Three American Artist Collectives
The three 20 th-century American artist collectives in this study—Group f. 64, Fluxus, and Guerrilla Girls—were founded on explicit rejection of existing cultural biases and commercial constraints. Despite the inherent individualism of contemporary art practice, the members of each of these collectives sought to consolidate their power in the face of unfriendly institutions, and in each case, defined their union through manifestos, public acts or exhibitions, and/or collective works of art.
This section will examine the ways in which each collective aligns with the three American themes described in the previous section. It is apparent that the achievements and longevity of each group were (are) connected to the establishment of strong personal and intellectual connections among group members; to the group's capacity to respond constructively to internal dissent; and to the relevance of the group's mission when the natural inclination of individual members is to pursue their own work.
Group f. 64
Group f. 64 was formed in 1932, a collective of American photographers of the west coast who rejected the popular pictorialist photographic techniques of the time in favor of a "pure" photography whose aesthetics were defined by the technical capacity of the best cameras and lenses. The group's name derived from the highest lens aperture setting, which yielded the greatest depth of field (sharpest focus). These photographers wanted the art world to recognize the unique capacity of the camera to render the real world with minute precision—and the beauty of that precision—so that photography would be viewed, as much as painting, as an authentic medium of fine art. Some notable members of the group were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston.
The Revolution and The Manifesto
Within 15 years after the first known photograph was made by Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1824, 2 2 the daguerreotype process made photography commercially viable. 2 3 Photographs from the nineteenth century have a special fascination: they are our first glimpse of the way people of the past really looked. In the United States, two major events first attracted photographers out of their portrait studios and into the "real world": the Civil War and exploration of and expansion into the American West. 2 4
Photography was visually compelling, but few people at the time considered photographs fine art. Photography was considered a mechanical process, nothing more. In 1900, Eastman Kodak introduced the Brownie camera, which cost only $1.00. The sales pitch was, "You push the button, we do the rest." The Brownie made photography accessible to the middle class, and suddenly photographs were everywhere. 2 5 In the early 20th century, the photograph seemed a world away from fine art.
Most serious photographers looked to the language of painting to make photographs that looked like art. These photographers chose what they felt were exalted subjects—mythological or historical characters, sentimental archetypes, abstract ideas, or emotional states—and interpreted them through the use of posed actors, dramatic lighting, and technical practices that obscured the precision of the photograph. This photographic style was called pictorialism. Pictorialist photographers worked with soft focus, and might use textured photo papers, chemical toners, or hand-coloring to heighten the sense of drama or obscure unwanted detail. 2 6 The era of pictorialist photography began in approximately 1885 and became the dominant language of photographic art well into the 20th century.
Although modernist abstraction had touched the photographic world in the work of New York photographer Paul Strand by 1915 and the advertising photographs of Charles Sheeler in the 1920s, most museums, galleries, and camera clubs recognized only the pictorialist style as the way photographic art was supposed to look. California photographer Edward Weston had worked in the pictorialist style, but he thoroughly rejected it at least eight years prior to the formation of Group f. 64. In fact, he scraped clean his 8x10" glass negatives to destroy his early work. 2 7
In his daybooks, Weston was quite clear about his thoughts on the pictorialist style:
"...seeing some unusually awful reproductions in [an issue of Camera Craft magazine]...with a laudatory article by the editor, I spent an hour writing him my mind. These cheap abortions which need no description other than their titles, "Pray," "Greek Slave," "Orphans," "Unlucky Day," have nothing to do with Art, nor Life, nor Photography. So I not very gently explained. But why did I waste my time? I know the Editor's policy...: backing my work and opinions, his publication would fail! I am in a mood to stir things up! 2 8
Weston felt that photography had "the validity of a new expression, without tradition or conventions...[and] the strength of pioneering." 2 9 His new, sharp-focus style felt to him to be a new American art, which was in opposition to everything European and everything before World War I. 3 0 In 1930, he wrote, "To photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant representation—not reinterpretation." 3 1
But Edward Weston was a maverick; it wasn't in his nature to organize a group of like-minded photographers. Group f. 64 was conceived by young photographers Willard Van Dyke and Preston Holder, who were students at the University of California at Berkeley. Van Dyke knew Edward Weston and knew that photographer/gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz had been patronizing to Weston when Weston went to New York in 1922. Van Dyke felt that Edward Weston's photographs were superior to those of Stieglitz's protégé Paul Strand. 3 2 Van Dyke had seen Imogen Cunningham's plant forms, Ansel Adams's photographs of the Sierra and the work of several like-minded local photographers. At their first gathering, at the house of (father and daughter) John Paul and Mary Jeannette Edwards at 683 Brockhurst Street in Oakland, California, they decided the name for their group, based on the very small lens aperture setting. The group liked the logic of the name, as well as the way it sounded and looked. 3 3
The Group f. 64 Manifesto was apparently written as an explanation for a museum audience. It was posted at the first exhibition of the group's work at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, November 15-December 31, 1932. The manifesto explains the meaning of the group's name and the desire of the group to show what it considers to be the "best contemporary photography of the West," of its members and other like-minded photographers. It continues, in part:
Group F. 64...will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technic, composition or idea, derivative of any other art-form. The production of the "Pictorialists," on the other hand, indicates a devotion to principles of art which are directly related to painting and the graphic arts….The members of Group F. 64 believe that Photography, as an art-form,...must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself….The Group...is favorable towards establishing itself as a Forum of Modern Photography. 3 4
The Group f. 64 revolution tried to establish an absolutely new way of seeing photography as fine art. The manifesto makes clear what the group opposes ("Pictorialism") and draws a broad but ambitious outline for what the group might become: "a Forum of Modern Photography".
