Life And Work Of Barbara Kruger Photography Essay

Life And Work Of Barbara Kruger Photography Essay redden though some may challenge the ideological messages behind Barbara Krugers wrench in the mid-eighties, it brought ab expose a change in rules of order. She criticizes everything that is vilify with the stereotyped fraternity victimisation a conceptual approach to her art twist. Kruger challenges gender, call forth, religion, consumerism, greed, creator and her civilize becomes render by the mass media.Kruger was born in 1945 in newbornark, New Jersey. In 1964, she studied at the School of Visual cunnings at Syrac single-valued function University. After a class at Syrac engage, she went to the Parsons School of aim in New York and studied natural image. After a year at Parsons, she received an entry level position at tweed perch Magazine in New York. She was soon promoted to head designer at the magazine.By useing for a magazine, she was capable hang how haggling and photos force out lay d have a definit e power to consumers. She became familiarized with these concepts of pictural design and started applying them to her art give. During the late 1970s she started off using her own photography as the medium for her create as a fe male artist.In the 1980s she developed a different approach to her work by combine images and school text. In the book Thinking of You St dis gentlemantle Heller states, Krugers method was formd by reductive Modernist graphic design, the kind that began somewhat idealistically but has dominated corporate personal identity during the postwar years, as well as the so-called Big approximation or Creative Revolution advertising style of the sixties, known for ingenious slogans and ironic single images (Heller 112).Krugers graphics is considered postmodern. For Kruger, as for many contemporary theorists, postmodernism is non a style of succeeding the dissolution of modernism but sooner a historical condition, marked by new philosophical trans puzzle o ution it signals a rupture with the nonion of sovereign and individuality inherited from the sagacity (Linker 12). Postmodernism is an art movement that happened after modernism during the late 20th century. Krugers work continues postmodernism because it sets a precedent for social constructs.Barbara Kruger uses space, text and photos as a route to bring her messages to a grand audience. Her use of words and pictures looseness a deeper meanspiriteding. Her artwork shows the pull iner how fast throng be to label some tree trunk in companionship. The work shows how an early(a)wise persons view gouge impact society as a whole by permitting the hierarchy in society manifest our culture. Barbara went beyond this to get a reaction from society by raising this social aw atomic number 18ness in her art.Some may argue that her work disrupts the space or environment in which it is displayed. In the article Jam Life into Death, Ana Balona de Olivera talks virtually how Kruger uses the explicit aesthetical violence of disruption in order to raise aw arness of cloak-and-dagger social violence (Balona de Olivera 752). I dont agree that her artwork is violent or disruptive in relation to the space itself. In our vast serviceman we reveal tumid advertised displays all around us. There is more than violence viewed on television and in news. I believe her work is more rough the message than the actual disruption of the space it occupies. She murders us stop and wonder what we are spirit at.When viewing her work, we are challenged to see the actual message behind the work. She tries to communicate messages that she tactual sensations are beneficial to society or ironic in nature. The images she chooses may or may not have anything to do with the text on top of the images. Kruger states, As farsighted as pictures remain powerful, living conventions at heart culture, Ill continue to use them and turn them around (Squiers 148).Kruger uses ominous and w hite images that she has come crosswise in magazines, advertisements and other media. She uses these images that arent her own but started to weave them with text to make them her own, which is called appropriation. Krugers work will be necessary to a visual representation for the 1980s, her influence now permeates all the forms of media culture that she appropriated (Garrard 263).Her juxtaposed images shaped how people view society. In Michael Foucaults thesis What is an Author A frustrate he states, The modes of circulation, valorization, ascription and appropriation of discourses vary with each culture and are modified within each (Foucault 952). Krugers works are a reflection of corporate consumerism and are viewed daily by many people. As a consumer, it is evident that we are buying into corporate America and there is no sign grievous us it happens all the time. Sometimes images stay with us and later in life we can identify with them. Some images will leave as soon as we se e them with little or no government issue on our lives.Working as a graphic designer, Kruger was aware of how certain images sell to a grand audience. In graphic design, the subject you use depends on the