Naked billboards that shocked the facility – burning the path of the art world

It has been 40 years since the controversial activist group Guerilla Girls was formed. Their most powerful campaign, “Naked Posters,” breaks new ground and has lasting influence.

On a Sunday morning in New York in 1989, several women perused the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection. Guerilla Girls, an anonymous feminist art collective hidden among the regular punters, was not noticed as they carefully counted the number of female artists against the number of naked women depicted in the artworks. They had a secret mission that made people care about the racial and gender inequity of the art world.

“The idea has always been to find an unforgettable kernel,” one of the founding members of Guerilla Girls, who uses the alias Case Colwitz, tells the BBC at the National Women’s Museum of Art. Exhibition It celebrates 40 years of their work.

They went through various rooms – past the near absence of nudes of ancient Greek males and early Christian sections, but it was when they bumped into the early modern era that they found statistics that led to their biting criticism of the world of art. They raised the question of who was allowed to be opposed to the subject in the lofty corridors of the world’s most prestigious arts institutions.

“Less than 5% of artists in the contemporary art section are women, but 85% of nudes are women,” reads the poster next to the nude females whose heads are covered in the group’s trademark gorilla mask. The illustration is based on the picture La Grande Odalisk1814 by the male painter Jean Augaste Dominique Ingles.

To this day, the group remains anonymous and when the BBC interviews Kollwitz she wears a mask. “I don’t think anyone who actually sees that poster can go to the museum and doesn’t think about what’s on the wall or why,” she says.

Should a woman be naked to enter the Met Museum? The poster was intended to have been a committee from the New York Public Art Fund, but looking at the final results, the funds were withdrawn. The guerrilla girl committed to the message and placed it on the sign and the bus itself. “We decided to buy space on the NYC bus and we also pasted it on NYC Street.”

The posters threw the group into the spotlight and solidified the style with the mass audience. The combination of humor, statistics and bold advertising slogans was the culmination of practicing how to tackle gender and racial inequality over several years. The first two posters of the group – what do these artists have in common? And these galleries show that there are less than 10% or no female artists at all. It was painted on New York walls, street lights and phone booths.

The decision by guerrilla girls to adopt the language of advertising was in response to what was considered inefficiency in traditional protests. The group was formed in 1985 after attending a protest outside the Museum of Modern Art in New York last year. A recent international survey of painting and sculpture featured only 8 artists of color, with 17 women and eight artists out of 169 artists.

“A few of us went to this protest. It was very clear that no one cares. Everyone just went inside the museum. All these signs about women’s art. They didn’t believe it for a minute.

As Kollwitz points to it, the “naked” poster was a game changer. “We often have crazy visuals, facts, humor – something to draw them in – and if you actually see our posters, you will never see the art the same way again.”

Author and podcaster Katie Hessel points out how artists grew up in their homes on television throughout the ’80s in her book, The Story of Art Of Art Of Men. “When they played with the stereotypes of women’s media (and art history), they regained control of their gaze and turned it to themselves.”

“The guerrilla girls called the public’s attention to inequality and systematic discrimination in the art world, and ultimately asked: How did the museum escape by celebrating patriarchal history instead of the art history?”

As an external force pushing through space, their text-based work often hangs in the very place they once were trying to provoke. Their continued anonymity is another invitation to remind me of female artists who struggled in their time. All founding members are art professionals in their own right, but as guerrilla girls, they have pseudonyms of late artists like Frida Kahlo and Zubida Aga.

“More than being anonymous, it’s their way of doing things and it’s really smart,” says Michael Wellen, senior curator at Tate Modern in London. “Every time you understand who you are talking to, there is an education moment.” The world of art has changed since the number of original nudes in the Met was counted. However, inequality between artists of color and women compared to white men remains. This can be seen not only in who is hanging on the wall, but also in other areas of the art market. For example, artwork by women explains 39% of gallery salesa 2024 Art Basel report, a recent study noted that so is the permanent collection of major US galleries. 85% of white people, 87% males. In the UK, the Royal Academy in London only exhibited Marina Abramovich’s life in 2023.

“I think there is an undeniable change in how museums represent the history of art and contemporary art, and that is due to the light that guerrilla girls illuminate these inequalities,” Wellen says.

The poster’s protest was originally a critique that was allowed to stick to museum and gallery walls, but this focus has also evolved for guerrilla girls and other artistic activists. In 2019, American art photographer and activist Nan Goldin dropped thousands of prescriptions in the Atrium in protest in Guggenheim and protested a museum accepting donations from Puldue Phardue Pharma, the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. The protest was featured in the documentary “The Beauty and the Bloodsed.”

The work of guerrilla girls has evolved to take on a wider range of issues, address environmental concerns, and expand their signature style around the world over the years. The founding members act like a cell, cooperate internationally, with around 60 contributors across Asia, Latin America and Europe. In March this year, they created a poster at the Women’s Fund in Bulgaria. Don’t they deserve more than a thin slice of government? He criticized the lack of female representation in the country’s government.

Tracking progress is difficult. Over the years, guerrilla girls have revisited posters that threw them into the spotlight and recounted them. It’s a jarring commentary on how small things change despite public pressure. Between 1989, 2005, and 2012the number of female nudes in Met has decreased, but in reality the number of female artists has reduced. Of course, this doesn’t indicate all institutions, but as always, just like their work, the message is clear. There’s still something to do.

“I chose her because she was a political artist, and I think that’s what I think is the same for the guerrilla girl and myself,” says Kolwitz. Born in 1867, the authentic Käthe Kollwitz work focused on women and was highly anti-war. Her work is very different from that of a guerrilla girl, but the thematic content overlaps.

The guerrilla girl remains active, and crossing the 40-year threshold is a moment of reflection, but it is also time to look ahead. While you might expect to see people who have fought injustice with progress like snails for decades will get exhausted, Colwitz says the challenge of progress is something that inspires the group. In November they will be exhibited on Getty Research Institute A graphic novel is ongoing in Los Angeles. “We never stop having trouble,” she says. “Our battle is not over.”