Barbara Kruger
- Is a Conceptual Artist. (Conceptual Artist is art in which the idea or concept presented by the artist is considered more important than the finished product)
Born: January 26th, 1945 in New mark New Jersey, US
Education: Syracuse University, Parsons School of Design, New York
Nationality: American
After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Kruger obtained a job a Conde Nast Publications followed by then getting a job at "Mademoiselle", a women's fashion magazine that ended in 2001.
As her early years as an artist, Kruger crotched, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objectives. She then went on to publish her own artist's book consisting of her own photographs and work.
Much of Kruger's work pairs found photographs with pithy and assertive text that challenges the viewer. She develops her ideas on a computer, later transferring the results to (often billboard-sized) image. Kruger has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t."
Kruger was awarded the MOCA Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts in 2001. In 2005, she was included in The Experience of Art at the Venice Biennale and was the recipient of the Leone d'Oro for lifetime achievement. At the 10th anniversary Gala in the Garden at the Hammer Museum in 2012, Kruger was honored by TV presenter Rachel Maddow. In 2012, Kruger joined John Baldessari and Catherine Opie in leaving the Museum of Contemporary Art's board in protest, but later returned in support of the museum's new director, Philippe Vergne, in 2014.
Above shows one of Kruger's most famous and well known pieces of work. "Your body is a battleground" (1989).
As the stark line divides the figure’s face in half, the viewer’s attention is immediately drawn to the impeccable symmetry of the face; her eyebrows are exactly the same shape, almost as if one is a mirror reflection. The viewers come to read this image as a construct of society, a stereotypical image of how women should appear: she is an object of beauty. In the book “Love for Sale” which survey Kruger’s work and its implications, Kruger is quoted as saying that she bases her work on stereotyping, a “domain as that of ‘figures without bodies.” In this image—a stereotypical depiction of women by society—the woman is no longer an individual. Rather, the depiction of the woman is a product of the society. By adding text, Kruger critiques the circumstances under which this image was originally produced.
Throughout Kruger's creations, it is noticed that she always uses the colour red, which has connotations of danger, warning, alert, attention, passion, love, lust and "stop". The font is always italic and bold which shows she is trying to make serious statements throughout her art work. The images she uses does reflect most of the themes she uses well. An example of this is her Abortion image. In the background it shows a grey contrast of a group of men in a suit with cropped heads, and a fact on the front saying: "77% of Anti-Abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant". This is basically saying that men are the most popular sex to be anti abortion choosers yet they are the ones that will never experience getting or being pregnant, so they shouldn't really have a say as it's not up to them whether a woman keeps her own baby as it has to survive and grow in her own body which is her property only, no one else's.
There is definitely a computer and certain programmes used to create these images regarding tools. To make something like this in my experiences I would use either Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.
To make them more successful I personally would hand sketch the images myself to add a more artistic and personal touch to them, instead of use pictures maybe off the internet or hand taken images.
Here is a video showing one of Barbara's exhibitions in Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIHkpUKiFaI
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