Horror on the National Mall! Thousands of women locked in basements of D.C. museums!

Artemisia Gentileschi, Guerrilla and the Elders, 1610
(from The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art.)

The Guerrilla Girls are at it again.  Now they have partnered with the Washington Post to create a full page spread in the April 22, 2007 issue as part of a special section on feminism and art.  These female crusaders are an anonymous group of artists who use outrageous visuals and splashy design to expose gender and racial discrimination in the art world.

The Guerrilla Girls are not the first artists to use art as a political instrument for social reform.  Artists have been using art to communicate messages and emotions for centuries.  My problem with political art is that it is often bad art.  Political art is bad art when the ideas or concepts being communicated take precedence over aesthetic concerns.  This is the major problem with conceptual art today.

Consider Marcel Duchamp’s creation, Fountain (1917), a common urinal turned onto its back and signed and labeled by the artist.  Of course there was method to his madness, and a clear message:  Duchamp challenged the meaning of art, the nature of the artistic act, and the role of the artist.  And so conceptual art was born.

Marco Evaristti is a contemporary conceptual artist who in 2000 exhibited his blenders with living goldfish and gave the public the chance to switch them on.  The theme of his installation was the transience of beauty—the fine line between existence and nothingness.  Evaristti’s blenders and goldfish powerfully communicate this message—with a brutal strength as if using a sledgehammer.  This is not a work of art—there is no artistic vision, no aesthetic value, and no room for artistic growth.  The viewer is much like a goldfish in the blender, with reality reduced to the confines of its glass container.      

Compare Evaristti’s blenders and goldfish to the work of Man Ray, a contemporary of Duchamp’s.  Man Ray affixed to the smooth face of a laundry iron a row of wicked-looking tacks, giving his creation the deliciously malevolent and sardonic title, Gift.  Gift is the work of artistic genius.  The wicked-looking tacks flout the iron’s proper function of smoothing and pressing, creating visions of sharp spikes tearing and rending a smooth silk negligee.  The smooth and massive bulk of the flatiron is in delicious contravention to the slender pointed spikes.  As with Evaristti’s Goldfish Blender, Gift also speaks of the transience of beauty, but with an aesthetic sensibility that enhances and subtly reinforces the message.  I first viewed a copy of Man Ray’s Gift in London’s Tate Modern several years ago. The meaning behind that simple object haunts me yet. 

Man Ray, Gift, circa 1958 (replica after destroyed original of 1921) 

Interestingly, neither Duchamp nor Man Ray considered their creations great works of art.  Both original artworks disappeared or were later destroyed.  The value of the creation lay in its message which, once transmitted, left the object an empty shell of little value.  Contemporary conceptual artists seem to value their creations for their content alone.  They mistake content for aesthetic worth.              

Conceptual art done well can be a joy to behold and the Guerrilla Girls do it right.  Their anonymity ensures that attention remains on the message, not on the artist.  They appropriate readymade media images and use them to educate the public about unequal social positions based on gender.  They utilize advertising techniques that capture the attention of the modern audience.  And they do it exceptionally well.

Links:
Guerrilla Girls Raid a Male Stronghold (Washington Post)
The Guerrilla Girls’ Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art
Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls’ Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes

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