message you are trying to convey in the advertisement. The case that Barbara uses is called Future Bold Italic. I appreciate the fact that Kruger uses the same font in every piece so the viewer cant convey a certain feeling or mood attributed with it. She let the words do the talking. Even though her images are collage, they possess a graphic quality to them. With this experience she could use images through repetition and recognition that impact our social culture.Kruger uses the color red behind the text invoke a range of feelings by the viewer. The color red can make people feel angry, loving, warm or powerful. Her color choices were something you would see in a newspaper or for marketing a brand homogeneous Coca-Cola during the 1980s. Again, her graphic design abilities cam e into play. By using these change she could grab peoples attention to them. These colors seem to resemble Russian constructivism but I dont think she was influenced by the art produced during that time.Kruger chooses larger than life public displays. She uses hoardings, bus stops, posters and other remote areas. There isnt an average size of her work. She can work as large as a 14 x 48 foot billboard or as small as a print on a coffee cup.Kruger as well as incorporates her work inside local settings. Her work is viewed in galleries, museums, and storefronts. Her artwork has also appeared in Rage Against the Machine videos and album covers. Krugers artwork is sold as a commodity on T-shirts, postcards, bags and other paraphernalia. What better counseling to convey a message like Dont be a Jerk on your coffee cup.The artist Jenny Holzer also uses declarative sentence structures that are similar to Krugers artwork. Her work is projected electronically onto a public space using te xt to convey a message. Krugers work represents typical feminine stereotypes as well as other stereotypical issues that existed during the 1980s. Jenny Holzer and Barbara Krugers art was situated at the complex crossover of the postmodern avant-garde of appropriation and simulation art with feminist exact theory coming from England and France (Garrard 254). Kruger sets a discourse for other feminine artwork make in the 1970s. Kruger, like others, has voiced her concern not to enlarge theory. Nevertheless(prenominal), crucial notions that circulated within theory about the relations among sexuality, meaning and lyric found their way into these artists works (Linker 60).Krugers silkscreen image Untitled (Your soundbox is a battleground) 1989 (figure 1) speaks about patriarchy, stereotyping, and consumption. It is a photographic silkscreen on vinyl and is approximately 112112 inches. There is a vintage photo of a muliebrity who take ins like a stereotypical housewife. The wor ds Your organic structure is a battleground lay crosswise the image inside a red box. The char in the photograph has a remarkably intent gaze. She also has penetrating features and her face is split symmetrically revealing two different face images. unmatchable side of her face is black and white where you are able to recognize her visual features. The other side of her face is reversed black and white. The features become mechanical and not easily recognizable. We are looking at the same women with two extremely different sides to her. It looks like she has a nigh(a) side and bad side to her.This photo relates to how women may not feel human all the time in a male-dominated society. And one can note, on the other hand, the ideology of the spectacle as authorized by the dominant allele order, in which one part of society represents itself to the other, reinforcing domination (Linker 61). The text relates to the struggles women have had over how they are depicted in the media. During the 1980s women were fighting for their own reproductive rights. They were preserving the womans right of choice to have an abortion against the pro-life movement. Kruger allowed a campaign by the Pro-Choice Public Education Project to assimilate her style in a 1998 ad for abortion rights (Dieckmann 172).Kruger took this image to an even larger display for the art world. By agreeing to let herself be copied for a cause, Kruger displayed yet other of her facets- call it Barbara Kruger, Anti-Author (Dieckmann 172). The essay What is an Author A Lecture by Michael Foucault calls for the death of the author. He states, The author is the principle thrift in the proliferation of meaning. We must reverse the traditional idea of the author (Foucault 952). Kruger has set out to take authorship away from this work.Foucault asks the issue in his essay, What difference does it make who is speaking? (Foucault, 953). The image Untitled (Your body is a battleground) was speaking for wom en and womens rights. Kruger let the people repeat her work for a greater protest in her favor. Kruger wanted to get a reaction from society by using her work to promote a cause.Another example of her work is Untitled, do in 1987 (figure 2). The image was placed on a billboard for the University of Art MATRIX program. It shows a girl impressively admiring a boy who is flexing his arm. The text reads We dont need another