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.
One of Kruger's most famous earlier work is 'Your Body is A Battleground' (1989). It consists of one simple image, accompanied by red strips and white bold texts. The background image is divided in the middle, and the inverse effect is used on the right part of the image. The purpose of doing so is to attract attention to the image instead of the fonts. As time progress, Kruger begins to place more and more texts and quotes, combining them with images more often. However, the same bold colours are used; red, black and white. This simple 3-coloured style help to create a sense of unity in all of her works, as she developed her style to focus more to text rather than image. One of her recent work is 'Untitled/ Seeing Through You' (2004). We can see significant development here, as she introduces more colours into her work. The red border keeps her edgy and authentic style, but she also experiments with new colours such as shades of green. She also explores opacity and textures through this art work.
Kruger incorporated her works and space together to create an effective experience for the audience so they could experience a more spatial feel of her works much better than looking at a single poster. As human beings, we interact with the space surrounding us. Therefore, the text being placed all over the walls and ceiling, we are surrounded and our attention is focused on the quotes that are on the walls.
The bright colours that she uses on her works create a strong impact on the audience as it draws our attention to the bright colours of the text. Her fonts are also bold, which captures our attention more quickly.
Her style is very consistent through time, however, the context of her works have changed and adjusted to newer issues we face in our society today. They are still rather controversial, but with introducing new colours, it help to tone down the graphic messages she may have incorporated into her works.
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ReplyDeleteI really like your opinion youve made about how we as humans interact with the space around us and i totally agree with you on this one and with krugers work she pulls off this effect real well. By using a large scale, the viewer becomes engulfed by the work, where the audience is more likely to think about what the work is portraying and how it makes them feel and respond to it.
It kind of has the effect that some of Mark Rothko's work gives but through an illustrated way rather then a painted abstract way.