Self-Government and The Collective
As stated in their manifesto, Group f. 64 was a somewhat open organization. They were interested in the work of like-minded photographers, and unusual for the time, included several women photographers in their number; the acceptance of women may be attributable to an awakened attitude towards the "New Woman" who emerged after the battles for the right to work and the right to vote. 3 5 Some members of Group f. 64 were more active in exhibitions or as spokespersons than others. In all, eleven photographers were considered members at some time in its existence: Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, Brett Weston, and Edward Weston. 3 6
If Willard Van Dyke, with his youthful energy and fierce dogmatism about "pure photography" had been the catalyst for the group's formation, Edward Weston was certainly its spiritual leader. His work first defined the f. 64 aesthetic: sharp focus, filtered natural light, and the study of abstract form and surface detail in organic or natural subject matter. His prints were contact prints from 8x10" negatives. Ansel Adams, age 30 when the group was founded, was more mature than Van Dyke and more sociable than Weston; given a thoughtful, analytical nature, he probably had the best sense of the group's achievements and limitations. In 1935, he wrote:
I consider the production of Group F 64 as definitely transitional in character. I define transitional in regard to point-of-view—aesthetic and social. I believe we have obtained a fairly final expression of mechanical technique (in reference to the present development of the medium), and I think our next step should be the relation of this technique to a more thorough and inclusive aesthetic expression. 3 7
While pictorialist photographer William Mortensen was one of several of the old guard who criticized the work of Group f. 64 as nothing more than "finger exercises...[that do not] merit artistic consideration," 3 8 Ansel Adams was willing to concede:
Our work has been basically experimental. In our desire to attain a pure expression in our medium, we have made powerful attacks in various directions, stressing objective, abstract, and socially significant tendencies. These phases of our work should now be taken from the laboratory...and functionally applied....
Group F 64 has become an institution in the mind of the photographic public...and our chief task at present will be to keep the prestige we have developed and at the same time expand in fresh and stimulating directions. 3 9
With reference to "socially significant tendencies," Group f. 64 member Consuelo Kanaga focused on portraits of African-American subjects. One of her images portrayed a black male hand gently holding a white female hand. About this image and others, Adams was willing to criticize Kanaga's work in a public statement:
Of late she has become involved in social-significances, which I frankly believe to be detrimental to the fulfillment of her art....The philosophic properties of subject material are better suggested in subtle aesthetic intention rather than in ... obvious propagandic [sic] treatment. 4 0
The group's manifesto had suggested inclusion and openness, but it also allowed for judgment and possible exclusion. Any hint of sentimentality or propaganda was suspect.
Adams was more sympathetic with the objective-seeming FSA work of Dorothea Lange, who was something of a satellite member of Group f. 64; Lange also participated in exhibitions at 683 Brockhurst, which Mary Jeannette Edwards had made into a salon and gallery for the f. 64 style of photography.
One of the most important weaknesses of the collective was the unequal status of its members. After achieving some notoriety for Group f. 64 and its mission through frequent articles, editorials, and letters in photographic journals, the higher status members had much to gain by separating themselves from the beginners. The younger, less well-known members benefitted from their connection to the more celebrated ones, particularly to Edward Weston. 4 1 Today, the weakness caused by inequality of members of a collective is seen in the fraying solidarity of labor unions, when in contract negotiations, they agree to accept "grandfather clauses", different treatment of members based on date of hire. If members of a collective do not share a common purpose or equal benefit from their association, its survival may be threatened.
