Complicating Authorship: Contemporary artists’ names

From Duchamp's drag as Rrose Sélavy, photographed by Man Ray, through to contemporary artist Bob and Roberta Smith, the artist's pseudonym has served as a political tool challenging traditionally inherent concepts pertaining to authorship: gendered notions of genius, singular attribution, the scarcity model and notions of intellectual property, all of which are perpetuated by the art market. These facets of an art practice are not yet well recognised or documented because the artists’ complex authorships defy the economy that would otherwise benefit from writing their ‘biography’. This article explores the agency of the pseudonym over a sustained period of time through two case studies in particular: the Guerrilla Girls, an all-female collective working anonymously, and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, the first British performance artist to be nominated for the Turner Prize. Through their practices, this article will reflect on how pseudonymous artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share recognition, and how a name might aid ‘artivism’. There exist artists more dissident, but the fact that both these case studies work within the financially incentivised infrastructures of the artworld helps demonstrate how a pseudonym might critique, challenge and reshape the parameters of authorship from the inside out. This article concludes that contemporary artists’ name/namelessness is inherently political.

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