Barbara Kruger: Connecting Words and Images Emily Catanzarite Visual Communication May 17, 2011
There is a common phrase used, a picture is worth a thousand words. If this is true, how many words is a picture worth if there are words in an image? What if a work of art is all words? Does the use of words in an image create a more clear meaning for an image or does it complicate the message even more? These questions are exactly what came to my mind when observing the work of Barbara Kruger. Much of her text questions viewers about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, although her black- and- white images are collected from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing. Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist, born in 1945 to a lower middle- class family in Newark, New Jersey. Her interests in the world of art brought her to study design at Syracuse University. After studying for a year at Syracuse she moved to New York where she began attending Parsons School of Design in 1965 with a concentration in fine art. She studied with fellow artists and photographers Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel, who introduced Kruger to other photographers and fashion/magazine sub- cultures. After a year at Parsons, Kruger again left school and worked at Condé Nast Publications in 1966. Not long after she started to work at Mademoiselle magazine as an entry- level designer, she was promoted to head designer a year later. Later still she worked as a graphic designer, art director, and picture editor in the art departments at House and Garden, Aperture, and did magazine layouts, book jacket designs, and freelance picture editing for other publications. Kruger was heavily influenced by her
years working as a graphic designer. She describes her experience as a graphic designer as the biggest influence on my work (Kruger, 1990). Her decade of background in design is evident in the work for which she is now internationally renowned. Today Barbara continues to create controversial works of art and is one of the most well known conceptual artists around the world. (Kruger, 1990) Barbara Kruger said, I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren t (Alberro, 2010). Barbara Kruger s word choice influences how her work is perceived which creates an unexpected and provocative meaning for an image. She is an artist concerned with the ways in which society controls our thoughts, desires, and attitudes. If there is a consistent method, it is to proceed by implication in the strongest sense to trace the ties to capital, power, words, and images that bind us all (Alberro, 2010). Barbara is known for her large conventional images taken from various media sources and covered with text, disrupting their power and clearing a path for awareness. Her work ranges from photographs, film, and large- scale exhibitions, all in which have a particular message she portrays through each piece. She has produced books, posters, billboards, and popular consumer items such as T- shirts and matchbooks. I find this ironic because much of her work criticizes the seemingly endless need to buy such products. Barbara s work is easily recognized because her style is unique. A bold red outline is usually used to outline one word or phrase over an image. Spotting her work is not difficult at all. The fact that Kruger uses active language is the central purpose of her art (Alberro, 2010). It is interesting and refreshing that she chooses to focus her work around text. Her
work is often observed by a mass audience so it is important to understand how it influences people and consider exactly what Barbara is trying to say with each message displayed in her work. Through her work Kruger aims to intercept the stereotype, to suspend the identification afforded by the gratifications of the image. To do this, she deploys the stereotypes double address, by which it constructs the viewer twice over, addressing him or her personally and impersonally, as individual (you, here, ) and as type. The stereotype makes use of the arsenal of its rhetorical powers to solicit and seduce, engaging the viewer through the particularities of its details, only to withdraw into the detached and disembodied reductions of the generalized image, the pose. (Kruger, 1990) There are dozens of concepts to explore when discussing Barbara Kruger s art, especially when considering the use of words with or instead of images. Barbara is known to be a feminist artist so it is not surprising that the concept the gaze can be considered when discussing her work. To gaze implies more than to look at it signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze (Schroeder, 2005, p. 587). This concept suggests that there is a battle of power within images that the gaze appears. Relating the gaze to feminism is easy because women are often what the image suggests should be gazed at. Barbara uses the awareness of male dominance that society is not afraid to hide to her advantage. Often male consumer s gaze expresses social distance, social relation, and social interaction; he believes that he is in a position to judge and appreciate attractive women. (Schroeder, 2005, pg. 587) Men believe they have the authority to observe
women as they please because they are men. There s not doubt that women do the same thing to men, but society recognizes men as doing this because more often than not this is seen as a normal behavior for men. Since Barbara generally uses women as the subject for each image she has been successful in using the gaze with a stereotypical outlook on women. However, the stereotypes are obvious more for the text she uses rather than just the image. An image that the gaze is apparent is her It s a Small World picture. The woman in this image is looking through a magnify glass with a dumbfounded look on her face. If the image was left without any text then one might assume that she is in a classroom working on some type of science project or something else requiring a magnify glass. The addition of the words changes the message of the image completely. The text reads It s a small world, but not if you have to clean it. This suggests that the woman is possibly looking at dust on a surface and because she is a woman she will be the one to clean it. These assessments can be made because of her gaze. She is observing something and the words can manipulate what exactly it is. Being that Kruger is a feminist artist, we may also come to the conclusion that her use of this particular image was because the woman has the magnify glass and seems to be looking directly at whom ever is observing the image. This could have been her Barbara s way of getting
