Texts

Website: The couch sessions and Barbara Kruger - The art history archive -Feminist art

Kruger’s use of text and typography over a black and white background to convey simple messages about feminism and consumerism are still striking and poignant over 30 years later. But if her previous work was a subtle jab, her new installation at The Temporary Stedelijk in Amsterdam seems to scream at you and punch you in the face.

Using the gallery’s largest room as her canvas, Kruger makes a bold point of how we treat each other. Amazing. The exhibition runs until JanuaryKruger’s earliest artworks date to 1969. Large woven wall hangings of yarn, beads, sequins, feathers, and ribbons, they exemplify the feminist recuperation of craft during this period. Despite her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial in 1973 and solo exhibitions at Artists Space and Fischbach Gallery, both in New York, the following two years, she was dissatisfied with her output and its detachment from her growing social and political concerns. In the fall of 1976, Kruger abandoned art making and moved to Berkeley, California, where she taught at the University of California for four years and steeped herself in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes.

She took up photography in 1977, producing a series of black-and-white details of architectural exteriors paired with her own textual ruminations on the lives of those living inside. Published as an artist’s book, Picture/Readings (1979) foreshadows the aesthetic vocabulary Kruger developed in her mature work.

By 1979 Barbara Kruger stopped taking photographs and began to employ found images in her art, mostly from mid-century American print-media sources, with words collaged directly over them. Her 1980 untitled piece commonly known as "Perfect" portrays the torso of a woman, hands clasped in prayer, evoking the Virgin Mary, the embodiment of submissive femininity; the word “perfect” is emblazoned along the lower edge of the image.

My own words:

I found Barbara Krugar's artwork interesting, because I like that she draws and designs letters on walls. I also like how she added some texts on her work which includes a person on it. 

Title:  You Are Not Yourself

Medium: Photo collage

Size: 182.9 x 121.9 cm

Barbara Kruger Untitled (We don't need another hero) 90" by 117" photographic silkscreen/vinyl 1987

Chromogenic (C-print)

70 х 80 in. (177.8 x 203.2 cm.)

Signed, and numbered, verso

My own words: Barbara Kruger only writes 1 sentence and quotes. It looks like she photoshopped the letters that are on the centre of the image. She also cut out letters from news papers or magazines and collaged them onto paper, wood, glass or any hard surface.