Barbara KrugerBarbara KrugerSpeaking the Truth into PicturesSpeaking the Truth into Pictures

Background

http://caraphillips.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/04189-bk.jpg

Growing up & starting out

• Born 1945 in Newark New Jersey

• Only child

• Attended Syracuse University & Parson’s School of design, where she studied with Diane Arbus

Artistic Journey

• Started designing ads for Mademoiselle Magazine at 22, promoted to head design within one year

• First art exhibited work was fiber arts, “women’s work”

• Became involved in New York poetry scene, publishing and performing her work in poetic society

Moving towards montage...

• 1976: Left New York loft for California, where she stopped all artmaking for one full year

• “[I was trying to] rethink my connections to my work, to the art world, and most importantly, to the games and relations that congeal, disperse and make the world go round.”

• When Kruger returned to her work, she took up the camera, capturing images of California residences, which she published with accompanying narratives written about the people living there.

The Work

Stealing images to tell the Truth

• Work in fashion provided the skills for choosing and cropping images while also providing fodder for a mission in dispelling lies visual media passes off for reality

• Kruger’s work focuses on taking well-recognized images and adding text with an accusatory “you” or non-identified pronouns as commentary on the original visual message

Themes

• Politics

• Feminism

• Commodity Fetish

• Rhetoric of realism

“I’m interested in how identities are constructed,

how stereotypes are formed, how narratives sort

of congeal and become history.”