“DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM?”

THE GUERRILLA GIRLS’ ODALISQUE: MODELS AND MEANINGS

Resumen

“Do women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan museum?” was the question put up by the Guerrilla Girls to all New York inhabitants seeking to shake art world consciousness. After making a study on the subject they have raised that even if a minority of women artists is represented in the museums, 85% of the nudes are female. Having the body of the Odalisque by Ingres with a gorilla head has a starting point; a story of the female nude throughout history will be criticized since the erotic painting of Venus by Titian. The same perfect body of the classical canon has been used for completely different ends. If one wants to get a place in society by being seen and the only way of being seen was using its beauty, the other demands a place in society by all means less beauty… never by using the perfect body. While to some this may seem obvious, the significance of this interpretation should not be underestimated. In fact, this assessment of the unique inflections of the body meaning and female power nowadays at the same time that quotes and evokes Antique art, attacks it in the heart by distorting it in terms of morphology, iconography, function and meaning.