Barbara Kruger analysis

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist whose work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with text in white and red. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. Barbara Kruger is best known for her silkscreen prints where she placed a direct and concise caption across the surface of a found photograph. As Kruger's career progressed, her work expanded to include site-specific installations as well as video and audio works, whilst maintaining a firm basis in social, cultural, and political critique. She is associated with Feminist art, as well as conceptual art due to the themes and structures that her artwork involves for example women’s rights. The social basis of Kruger’s work is what has inspired me as she quickly strikes a message across with her bold compositions. This has inspired me to pursue stereotyping in society because this is a strong force in the modern world when building our thoughts and opinions based on a particular group.

Barbara Kruger – Untitled (your body is a battleground), 1989, photo silkscreen on vinyl

By emblazoning text over images, Kruger directly communicates a message to the viewer, of which it’s controversial nature is emphasised by the jarring colour palette of red, white and black that she uses. Kruger designed this print for the rights protest, the March for Women's Lives, in Washington, D.C. The woman's face is split vertically, showing the photographic positive and negative sides, suggesting a highly simplified inner conflict of good and bad. Doing so also creates tonal variation within the composition, making it appear more interesting. The political and social implications of the work are evident, but Kruger accentuates the direct nature of her message by having her subject look straight ahead through the print which addresses the viewer through her stare. The message highlights the issue of feminist struggle, connecting the physical body of female viewers to the contemporary conditions that were protested in Washington, D.C. Kruger uses a monochrome palette which she infuses with red to create a stark contrast from dull to bright to emphasise her political messages. The striking nature of this message is emphasised by the word ‘is’ as it suggests a determination of being. This means that I need to think carefully about the words I choose when experimenting to make sure that my message has the most dramatic effect possible. Furthermore, Kruger cleverly uses shape by putting the text in a red box which gives the message a stern, rigid nature which consequently come across very seriously.

Kruger completed a photographic study of hospitals, with her overlays of text being a lot shorter and more concise. These declarative phrases included ‘go away’ and ‘not that’. There was a crucial change in Kruger’s artwork in the 1970’s, whereby she ditched photography and instead used found images from magazines or newspapers to work onto. She embraced both the imagery and language of advertising, combining black and white photographs with ambiguous but statements in collage-like presentations. However, she rejected the philosophies of commercial advertising, by raising questions concerning gender equality and consumerism.