Freedom and Individualism
As Ansel Adams had said, Group f. 64 was transitional in nature and proved temporary. The worsening Depression affected artists and photographers who were already living on few sales and commissions. Group f. 64 disintegrated after 1935, as members moved away from the San Francisco Bay Area. Edward Weston moved to Santa Barbara and Willard Van Dyke moved to New York City to pursue a career in motion pictures. Weston later received the first Guggenheim fellowship ever awarded to a photographer. Ansel Adams worked in his studio in Yosemite, and continued to make many memorable photos of the Yosemite Valley and other wild places. In his Yosemite studio, he developed many of Dorothea Lange's Farm Security Administration negatives, despite the FSA policy that photographers send their film to Washington for processing. 4 2
Many of the women photographers of Group f. 64 were forgotten until much later in their lives. Historian Therese Thau Heyman writes:
These remarkable women were acknowledged as peers by their Group f. 64 male contemporaries. Only later did a silence come to surround their work—a silence created by exhibition curators, art dealers, and photographic historians in the 1950s. Although Lavenson and Cunningham continued to live and photograph in the Bay Area, they were not singled out for solo shows until their careers were validated by their remarkably long lives. As Cunningham noted, she and other women photographers in their fifties were invisible; only when she reached seventy did she become a celebrity. 4 3
Group f. 64 was probably destined to be a short-lived association. Its members were highly independent fine artists working in a brand new way, in a medium that was still considered a bit suspect for being commercial and also a bit too much the realm of the amateur. As Adams had felt, members' interests were diverse, but the shared character of the group's images—mostly close-up, still lifes and portraits, shot as studies of tonal abstraction and surface texture—had their limitations. In 1958, Adams said of Group f. 64, "It accomplished its purpose and there was no need for repetition. In fact, continuation might well have reduced its effectiveness...It is good that it didn't last long enough to become a cult." 4 4 Photography curator and historian Beaumont Newhall noted that "their debates in the press and their other statements gave the impression that the parameters of their aesthetic were narrow in relation to the possibilities for creative photography." 4 5
Critics came to question the premise of the work of Group f.64. In the Depression era, it seemed wrong that their photography was concerned only with aesthetics and not with economic or social problems. 4 6 The cultural mantle of "straight photography" was passed to the photographers of the FSA, like Dorothea Lange, whose work used sharp-focused realism but who placed a greater importance on social documentation and, in most cases, a lesser emphasis on lofty standards of craftsmanship or technique.
Fluxus
Fluxus, started in 1961, was (is) a loosely-strung collective of musicians and conceptual artists, the principle organizer of whom was George Maciunas. Maciunas's Fluxus Manifesto calls artists to "purge the world of bourgeois sickness, 'intellectual', professional & commercialized culture." 4 7 Sputnik notwithstanding, the Fluxus movement coincided with the apex of American confidence and consumer culture, and refuted it, calling for an anti-materialist art that resists being a consumable product. The products of Fluxus, then, are the ephemera of idea art—including photographic records of installations and performances—and art objects disguised as mundane ones—stamps, notecards, boxes of seemingly random stuff, posters, and signs. In addition to George Maciunas, some notable members of the group were Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, Emmett Williams, and Ben Vautier.
The Revolution and The Manifesto
Fluxus—the movement, the collective—was founded by Jurgis Maciunas. His difficult childhood is a key to his character, and knowing a bit about his character is helpful to understanding the origins of Fluxus. Jurgis was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1931; his mother was an opera singer and a dancer. As a 3-year-old boy he contracted tuberculosis and was placed in a sanatorium for three months. He was often ill, and much of his childhood was spent away from his parents, in the home of another family or in hospitals. He became particularly afraid of losing his mother and, later, as an adult, avoided close relations with women so that he could persuade his widowed mother to live with him. In 1944, the family fled the advancing Soviet Army to the American-occupied zone of Germany. In 1948, the Maciunas family moved to the United States and settled in Long Island. 4 8
Jurgis was a dedicated student with a range of artistic and art historical interests. From 1949-1952, he studied fine art, graphic art, and architecture at the Cooper Union, New York. From 1952-1954, he studied architecture and musicology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh; and from 1955-1960, he studied European and Siberian art of the time of the early medieval migrations at New York University. 4 9 His largest work of scholarship, never finished, was a detailed diagram of art history of all cultures and epochs, which was continually undergoing revision and amplification. 5 0
In the winter of 1960-61, Maciunas met some of the young artists and composers grouped around avant-garde composer John Cage and offered to publish their work in his magazine called Fluxus. When Jurgis also got involved with Communist sympathizers, the Lithuanian Society, which had been intending to finance Fluxus magazine originally, pulled out, feeling that they had been lucky to escape Communism to New York in the first place. 5 1 At that point, Jurgis changed his first name to George. Throughout his life, Maciunas would be dogged by debt and a victim of his own ill-conceived schemes to make money.
