“Sex/Lure” (1979)…the poster displays Kruger’s perfected ‘agitprop’ style. It is composed of a cropped black and white pop-art photograph of a mans mouth, chin and neck in the background, with a prominent red border framing the image. A brown cross and horizontal line overlay creates an interesting composition, dissecting the different parts of the face. The words “SEX” and “LURE” are positioned strategically underneath and amidst these lines to create a visual commentary. It’s hard to explain how the composition works to create this commentary; a relationship is created between the two words so that I just have this really clear reading about what the artist is saying just from looking at the image. It has a strong mood; I particularly liked this poster because it is a bit more mysterious and complex than some of the others in a way that I cannot explain in words how it makes me understand it. This work is very 2-D and ‘flat’ in comparison to her more modern installation works, but this flatness works because the statement is very blunt.
“Between Being Born and Dying” (2007)…was an installation at the 2007 Women Artists’ Biennale in
-'I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition to try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience. I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty'.
barbara kruger
The work is a mixture of ironic statements, pithy humor, and political commentaries which create an overwhelmingly bold environment. The black and white colors of the huge texts are ironically true to the statements themselves, which are very black and white i.e. they are true or false. They are not relative. The work is different to her poster style work because of the 3 dimensional aspects. I imagine as you move through the space the bold black and white statements interact with each other and change as you move through the space.
Kruger uses the contrast and a consistently simple colour palette in her work to create a strong impact. The font she uses (futura) is clean and crisp. Her work is no-nonsense and steers clear of being decorative or traditionally attractive. The impact is created also by the style of her statements. They are funny, ironical, and challenging but you never know quite how seriously to read her statements. Kruger’s work has developed in technique mainly, her ideas about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another have remained a constant in her work over the years. She has advanced from using only black, white and red in her posters to completely saturating them with colours such as magenta and cyan. Since her early years Barbara Kruger has also created installations comprised of video, film, audio and projection (she produced three large-scale gallery installations between 1989 and 1991).
References:
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/feminist/Barbara-Kruger.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kruger
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/kruger/index.html
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