Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is a prominent conceptual artist, photographer, and feminist known for her provocative works that challenge societal norms across various media, including print, video, and public installations. Born on January 26, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey, Kruger was raised in a working-class Jewish family and began her artistic journey studying at Syracuse University and the Parsons School of Design. Her early career included design roles at Mademoiselle magazine, where she honed her graphic design skills, which later informed her artistic style.
Kruger's notable works often feature a distinctive blend of black-and-white photographs paired with bold, confrontational text, addressing issues such as consumerism, gender and racial stereotypes, violence, and power dynamics. Iconic pieces like "Your Body Is a Battleground" and "I Shop Therefore I Am" exemplify her ability to merge art with social commentary. Over the decades, she has expanded her practice to include large-scale public projects and immersive installations, earning recognition and awards for her influential contributions to contemporary art. Her work remains relevant today, particularly in discussions surrounding women's rights and social justice, making her a significant figure in both the art world and broader cultural conversations.
Barbara Kruger
Artist
- Born: January 26, 1945
- Place of Birth: Newark, New Jersey
ARTIST, FEMINIST, AND PHOTOGRAPHER
Kruger is a conceptual artist whose provocative work, appearing in print media, video, and public places, has challenged social, cultural, economic, and political norms. Her unexpected juxtapositions of images and text address such issues as consumerism, gender and racial stereotypes, violence, religion, and power.
AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Art; social issues; women’s rights
Early Life
On January 26, 1945, Barbara Kruger was born to a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey. Her father found work as a chemical technician, and her mother was a legal secretary. They lived in a predominantly Black neighborhood. When Kruger’s father became the first Jewish person ever employed at Shell Oil Company in Union, New Jersey, their family received anti-Semitic telephone calls.
After attending Weequahic High School, Kruger entered Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts, in 1964. When her father died in 1965, she returned to New Jersey. In 1966, she entered the Parsons School of Design in New York City, where she studied fine arts for a year. Her teachers included photographer Diane Arbus and painter Marvin Israel, formerly an art director at Harper’s Bazaar. Israel introduced Kruger to Richard Avedon and other photographers. Condé Nast Publications hired Kruger as a second designer for Mademoiselle magazine, and she was promoted quickly to chief designer in 1967. After four years at Mademoiselle, Kruger resigned but continued to work as a freelance picture editor and graphic designer at Aperture, House and Garden, and other magazines.
By 1969, Kruger had started doing artwork. Like other women artists of the time, Kruger integrated traditional decorative crafts with fine art. She created large stitched and crocheted wall hangings of ribbons, beads, feathers, stuffing, sequins, paint, fur, and glitter. She was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial Exhibition and had several solo exhibitions.
Life’s Work
Beginning to question the meaning of her art, Kruger created more abstract work in 1975. In 1976, she stopped doing art completely and moved to Berkeley, California, where she attended film screenings, read theory and criticism, and took photographs later published in her 1979 book Picture/Readings. She taught as a visiting artist at numerous institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley; the Art Institute of Chicago; the California Institute of the Arts; and Ohio State University.
In 1979, she began writing columns on film, music, and television for Artforum. That year, she also began developing her trademark style of black-and-white photographs of cultural images from mainstream sources that were juxtaposed unexpectedly with familiar phrases or slogans typeset in the Futura Bold Italic font against a red background.
Beginning in the 1980s, she exhibited her new work in museums and galleries. She was represented by Mary Boone Gallery beginning in 1986. At the same time, she did large-scale public projects worldwide, such as billboards, subway posters, bus placards, and display windows. She also put her art on T-shirts, tote bags, and other merchandise. Her art cleverly and directly addressed social, economic, political, and cultural issues. Your Body Is a Battleground (1985) speaks to the objectification of women. I Shop Therefore I Am (1987) was a popular piece on canvas shopping bags. It’s a Small World but Not If You Have to Clean It (1990) showed an image of a woman looking through a magnifying glass. Other art included Your Comfort Is My Silence (1981), Money Can Buy You Love (1985), In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (1987), and Super rich/Ultra gorgeous/Extra skinny/Forever young (1997).
Beginning in the 1990s, Kruger worked more with film, video, and sound. Her 2004 video installation Twelve consisted of four video screens showing private dialogues on themes such as obligation, friendship, family, love, identity, control, and opinion.
In the twenty-first century, Kruger continued to write, teach, and exhibit internationally, including solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2000); the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Scotland (2005); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2008); and Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York (2010). In March 2016 Kruger’s Untitled (Blind Idealism Is . . . ) was mounted on a billboard overlooking the High Line, a park in Manhattan.
In 2022, Kruger's work was on display in two immersive shows in New York City. Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. involved covering the floors and walls of the Museum of Modern Art's Marron Family Atrium with words. Similar Kruger works were simultaneously on display at David Zwirner Gallery. That year, Your Body Is a Battleground, which she had created to promote the Women's March on Washington in 1989, gained new attention after the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade.
Significance
One of the most influential artists of her time, Kruger was a pioneer in using advertising design and typography in fine art and showing that words could be considered art. She put her art on consumer products and in places usually reserved for advertising, thus directly confronting the largest number of viewers with her thought-provoking work.
Her numerous awards and honors have included a National Endowment for the Arts grant (1983–84) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Fifty-first Venice Biennale (2005). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and other museums.
Bibliography
Gorner, Veit, et al. Barbara Kruger: Desire Exists Where Pleasure Is Absent. Bielefeld: Kerber, 2006. Print.
Hernandez, Margarita Lizcano. "Barbara Kruger. American, Born 1945." Museum of Modern Art, 2022, www.moma.org/artists/3266. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.
Kruger, Barbara, et al. Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. Cambridge: MITP, 1999. Print.
Kruger, Barbara, Alexander Alberro, et al. Barbara Kruger. New York: Rizzoli, 2010. Print.
Kruger, Barbara, and Kate Linker. Love for Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger. New York: Abrams, 1996. Print.
Phillips, Lisa, and Barbara Kruger. Barbara Kruger: Money Talks. New York: Skarstedt Fine Art, 2005. Print.
Smith, Roberta. "Barbara Kruger: A Way with Words." The New York Times, 24 July 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/07/14/arts/design/barbara-kruger-artist-moma-zwirner-feminist.html. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.
Swanson, Carl. “Barbara Kruger on Blind Idealism, Trump, and the Brussels Terrorist Attacks.” NYMag.com. New York Media, 22 Mar. 2016. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.