hero near the bottom of the piece. The text is white in a red stripextending all the way across the image. The photograph is also outlined in red. The text may be in reference to a song written by Tina food turner in the late 1980s. The lyrics talk about children that are living in fear because they realize there is no such thing as a hero. The black and white photograph is reminiscent of Dick and Jane artwork done in the 1950s.The photo raises an issue of the role of gender at an extremely young age. The word We suggests women. We shouldnt think of a boy creation able to protect a girl at such a young age. During the 1980s men were the ones fighting in the war in Iraq, while the women tended to the home. Though women had more rights, men and women still played autarkical roles in society. It wasnt until the 1990s that women began moving up the corporate ladder into a higher social status.I think this work is suggesting that we dont need another concentrated guy in society trying to show women how to act and what to do. Its enough to say when we are born, are roles in society are predetermined. As girls, we are taught to play with Barbie Dolls. As girls, we grew up with Barbie Dolls and are taught to be gentle and loving as she is. Boys are taught to be aggressive and tough as their war figures and plastic weapons are made for.In tutelage with contemporary feminist theory, she endorses Freuds refutation of the terms masculine and feminine in favor of active and passive relations, connecting sexuality to the situation of the subject (Linker 62). This is current in that most artwork depicted women as objects of possession. Kruger challenges the real power of a mans role in society. It should be noted that those Emotional and intuitive men were allowed to get away with imagery whose blatant essentialism would have been condemned if done by a women (Garrard 257).Today Krugers work graces the cover of a consumer set society. The work Untitled 2010 (figure 3) appeared on the cover of W magazine. The magazine showcased motley artists and Krugers work was on the cover. The cover showcased Kim Kardashians naked body. Krugers text Its all about you, I mean me, I mean you laying across separate of her body. This is an example of how a cosmos superstar made herself a sex symbol for a remarkably young generation of followers.It isnt entirely pull in why Kim Kardashian is on the cover of this magazine. Kruger has not talked about the work in detail or her intent. Kim Kardashian is using her sexuality to gain notoriety in th e public eye. Barbara Krugers older work would fight against any imagery like this. I believe she is trying to deal with the issue of the female gaze. I think she is realizing that sex sells in this new generation. It may be that her popularity as an artist is widely from her art in the public eye.Kruger challenges how celebrities are portrayed by the media though she may be condemned for doing so. Kruger is teasing the male audience by not putting her whole body on display. The play on words cover up any sexual connotations. Kim Kardashians body appears to be made plastic or airbrushed but none the less complete.The text is broken into three sections One section lays across her disparager saying, Its all about me. This text implies that she is a reality superstar and is the perfect example of beauty. The second text lays across her midsection stating, I mean you. The text implies that women are trying to become this perfect women that they may see in a magazine.In the essay From Visual Pleasure fib Cinema Laura Mulvey talks about the pleasure of looking through film. One pleasure is scopophilia taking people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling and suspicious gaze. She states, Women, then, stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies through linguistic command by imposing them on women still tied to her place as aircraft carrier of meaning, not maker of meaning (Mulvey 983).I think scopophilia is prevalent in advertising today. In most magazines the front cover always has a women staring at the viewer and some sexual aspect of her body becomes a secondary focal point. Though some of these magazines may be reproduced for women, men also get a visual pleasure from looking at them. Indeed, Krugers art is invariably directed at the manner in which visual mastery becomes aligned with difference or, more pointedly, at the way in which representations position wome n as objects of the male gaze (Linker 61).As a woman, if I were to use this image and put it on my fridge to look at everyday, I would have to admit that I could never be this person. But many women believe that this is reality. The third text is laying across her genital area and states, I mean me. The text implies that it was never about you it was all about her. Her body image is a false reality fueled by the mass media.In conclusion, Krugers work is similarly fueled by the mass media. Using re-occurring ideological messages to communicate her ideas the themes of gender, sex, consumerism, greed and power, she criticizes everything that she feels is wrong with the society we live in.