The original Fluxus manifesto was George Maciunas's creation, but he was capturing a spirit of experimentation that was invigorating the work of young artists in New York and Europe. He was interested in and inspired by them, and he wanted to create an overarching theory of the art and performance he was witnessing. Maciunas's enthusiasm and humor, his ideas for Fluxus projects, and his desire to help stage other artists' work attracted young artists and musicians to the Fluxus collective. "Promote living art, anti-art," reads the manifesto. "Promote NON ART REALITY to be fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals." 5 2 Art should be down to earth and inclusive. "Purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, —PURGE THE WORLD OF 'EUROPANISM'." 5 3 Art should not follow tradition or schools of thought; it should be absolutely free to chart its own course. The original manifesto's collage of text echoed the automatic writing of Dadaism and suggested that "the arts in general...achieve a kind of one-dimensionality." 5 4 George Maciunas corresponded frequently with other Fluxus artists, who agreed with his theory of "oneness of all the arts." 5 5
If the first Fluxus manifesto was opaque, it was also a sort of Rorschach test. Fluxus anti-art worked in harmony with the transgressive musical experimentation of John Cage and also alongside Andy Warhol's pop art boxes, in the sense that Fluxus products were also imitative in a jesting way of "normal" commerce, but were something completely useless. In 1965, the Tulane Drama Review magazine called Fluxus a "fusion of Spike Jones, gags, games, vaudeville, Cage and Duchamp." 5 6 Also in 1965, Maciunas wrote a second manifesto, which makes clear that the humor has a serious purpose: to take art off its pedestal, to reduce the distance between artist and audience. The 1965 manifesto compares "Art" to "Fluxus Art-Amusement".
"Art justif[ies the] artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society,...demonstrate[s] the [dependence]...of [the] audience upon him,...[and] demonstrate[s] that no one but the artist can do art. Therefore, art must appear to be complex, pretentious, profound, serious...valuable as a commodity so as to provide the artist with an income. To raise its value..., art is made to appear rare, limited in quantity and therefore obtainable and accessible only to the social elite and institutions." 5 7
In contrast,
"Fluxus Art-Amusement...establishe[es the] artist's nonprofessional status in society,...[the] artist's dispensability and inclusiveness,...demonstrate[s] that anything can be art and anyone can do it. Therefore, art-amusement must be simple, amusing, unpretentious,... require no skill or countless rehearsals, have no commodity or institutional value." 5 8
The clear message of free expression combined with anti-elitism and promotion of equality of artists and audience aligns with American ideals—maybe this is what Maciunas meant in the first manifesto by "PURGE THE WORLD OF 'EUROPANISM'." 5 9 In spite of its international participation, Fluxus seems like a very American revolution.
