For decades political artists have strived to address issues in society in a creative and meaningful way. Whether the artwork form is protests, posters, paintings, and more the goal is to captivate their audience and spread awareness about the current situations the artists stand against. The Guerrilla Girls effectively mastered the art of political artwork in an extremely unique way. The unique group uses facts, humor, and sarcasm to expose sexism and racism in the art world. What makes the Guerrilla Girls extremely unique is their use of gorilla costumes to captivate an audience so that they would take them seriously. The Guerrilla Girls’ “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist” was constructed at a time of unequal representation of women …show more content…
There were two key, influential events that took place that caused the formation of the group. The first event took place in 1971 and was the publication of the feminist essay “Why have there been no great women artists?” by Linda Nochlin. The second event took place in 1984 where only thirteen out of 169 contemporary artists invited to display at the Museum of Modern Art were women. These two events enraged the Guerrilla Girls and fueled them with determination to shame the art industry for their underrepresentation of women. The artistic approach the political artists convey is feminist art and contemporary art. Feminist art is used to criticize traditional gender expectations and contemporary art is categorized of the art of today. Another aspect of the group that defines their art as contemporary is the misspelling of the word gorilla to guerrilla. The artistic mediums the Guerrilla Girls use to captivate their audience and spread their message consists of posters, billboards, performances, protests, lectures, installations, and limited-edition prints. By incorporating a wide variety of current artistic mediums they present their feminist views in a creative way that shames the art …show more content…
The poster, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, lists thirteen “advantages” in which women are excluded from art, literature, textbooks, and exhibitions. Some of the thirteen exclusions listed are “working without the pressure of success”, “knowing your career might pick up after you are eighty”, “being included in revised versions of history”, and “not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius”. The Guerrilla Girls use simple tactics like sarcasm to draw attention to the inequality or women in the art world. In addition, this political artwork medium takes a simplistic visual approach. The poster was created with the title in bold and centered to draw attention to the topic they are addressing. Also, in a slightly smaller font size the thirteen advantages and the name of the group is listed. The poster is created plain and in a sense uncreative to draw the main focus of the audience to the purpose of the poster and not any decorations that may be present in other types of