Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger – Analysis

Barbara Kruger born January 26, 1945 is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you" or "your". Kruger lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.

She initially worked as a designer at Mademoiselle Magazine and later moved on to work part-time as a picture editor at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications. In her early years as a visual artist, Kruger crocheted, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objects, some of which were included by curator Marcia Tucker in the 1973 Whitney Biennial. She uses the techniques of mass communication and advertising to explore gender and identity. Much of Kruger's work engages the merging of found photographs from existing sources with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for power and control that her captions speak to. 

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html

I have chosen to look at this particular piece by the artist as I have already looked at exhibition work by barbara on my blog, this image catches your attention straight away it is powerful and puts many thoughts into your head. Barbara has collaborated the black and white image as the background and overlays the image with the writing. The white ands red writing really contrast against the black and white image making the writing stand out and become more explosive, this becomes the centre of attention for the image. Barbara has combined the writing and image together in such a way that it seems as if the hand is holding the writing up, this is very clever and brings the piece to life because of the way the hand is positined it looks as if it is forcing it to you trying to make a point. If you imagine the image not being there with a plain red background the writing wouldn’t stand out and wouldn’t be as explosive.

Barbara has compiled the text so it hasn’t ended ‘I shop therefore I am’ doesn’t end the topic or the point, it brings up thoughts into your head of what could end the sentence. She leaves it hanging for us to complete. But not everyone’s thoughts are going to be the same showing that no one is the same, you can’t judge someone from that point as everyone shops. So is she trying to say ‘I shop therefore I am’… ‘Normal’ she is leaving it open for us to make our own decision; this makes the piece more interesting and personal.

Barbara only uses three simple colours in this piece, which are the only colours that are displayed in all of her work.  She uses red, black and white but displays them so that they contrast against one another making certain elements standout such as the writing. Red, white and black are also very overpowering, bright, bold colours singularly but Barbara has collaged them so that the red is more overpowering.  The font type used here is future bold oblique I believe, this type of font is thick and bold. This writing is eye catching; she uses this to make her point come across so that the writing is in your face. Barbara uses tone in the work but only in the image, the tone isn’t used in a particular way but there is some displayed in the work.

This work is explosive and really makes you think; it catches your eye straight away and has a grave impact on the viewer. I would like to take this into my future work I want to display words or quotes so that they are in your face and put a point across. The way that she chooses the red, black and white in a way so that they contrast and the words stand out; I will explore using these colours and maybe take them into future work.