Wiki & Abstracts (no. 37) - Barbara Kruger

In class Rob dicussed the importance and the weight of the phrase...

"I am."

That day I came across this image:

This discovery lead me to find one of my new favorite artists who uses many forms a media (text, photograpy, video, graphic design, etc.) to create art and deliver messages.

Introducing...

Barbara Kruger

Kruger is a rebel, straight up and saucy. She was a success in the art world from a very early age and has been working in magazines creating graphic designs since she was twenty-two. Her method of madness is to swtich her audience from just observers to active thinkers, for there minds to be invovled in the art.

Much of Kruger's work engages the merging of found photographs from existing sources with blunt and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. In their trademark white letters against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans read “I shop therefore I am,” and “If you don't control your mind someone else will." Much of her text questions the viewer about feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing.

"Don't be a jerk" refers to mindlessly following the ideas of the masses and not thinking for yourself.

"We don't need another hero" refers to the role sthat men a pressured to play the hero and women are expected to be play the damsel in distress. Kruger often plays on the fact that both women and men have unfair roles thrust upon them at birth.

Kruger still works today and is activiely involed in the magazine industry.

She has even done many installation peices that use many text to convey her messages.

Here I have a video clip for a explanation of her work from the artist herself!

MAKE A

STATEMENT.