Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989 Source
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.''The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.''The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)
Words run through Barbara Kruger's work – clear, strong, and evocative words, mediated through her characteristic application of font and colour. Meaning, however, is conveyed by both synthesis and contrast. Rather than conditioned by the words themselves, the work's textuality is constituted, firstly, by the formation of often fragmented blocks of phrases, words, or letters. Colour is the decisive visual determinant in this textual layer, and is chiefly represented by the intense contrast between white, black, and red.
A second layer of juxtaposition emerges as such coloured blocks are dispersed over, and simultaneously contrasted with, original or pre-existing black and white images. Content is thus organised in the textual spaces within, as well as between, the plural formulations of contrast which constitute Barbara Kruger's signature visual language. Such a creative context does not only offer an insightful critical anatomy of cultural stereotypes, advertising clichés and propaganda aesthetics; it effectively stands them on their heads.
The politics of this approach is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's concept of problematization, defined as the development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts which pose questions for politics. Foucault argued that he always tried "to ask politics what it had to say about the problems with which it was confronted," and "question it about the positions it takes and the reasons it gives for this." Ιn this respect Barbara Kruger's work may be read as a visual form of questioning established norms and practices. As she pointed out in her egg interview, "I'm really interested in questions more than answers. Everybody's got answers, and I think it's more generative and engaging for me to think about questions and to think about doubt."
Barbara Kruger's work addresses issues such as gender, identity, and the politics of the body; consumerism and commodification; conformism and discipline. What underpins and interrelates these subjects is her understanding of power; as she argued in the same interview: "Power is the most free-flowing element in society, maybe next to money, but in fact they both motor each other. And it's in this room right now, it's at every dinner table, every board room, every bedroom; every social situation is rife with the consequences of power. And I feel compelled to address that, because it is the major constituent in determining what our lives feel like, what our every-days feel like, what our days and nights feel like."
This is again parallel to the work of Foucault, who theorized power relations as imminent in, and not external to, other kinds of relationships, such as those constituted in the context of economic processes, knowledge and sex (The history of sexuality, Volume 1: The will to knowledge, Penguin, 1978). Power relations are seen as rooted in the system of social networks and their differentiated forms are irreducible to any single binary opposition (Afterword: The subject and power, in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, 1982).
A second layer of juxtaposition emerges as such coloured blocks are dispersed over, and simultaneously contrasted with, original or pre-existing black and white images. Content is thus organised in the textual spaces within, as well as between, the plural formulations of contrast which constitute Barbara Kruger's signature visual language. Such a creative context does not only offer an insightful critical anatomy of cultural stereotypes, advertising clichés and propaganda aesthetics; it effectively stands them on their heads.
Untitled (I shop therfore I am) (II), 1987 Source
The politics of this approach is reminiscent of Michel Foucault's concept of problematization, defined as the development of a domain of acts, practices, and thoughts which pose questions for politics. Foucault argued that he always tried "to ask politics what it had to say about the problems with which it was confronted," and "question it about the positions it takes and the reasons it gives for this." Ιn this respect Barbara Kruger's work may be read as a visual form of questioning established norms and practices. As she pointed out in her egg interview, "I'm really interested in questions more than answers. Everybody's got answers, and I think it's more generative and engaging for me to think about questions and to think about doubt."
Barbara Kruger's work addresses issues such as gender, identity, and the politics of the body; consumerism and commodification; conformism and discipline. What underpins and interrelates these subjects is her understanding of power; as she argued in the same interview: "Power is the most free-flowing element in society, maybe next to money, but in fact they both motor each other. And it's in this room right now, it's at every dinner table, every board room, every bedroom; every social situation is rife with the consequences of power. And I feel compelled to address that, because it is the major constituent in determining what our lives feel like, what our every-days feel like, what our days and nights feel like."
This is again parallel to the work of Foucault, who theorized power relations as imminent in, and not external to, other kinds of relationships, such as those constituted in the context of economic processes, knowledge and sex (The history of sexuality, Volume 1: The will to knowledge, Penguin, 1978). Power relations are seen as rooted in the system of social networks and their differentiated forms are irreducible to any single binary opposition (Afterword: The subject and power, in H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, University of Chicago Press, 1982).
Untitled (We have received orders not to move) 1982 Source
The aesthetic qualities of Barbara Kruger's forms and practices are paradigmatic of art's political significance. One of her best-known works, 1981's Your gaze hits the side of my face, sharply subverts the objectification of women by the male gaze. For Rancière, the image is effective as it abolishes the distinction between "the disembodied abstraction of words and the vitality of bodies" (Do pictures really want to live?, Culture, Theory & Critique, 50, 2-3, 2009, p. 130). And as Barbara Kruger has eloquently argued, "art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook."
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