, The Guerrilla Girls' Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How it Was Cured, from Ancient times Until Now, will be published in 2010.(Fromhttp://www.guerrillagirls.com/press/o...)
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