Week 6 last blog for semester 2-Barbara Kruger
American conceptual/pop artist Barbara Kruger is internationally renowned for her signature black, white and red poster-style works of art that convey in-your-face messages on women's rights and issues of power. Coming out of the magazine publishing industry, Kruger knows precisely how to capture the viewer's attention with her bold and witty photomurals displayed on billboards, bus stops and public transportation as well as in major museums and galleries wordwide. She has edited books on cultural theory, including Remaking History for the Dia Foundation, and has published articles in the New York Times, Artforum, and other periodicals. Monographs on her work include Love for Sale, We Won't Play Nature to Your Culture and others. She is represented in New York by Mary Boone Gallery. A major exhibition of her work will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in fall 1999, and at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2000.
Research Kruger's work to find an example from the 1970s or 1980s to compare with a more recent work. How has Kruger's work changed with the developments in contemporary visual arts? Describe a recent work that moves away from the 'poster' type work of her early career.
Find 2-3 works by Kruger to add to your blog.
How does the audience experience a more spatial, installation art work compared with a poster?
What elements does Kruger use in her work to create a strong impact?
Comment on the development of her work over the last 30 years.
Comment on the examples that you find on other students blogs.
Posted by Julia at 1:12 AM 0 comments
Labels: advertising, I shop therefore I am, Installation
Kruger’s earliest artworks date to 1969. Large woven wall hangings of yarn, beads, sequins, feathers, and ribbons, they exemplify the feminist recuperation of craft during this period. She was dissatisfied with her output and its detachment from her growing social and political concerns. Then she took up photography in 1977, producing a series of black-and-white details of architectural exteriors paired with her own textual ruminations on the lives of those living inside. During the early 1980s Barbara Kruger perfected a signature agitprop style, using cropped, large-scale, black-and-white photographic images juxtaposed with raucous, pithy, and often ironic aphorisms, printed in Futura Bold typeface against black, white, or deep red text bars.
ReplyDeleteThe recently work is a installations comprised of video, film, audio and projection Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, her work is consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another. In these recently [the forth picture] installation works Barbara Kruger transferred words and images directly to the surfaces of the gallery. Each installation featured a text written on the floor in white type on a black ground. All that seemed beneath you is speaking to you. All that seemed dumb knows what's on my mind. With a directness that is characteristic of Kruger's work, the text addresses the viewer's sense of certainty with the world. In Kruger's installations the floor now has a voice, the walls can hear you, and the architecture is manipulating the way you speak. I really really like her early works till the recently works because, it makes me really think of our society that nowadays we just think like her work is saying to us. She used black and white to contrast with red, it is really capture my eyes to look at it. Even the photographs that she took are very simple but it has a overwhelming of power and meaning in the poster. And the mostly why i liked her work is the photographs and the text are related and combined like the photographs are speaking to you. She has been using black,white and red to play the contrast between complimentary colors to juxtapose and provoking or give a message to a very huge contrast of what we are thinking. I think, the way she used to provoking people in society is very smart because i think the text and the photograph are juxtaposing together to show the huge contrast of the meaning and the reality in society. In last 30 years of her works is more like installation, it's kind a like spatial (I can interact with) but still I think, her work still playing around the idea of provoking and messaging to our society that is what we are thinking and contrast between our life, sex, desire and etc. She used text directly to the surfaces of the gallery. ( floor, ceiling and wall)
My favorite work by her is the second picture because the negative space give me the contrast to look at the white text directly, it made me think of the situation in my country, the politicians just only think about benefit and do not look back to the other what will happen to the country and their reputation. When i first looked at this piece, it's really hit me because sometimes i think how to stop this the benefit perpetuation in out society. "You delight in the loss of others"
Kruger has very frank, bold, and “very to the point” posters and installations that make a impact with any audience that view her work. I have found that she has different opinions with how the world is and she expresses and lets out all her opinions through her work.. In my opinion Kruger has very strong views on feminist issues, politics, and government issues.
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