Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Krugeris 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", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. Kruger lives and works in New York and Los Angeles...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionConceptual Artist
Date of Birth26 January 1945
CityNewark, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
As with the Princess Di crash, which sent the media on the most insane feeding frenzy. From the moment of the crash, the pornography of sentiment never let up.
Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.
I feel uncomfortable with the term public art, because I'm not sure what it means. If it means what I think it does, then I don't do it. I'm not crazy about categories.
I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.
I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.
I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.
I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.
I've always thought that it's good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that's how consensus is constructed.
If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.
Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud!
I think there are lots of ways to make good work. You can throw big bucks at a project and make what some would call crap, or you can work very modestly with eloquently moving results.
You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.
I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.
I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words.