Oh, yes - the day after a night of revelry, attempting to appear to work diligently and wondering where your brain oozed out to - most likely on to the pillow to sleep the sunlight away. Kelly and I decided to face our long-time fear of feminists, and check out the Guerrilla Girls at the Corcoran, discussing their new book 'Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers' etc. etc. It was a good step for us, because the women were very intelligent, spoke in normal voices, had a lot of humour, and had very clear goals - to promote women and minorities in the art world, and to, in their words, reinvent the 'f' word - feminism. Thank god, there was a distinct lack of men-bashing and 'womyn' superiority. So we were able to enjoy ourselves and then top it off by going out and agreeing to do large kamikaze shots. Woo-hoo! Go girls!
In many respects, it's been hard for me to approach ideas or fields of study in men/women terms - being raised to consider things from a logical, analytical, equal mindset makes it hard, even distasteful, to think of something like art as gender produced. It's art, and art I enjoy triggers emotions and thoughts in me, and that's what always been important - regardless of the sex of person from which it came. I realized last night, that my naïve self has failed to consider the many people involved in actually putting the art in front of me, and the fact that many of those people are extremely biased in choosing what they present, and most likely not biased in the same ways I am - where as I might not like something from an emotional standpoint, the art world makes choices based on race, gender, politics, etc. From my dabbling w/ art I know the extreme personalities involved, so this should not have been a huge revelation; but still, my assumption of fairness clouds reality sometimes. Duh.
Anyway, the women in gorilla masks put my brain to work, but in a tongue-in-cheek, 'wake up, silly!' manner, whereas they could have easily been angry about it and pissed me and most everyone else off. They probably wouldn't have lasted 18 years, then. Plus, they have an altered 'Women's Terror Alert System' poster w/ the Low Alert being: President Rides Around On Horse, Clears Brush on Ranch'. Isn't that a great visual? Even better to imagine him on his Segway...
Posted by zippy at September 25, 2003 10:42 AM