Self-Government and the First Fluxus Collective
After a few editions of Fluxus magazine, from 1962 on, George Maciunas began to organize concerts in a number of European cities, which attracted an international following of young artists. 6 0 About two dozen artists from several countries performed concerts and created publications between 1962 and 1964 under the name of Fluxus. They enjoyed a sort of benign infamy and "attracted vituperative media coverage until well into the early 70s." 6 1
With the success of the concerts, Maciunas began to imagine Fluxus as the protector of the copyright of the work of individual artists; the Fluxus brand would be a cultural movement of fun art against serious art. Naturally, some artists started to distance themselves. 6 2 Yet he held the friendship and loyalty of several collaborators. Some Fluxus multiples were issued in small plastic boxes. A project by George Brecht called the Swim Puzzle was a small shell in a box labeled, "Swim Puzzle". Another box project is a bit more serious, making war against the preciousness of high art objects:
Fluxus...did not seek to criticize high art and continuously expand it. Instead, Maciunas intended to...reject the system of high art once and for all...For example, the standard edition of Ben Vautier's Mystery Box was to contain dust. A larger, luxury version...was to be filled with egg shells. The largest Mystery Box was to contain garbage:...[Maciunas wrote to Vautier,] "This will be very practical since we can dispose of garbage by this method and even get money for it." 6 3
Because the products of Fluxus harmonized with the independent works of its individual collaborators, it can be difficult to understand the work of individual artists as distinct from their Fluxus collaborations. Fluxus editions and anthologies were almost all drawn up by Maciunas and manufactured by him, even if they originated with ideas by other artists. 6 4
A few Fluxus works were actually mass-produced, if 500 can be called mass production, but usually each work was carefully assembled by Maciunas, who would vary the contents as elements ran out or as his attitude towards the work changed. 6 5
In his work for Fluxus, George Maciunas had a few schemes to bring artists together in which he invested real (if not entirely serious) effort. He hoped to organize a tour of musicians to Siberia. Trying to convince one New York composer, he wrote, "Climate there would be very healthy, nice cool winters. Give concerts along the Siberian railroad stops. Think it over." 6 6 On the darker side, he invested in converting a building for a Flux Housing Cooperative. Having borrowed money for the project, he was attacked by two thugs in retribution for the unpaid loan; the attack cost him an eye. In one last attempt to create a physical community, Maciunas bought a farm in Massachusetts, again running up debt, and creating a situation that was not viable. Within two years, he would die of cancer. 6 7 In retrospect, in addition to the financial chaos, Maciunas's distaste for celebrating the individual artist probably prevented such a physical manifestation of the collective. In this regard, Fluxus resembles the utopian socialist collective in its refusal to honor sufficiently the individual's desire for recognition.
Freedom, Individualism, and the Fluxus Collective without George Maciunas
The original Fluxus was driven by George Maciunas. Today, Fluxus continues because of the durability of its founding principles, but also because of the curiosity of scholars. In the 1980s, academics became interested in the work of Fluxus. "Whether in spite of or because of the Fluxus aversion to definitions," no other art form of the 60s and 70s has generated such academic attention. The large number of artists, the range of projects and artifacts, and the varying accuracy of archival records have been the perfect fodder for academic exploration and categorization. "More than twenty catalogues and some six different catalogues raisonnes of individual collections,...many graduate dissertations and doctoral theses on the subject...reflect the enormous and almost insatiable curiosity amongst art historians about what Fluxus may have been." 6 8
It is interesting that the prices for Fluxus multiples (prints, boxes, non-one-of-a-kind ephemera), which sold in the 70s for between $2.50 and $150, have not increased much in value on the art market 6 9, which reflects a curious sustainability of its anti-materialist, anti-high art mission. A visit to the Wikipedia page for Fluxus describes a living enterprise, with history of George Maciunas's Fluxus on top, an electronic copy of the original manifesto, but then a new, clarified, no-nonsense translation of its mission for today:
The Fluxus artistic philosophy can be expressed as a synthesis of four key factors that define the majority of Fluxus work:
1. Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
2. Fluxus is intermedia. Fluxus creators like to see what happens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images, and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images, and texts.
3. Fluxus works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
4. Fluxus is fun. Humour has always been an important element in Fluxus. 7 0
In addition, there are many independent branches of Fluxus, several in Europe. At fluxnexus.com, one finds an exploded diagram of a machine, with current Fluxus artists' names labeling the parts. At the bottom is the following quote:
Fluxus has been able to grow because it's had room for dialogue and transformation. It's been able to be born and reborn several times in different ways. The fluid understanding of its own history and meaning, the central insistence on dialogue and social creativity rather than on objects and artifacts have enabled Fluxus to remain alive on the several occasions that Fluxus has been declared dead. —Ken Friedman, A FLUXUS IDEA 1/2. 7 1
Fluxus is alive today because it is a completely egalitarian and open collective, and because, to many people who make art, the never-ending act of (anti-art-establishment, anti-materialist) revolution continues to be meaningful—and fun.
Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls, begun in 1985, was galvanized by the selection of only 13 women artists out of a total of 169 in an exhibition at MOMA called "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture". 7 2 The group was/is a collective of anonymous women artists, who through posters, billboards, performance and public speaking, sought/seek to expose the biases against women and minorities in art museums, commercial galleries, and in the academy. As expressed by one member,
Our agenda...is fairly narrow, but it's...important because it's a civil rights issue. Many, many women go to art schools; more than 50 percent of art students are females. And they somehow get lost, because when they leave, there's not a support structure for them. They don't have access to the system, and their sensibility is lost. 7 3
The Revolution and The Manifesto
The Guerrilla Girls didn't compose a founding manifesto. In an email to the writer, Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz explains, "A couple of us had the idea to put up posters on the streets of NY, invited a few friends to join us, brought the first poster to the first meeting, and everything just took off from there." 7 4 Organizing for their revolution, the Guerrilla Girls worked strategically as artists and designers on how they would deliver their message:
What happened was we worked out how we wanted to package it all, and the Guerrilla Girls just seemed like a great idea, in terms of the double meaning of the word—"gorilla," the animal, and "guerrilla," the action. We spell it like the freedom fighters, but then we wear gorilla masks, so that it works imagistically. It's very effective. You have this angry gorilla image combined with a female body, and the women have reason to be angry. So when you see the image, you think of what the Guerrilla Girls stand for, which is the self-proclaimed conscience of the art world. 7 5
The strength and clarity of the graphic design of the posters plus the image of the women in gorilla masks giving interviews and taking action on the street communicated the message to museums, galleries, and collectors: we're smart; we're funny; we've got the facts. We call for the American value of equal economic opportunity and an equal chance for our artwork to be part of art history. We will not go away until you make things right.
Self-Government and The Collective
In the 1990s, in an interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Guerrilla Girl Alice Neel described the messiness of operating as a democratic collective:
Over the past ten years, we've come to resemble a large, crazy but caring dysfunctional family. We argue, shout, whine, complain, change our minds, and continually threaten to quit if we don't get our way. We work the phone lines between meetings to understand our differing positions. We rarely vote and proceed by consensus most of the time. Some drop out of the group, but eventually most of us come back, after days, months and sometimes years. The Christmas parties and reunions are terrific. We care a lot about one another, even if we don't see things the same way. Everyone has a poster she really hates and a poster she really loves. We agree that we can disagree. Maybe that's democracy. 7 6
The anonymity of each Guerrilla Girl, adopted for professional protection and to depersonalize the motives of the group, is also key to the equal status of each member. Guerrilla Girl Zora Neale Hurston said,
Being anonymous, operating under code names and alter egos, has meant there are no career gains to be earned by being a Guerrilla Girl. This makes us all equal, gives us each an equal voice, no matter what our positions may be in the "real" world. 7 7
Freedom and Individualism
Of the three collectives discussed in this research, Guerrilla Girls is the most cohesive and perhaps the most influential. In 1987, when Guerrilla Girls protested the overwhelmingly white and male selections for the Whitney Biennial, a non-profit gallery called The Clocktower offered them the space to curate an alternative show. Instead, they used the Whitney's statistics to do an exhibition of information "exposing the museum's pathetic and worsening record on women and artists of color. All of the statistics came from the museum's own publications." 7 8 The most recent Whitney Biennial of 2010 has been called "The Women's Biennial" for showing more than 50% women artists. 7 9
Guerrilla Girls have published many posters, an art history book, a book directed at young people about gender bias and women's identity, and another about their own history. They have a long list of appearances in academic publications. The collective is going strong today; many of the original members make public appearances, and their message and means of communication have adapted to the technological changes of the last 26 years. Their web address is www.guerrillagirls.com. As with Fluxus, Guerrilla Girls has inspired imitation. There are foreign language copies of its posters and two spinoff groups. Some former members have organized as a touring theater group and GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand deals with internet and workplace issues. 8 0
Although Guerrilla Girls never wrote a founding manifesto, they did write one in 2010 to deliver to the graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Several of its tenets deal directly with democratic principles and an idea of the place America should be: "Give collectors, curators, and museum directors tough love....Make sure that museums cast a wider net and collect the real story of our culture. Demand ethical standards inside museums!" Revolt and replace corrupt institutions that don't represent the people. "Be impatient....Claim your place. Put on your own shows, create your own companies, develop your own projects....Be the art world you want to take part in." Equality is the right to free labor. "Be anonymous....Anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. So join that long line of anonymous masked avengers, like Robin Hood, Batman, and of course, Wonder Woman." 8 1 Freedom of expression is an American right.
The artist collectives in this study model the interplay of American ideals with social realities. Joining a collective with other artists may present both advantages and disadvantages for the individual artist, perhaps effecting a compromise of quantity, quality, or kind of art produced. If the status of members of an art collective is unequal, the individual member might face similar barriers to visibility that she faces outside it. In spite of these risks, the art collective is important because it can create a presence, a space, for something new or "revolutionary" in American culture.
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