Women Artists. Suggested Response. THE ECONOMIES OF BEING: A Response to Barbara Kruger s I Shop therefore I am

Transcription

1 Women Artists Suggested Response Overall activity: To explore how Women artists have identified themselves, or gender-based themes, within their art providing a written or creative response. THE ECONOMIES OF BEING: A Response to Barbara Kruger s I Shop therefore I am On television, in magazines, on billboards in fact just about everywhere we are bombarded with brands and images that sell us aspiration, and it s in the power of the product s image that we invest our trust. We want the body that comes with the handbag and aftershave. We want the power that comes with the BMW or Lexus. When we go onto the high street and buy things (shoes, i-pods, clothes) don t we also Barbara Kruger, I shop therefore I am (I), buy into the image of the brand? When we go to the 1987 supermarket and make choices about which food or detergent brands to buy, we do so with a back catalogue of imagery and language that has told us which brand is better. T-T. Odumosu 1/5 Barbara Kruger s mixed media image entitled I shop therefore I am has become an iconic artwork. Produced in 1987, the image continues to confront its viewers with the painful truth that consumerism drives our everyday lives. In the eyes of multinational corporations, we are buyers first and people second. It is the brand, therefore, that makes our choice. but if we were told this, would we agree? Wouldn t we defend our own personal choices? I shop therefore I am is an interesting image. A photograph of a hand with its fingers holding or presenting some kind of object is imposed with a bright red text box containing the key statement. The textbox itself is held like a product (a perfume bottle or detergent) being offered for sale. The pose of the hand is a familiar aspect of television/magazine advertising, particularly in America. Yet in place of the anticipated product, is a statement that also serves as a question: What will the absent product do for us? Who will we be with (or without) the product? The decision about our shopping and our being is literally put in our hands by Kruger yet also who is the I in the piece? SONY advert, 1962 By the early 1980 s when Barbara Kruger was making her photomontage works, it was an established fact that most advertising was targeted at women since they were deemed to be the largest and most easily influenced consumer group. As a feminist artist, Kruger is interested in the role of women in society, and particularly in visual culture. She interrogates how the image and body of the female has been treated as a commodity and sexualised object. The statements in her photomontage works can also be read

2 according to the pronouns that she uses (I, You, my, your, we, they). Often the I or my in her work represents women and the You or your, represents men. Consequently much of Kruger s work challenges the imbalance and abuse of power by men over women. Barbara Kruger, Your comfort is my silence, 1981 Although Kruger s statements are very direct, they are also ambiguous, since they can be read in different ways - for example in the image to the left entitled Your comfort is my silence (1981). At first we are struck by the anonymous face of a man who hushes us as he raises his index finger to his lips. The image is tense with allusions to sex and sexual abuse, particularly if we read the text, as a man s comfort is a woman s silence. Yet the highlighting of the words Your and silence, mean that the text can also be altered or re-read as: Your silence is my comfort. This re-reading complicates the image and its possible interpretations. These ambiguities are things that Kruger herself says she has set out to achieve: I m interested in doubt something that is feared in American Society today. 1 Barbara Kruger s use of mixed graphic media in her work draws strongly on her early design training. In 1964, Kruger studied in the School of Visual Arts at Syracuse University, and then after a year moved to the Parson s School of Design in New York. At Parson s she worked with people who were connected to design and magazine culture, such as the photographer Diane Arbus and the then art director for Harper s Bazaar, Marvin Israel. In 1966 she worked for Condé Nast publications as a junior designer at Mademoiselle Magazine. She was quickly promoted to Head of Design, later that year. Kruger went on to design for publications such as Homes and Gardens, and continued to freelance as a picture editor and book-jacket designer. Although Kruger made art during this period, she did not utilise the design elements that she is now famous for, until the 1980 s, where she consolidated her signature mixed media style following years of photography training and study in the theoretical writings of people such as Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Harper s Bazaar, May 1963 Barbara Kruger is considered to be a conceptual artist, working in mixed media. As such she has rejected the pictorial conventions that have determined the traditional production of art. The brush of the great artist is replaced with montages of photographic imagery from magazines and contemporary culture, layered with subversive slogan s produced in graphic font. Her images and text therefore work with and against each other, by questioning the power, usage and impact of the graphic medium with which she works. In her own words, she notes: I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren't The following graphic montage that I have created, illustrates some of the visual and textual associations that I think can be made, in order to interpret Barbara Kruger s work. 1 Anne Keehen, Barbara Kruger in SWINDLE, Issue Icons T-T. Odumosu 2/5

3 In his text entitled The Discourse on Method (1637) the French philosopher Rene Descartes made his seminal statement: Je pense donc je suis or I think, therefore I am. This statement articulated the idea that our existence or reality is determined exclusively by our individual thoughts. In other words we exist, only because we think. Descartes idea became one of the most influential philosophical arguments on the subject of truth and reality. So to be (i.e. to be valued), you have to possess something? Image and Desire: In our contemporary visual culture, the media bombards us with images of sexualised women seducing us to buy expensive products. Beauty, the body, sex and the product are intertwined so we cannot disassociate one thing from the other The woman is the object of desire; the woman is also called to desire the product. The product becomes a measure of femininity. DESIRE Mixed Media: Kruger s photomontage medium drew inspiration from techniques developed by the Russian Constructivists of the 1920 s such as the Stenberg Brothers (shown here ). Constructivism in Russia sought to produce innovative art forms (design, architecture) that had practical, social functions - including posters for public events and revolutionary propaganda. Media/Advertising/Publicity/Propaganda? Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world. (John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Penguin, 1971, p.149) T-T. Odumosu 3/5

4 Contemporaries: Barbara Kruger studied at the Parson s School of Design in New York with the photographer Diane Arbus. A successful photojournalist, Arbus became known for her representations of so-called freaks and people generally on the margins of society: working class people, prostitutes, dwarves, giants and transvestites. She once remarked: Diane Arbus, Blaze Starr at Home, 1964 "There's a quality of legend about freaks like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats." Women A Word from the Artist: The brevity of the text is about cutting through the grease. I just want to address people in a very forthright manner. It is why I always use pronouns, because they cut through in the same way. Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in. 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. 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. Barbara Kruger in an interview conducted by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve for an article entitled The Art of Public Address in Art in America, November Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions), 1991 T-T. Odumosu 4/5

5 Afterthought In 2004, London s designer department store Selfridges, unveiled new signs and advertising as part of its promotion for their January sales. Black font on white strips were placed, like stickers, on a red background with the Selfridges&Co. Sale logo at the bottom. Slogans that were taken from quotes on consumerism by thinkers such as Malcolm X and Charles Baudelaire, read: Buy me I ll change your life You want it, You buy it, You forget it It s you, It s new, It s everything, It s nothing Buyer Beware Photo of Selfridges in store with Kruger signs. Taken from article on: We are slaves of the objects around us This advertising was the product of a three-year project with Barbara Kruger. Kruger was paid by the upscale department store to apply her signature font and textual critique to posters and placards that would promote the store in a trendy and subversive way. Kruger s art was being used to generate interest and income for the very same commercial spaces that she has been challenging in her art. Did she sell out? T-T. Odumosu 5/5