Post 5: Barbara Kruger

"Your Body is a Battleground"
arguably her most famous work,
tackes the issue of women's rights and
media portrayals head on.  

Barbara Kruger is one of the more contemporary female artists of whom I am a fan. Her work is largely conceptual, often addressing ideas regarding power and who has it, identity, and sexual power and identity. She is often thought of with other post modern contemporaries such as photographer Cindy Sherman because of the similarities in content of their works. Her work follows a similar aesthetic throughout- often a black and white photograph is featured, with red or white wording layered over it that features a somewhat-aggressive slogan or message on top of it. The message is so explicit it is impossible to miss. This is why her work was so important- Kruger was so blunt and specific about the concept she is tackling that it cannot be missed, even by those who don't believe her messages. 

This work deals with the idea of
materialism and consumerism
 but also confronts
unrealistic expectations of
women to look a certain way 

In explaining her own appropriation, Kruger says "Pictures and words seem to become the rallying points for certain assumptions. There are assumptions of truth and falsity and I guess the narratives of falsity are called fictions. I replicate certain words and watch them stray from or coincide with the notions of fact and fiction." While this idea or concept is not new and has been utilized by many artists, I think Kruger was one of the first to apply this to issues that directly affect women in a modern society.

This message is powerful.
The viewer doesn't need to see
Hitler's eyes to know his portrait.
While this example of this slogan
may seem a bit extreme, it is still
making the point that it is important to
be mindful or risk being powerless in
your own mind. 

Her art is called one of the most important for the modern feminist movement. Not only did she contribute to the art of the 1980s and 90s, she pushed it further towards recognizing inequalities between men and women, and explicated these through her art. She focuses her art on the differences in gender, and this often means the burdens women must endure as women (for example, "Your Body is a Battleground" is art but also a slogan and truthful rhetoric that mirrors the woman's struggles of then and now). I consider her to be one of the rare artists who is making art for the female spectator, and that alone makes her important.