2 digital prints on paper
Tate Modern
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/guerrilla-girls-6858" aria-label="More by Guerrilla Girls" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Guerrilla Girls</a>
Dear Art Collector Billionaire
Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the North American Acquisitions Committee 2020
<p><span>Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat Upgrade 2012–2016 </span>is a portfolio of twenty-seven works produced by an anonymous collective of American female artists between 2012 and 2016. Published as an open edition, it contains twenty-one poster projects of varying dimensions – twenty colour digital prints on paper and one black and white inkjet print on paper – alongside seven sheets of stickers and four videos documenting public performances by the Guerilla Girls at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The portfolio also includes two books published in 2016, <span>The Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How It Was Cured </span>and <span>Is It Even Worse in Europe: Whitechapel Survey</span>.</p>
paper print 2 digital prints
27 February 2023
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2023-02-27
Guerrilla Girls
Collection based display
Dear Art Collector Billionaire
displayed: 229 × 660 mm
Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the North American Acquisitions Committee 2020
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<p>
<i>Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat Upgrade 2012–2016 </i>is a portfolio of twenty-seven works produced by an anonymous collective of American female artists between 2012 and 2016. Published as an open edition, it contains twenty-one poster projects of varying dimensions – twenty colour digital prints on paper and one black and white inkjet print on paper – alongside seven sheets of stickers and four videos documenting public performances by the Guerilla Girls at institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The portfolio also includes two books published in 2016, <i>The Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria and How It Was Cured </i>and <i>Is It Even Worse in Europe: Whitechapel Survey</i>.</p>
<p>Since their formation in 1984 the Guerrilla Girls have fought to expose sexual and racial discrimination in the art world. Conceived as a response to the <i>International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture </i>exhibition held in the same year at the Museum of Modern Art, New York – a survey show of 169 artists which, despite claiming to showcase the very best of contemporary art practice, included the work of only thirteen females and no artist from outside Europe or the United States – the group conceal their identities by wearing gorilla masks in public and by adopting pseudonyms taken from such important deceased female figures as the writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) and the artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986). </p>
<p>Describing themselves as ‘the conscience of the art world’, the Guerrilla Girls began with a poster campaign that responded to the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition in 1984, targeting the institutions, dealers, art critics and artists who they felt were responsible for – if not silently complicit in – the exclusion of women and non-white artists from mainstream artistic circles (Chadwick and Guerrilla Girls 1995, p.15). Tacked up around the streets of SoHo under the cover of darkness, their posters shamed commercial galleries showing few or no women artists (see [no title] 1985–90, Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-guerrilla-girls-1986-report-card-p78808" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78808</span></a>), and questioned the morality of the city’s most renowned institutions, asking ‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?’ (see [no title] 1985–90, Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the-met-museum-p78793" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78793</span></a>).</p>
<p>In the same way that artists such as Jenny Holzer (born 1950) and Barbara Kruger (born 1945) turned to mass media techniques in the 1980s, the Guerrilla Girls also appropriated advertising strategies – and the practice of fly-posting in particular – to disseminate their messages quickly and easily to a wide audience. Containing information compiled from museum reports and magazine articles, their posters arrange stark statistics into bold graphics and eye-catching lists, designed for maximum impact in the public sphere. Whilst each project is grounded in data and research, wit and irony are also used as strategies through which to draw attention to what they see as the inadequacies of the art world and the hypocrisies of those in positions of power. Speaking about their use of humour, the group have said: ‘We’ve discovered that ridicule and humiliation, backed up by irrefutable information, can disarm the powers that be, put them on the spot, and force them to examine themselves.’ (Guerrilla Girls, <a href="http://www.guerrillagirls.com/interview/faq.shtml">http://www.guerrillagirls.com/interview/faq.shtml</a>, paragraph 24, accessed 29 September 2014.)</p>
<p>Compiled of works produced between 2012 and 2016, <i>Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat Upgrade</i> tackles a wide range of social injustices. It critiques issues including the ongoing underrepresentation of women and artists of colour in museum collections (<i>The Guerrilla Girls Asked 383 European Museums About Diversity</i> 2016), political electoral propaganda and governmental discrimination (<i>Minnesota ID Check </i>2012 and <i>Trump Announces New Commemorative Months </i>2016) as well as inequality in the film industry (<i>Even the U.S. Senate is More Progressive than Hollywood Update </i>2016). <i>Dear Art Collector Billionaire</i>, <i>Dear Art Gallery Billionaire </i>and <i>Dear Art Museum Billionaire</i>, all from 2015, Holldemonstrate the group’s acute understanding of the vagaries of the art market, whilst <i>Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into Boston Museums? </i>2012 and <i>Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into Music Videos? </i>2014 – which both repurpose the iconic poster of 1985 (Tate <span>P78793</span>) – reinforce the Guerrilla Girls’ campaign for justice and equality as an ongoing one.</p>
<p>Posters pasted onto the streets of New York have long been the mainstay of the Guerrilla Girls’ activities and works in the portfolio demonstrate the way in which they continue to make use of the city environment to disseminate their so-called ‘public service messages’. Billboard projects such as <i>Anatomically Correct Oscar Update </i>2016 make use of large-scale advertising hoardings to ensure their messages are placed in positions of visual prominence above roads and pavements; whilst sheets of stickers, produced to accompany the New York City street campaigns <i>How Many Women Had Solo Shows at NYC Museums? Recount</i> and <i>These Galleries Show No More Than 10% Women Artists or None at All, Recount</i>, both from 2015, turn individuals into mobile billboards, allowing them to take ownership of political and social causes by affixing slogans and graphics to themselves.<i> </i>Videos such as <i>Whitney Action </i>2015, <i>Girlsplaining Museum Ludwig </i>2016 and <i>Guerrilla Girls Guide To Behaving Badly </i>2016 document the group’s public actions in their iconic gorilla masks. Serving as records of performative actions at institutions and elsewhere, they also demonstrate the artists’ understanding of the potential of social media to reach wide audiences.</p>
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<i>Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat Upgrade 2012–2016</i>, is considered an addendum to the <i>Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat</i> which comprises two portfolios that are also in Tate’s collection: <i>Guerrilla Girls Talk Back</i> (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-women-artists-in-the-andy-warhol-and-tremaine-auctions-at-sothebys-p78788" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78788</span></a>–<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-guerrilla-girls-definition-of-hypocrite-p78817" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>P78817</span></a>), a portfolio of thirty posters produced between 1985 and 1990, and <i>Guerrilla Girls Talk Back</i> <i>Update </i>1991–2012 (Tate L03679–L03739), a portfolio of sixty-four works produced between 1991 and 2012.</p>
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<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Whitney Chadwick, Guerrilla Girls, <i>Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls</i>, New York 1995.<br/>Guerrilla Girls, interview from <i>Confessions of the</i> <i>Guerrilla Girls</i>, New York, 1995, <a href="https://www.guerrillagirls.com/confessions_interview">https://www.guerrillagirls.com/confessions_interview</a>, accessed 28 March 2019.<br/>Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz, ‘Transgressive Techniques of the Guerrilla Girls’, <i>Getty Research Journal</i>, no.2, 2010, pp.203–8.</p>
<p>Hannah Johnston<br/>March 2019</p>
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Summary
2024-02-26T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT