Barbara Kruger is a 75 year old American artist, best known for her monochromatic collages with text overlay. Her work surrounds a critique on society from a feminist perspective, examining behaviours and stereotypes of consumerism. She uses mass-media imagery as a background for the text she uses on top, to create political, cultural and societal responses to current affairs. The red accents of the text, layered over the monochromatic background suggests a bold and heavy message is being carried across the work, also the size of the text in comparison to the images.
Her work has used phrases such as “I shop therefore I am.”, “Don’t make me angry”, “Not stupid enough” and “Surveillance” to make comments and work.
“I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.”
This video allows Kruger to speak on her work in her own words. She discusses her life as an artist starting out and how working in the media as a designer helped shape her individual work as an artist. Without realising, her work became driven by different things and held different meanings. She discusses how her work is centred on double meanings, the gaze and eye; the text directly addressing the audience.
This video, similar to the other, allows Kruger to speak on herself and her work in her own words. Here she discusses how her work shaped her work as an artist, the thousands of responses to her work (which included so many who copied her work and design aesthetic such as the brand ‘Supreme’), discovery of self against your work and how you aren’t always the face of your brand and the work you produce. I found this particularly interesting when listening to her, as I don’t recall ever knowing what she looks like, yet her work is ingrained into my brain and so influential to so many artists.
Her work inspires playfulness and boldness, not shying away from the message you want to put out. It inspires me to potentially work with a monochromatic colour scheme, creating simplicity for the boldness to shine through. However, I am unsure of how I want to use the text I have accumulated and incorporate it into my work.
“I think what I’m trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.”
Emily Ryder 