people to look at themselves and self reflect how they as men treat women and as women are treated by men. Another image of Barbara Kruger s that exemplifies the gaze is Your Body is a Battleground. The woman in this image is looking directly into the lens of the camera. Barbara cropped the image so that this is easily noticed and it is almost impossible to not look into the woman s eyes. Her gaze goes directly to the viewer of the image, suggesting the your in the text is referencing the person looking at the picture. Many of Barbara s images have this very same idea with the use of you and your in the phrases. Once again the use of a woman points toward her feminist views and this particular image shows a picture perfect woman. The image splits the woman s face symmetrically along the vertical axis. There is a play of positive and negative space between the two halves of the image, highlighting ideas of positive versus negative, white versus black, and good versus bad (Kruger, 1990). The most obvious use of the gaze in Barbara Kruger s work is the image Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face. Through this image Kruger is saying that the viewer only looks at one aspect of the artwork, in this case, the side of the woman s face. The same can be said for the male gaze, in that the viewer is only looking at one aspect of the object being viewed. They are
only seeing the woman in one way. Rather than seeing a woman as strong, independent, or intelligent, she is portrayed as an erotic object, valued only for her sexual beauty. They only see the value of a woman as far as it pertains to the pleasure of the man. Women who don t fall under this category, who dare to break the traditional mold, are looked down upon as catty outcasts who get what they deserve in the end. Also, the woman in the image is looking down toward the ground. Her gaze makes her seem unconfident and as if she cannot look straight ahead because a man is walking in her direction. The gaze is also apparent in Barbara Kruger s image with Marilyn Monroe, Not Stupid Enough. Marilyn Monroe was the iconic blonde bombshell because of her natural flirtatious personality and her oozing sex appeal for men. In a sense she was what some men considered the perfect woman. She could seduce men with simply just a look. Her gaze in this image drifts to the viewer. The text in the image reads not stupid enough, not ironic enough, not good enough, not skinny enough, and not nothing enough. Considering these statements it seems as if these are the thoughts of an insecure woman who hides her insecurities from the men that desire her. As she gazes at the men who want her these are the thoughts she has. If sexual roles are constructed in representation, they can also be revised and reconstructed in discourse: thus, feminist theory contrasts the
multiplicity of subject positions, in language with the rigid paradigms of identity generated by and for the social order (Kruger, 1990). There is also the possibility that they text is the thoughts of men as they observe the object of their affection. Since Barbara is a feminist artist it is likely the combination of this image with the particular text is her way of saying that men are too judgmental toward women because they expect total perfection for all aspects of women they desire. Marilyn Monroe was also the subject for a series of prints with words like envy, fear, lust, and pray over her face. Marilyn has a similar look on her face as in the Not Stupid Enough image. However, she has a more direct look on her face in this image, which looks at the viewer. She also seems to be laughing, possibly at the viewer. Her laughter could be directed at the observer of the image and the cause is the word printed across the image. Instead of the male viewer holding the power, in this image the woman is holding all the power. A second visual communication concept that can be applied to Barbara Kruger s work with ease is semiotics or the general study of signs of whatever conveys meaning. Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything
that can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. This something else does not necessarily have to exist, or to actually be somewhere at the moment in which a sign stands for it. (Berger, 2012) The verbal language within Barbara s images is a part of social codes. She is using syntactical sub codes to help communicate a particular message to viewers. Within the focus of semiotics is a dualism view on categories and what they mean in a dominant culture. Semiotic meaning draws upon dualistic notions of being, identity and difference such as self /other, male/female, white/black, rational/emotional, culture/nature, and normal/exotic the opposed elements of which stabilize various positive and negative cultural associations and values (Schroeder, 2005, p. 583). This suggests that everything has a binary opposite, both having an equal amount of meaning. In many of Kruger s art it is easy to find the symbols that hold a greater meaning behind them and we can interpret them in different ways, with either the image or the words. The question of how to construct representation capable of transcending the parameters of patriarchal culture within the visual field has been at the center of Kruger s work as much as that of how to dismantle from within the governing forms of visuality and speech (Alberro, 2010). Two terms that go hand in hand with semiotics are signifier and signified. The signifier of an image calls attention to something other than itself and the signified is the meaning constructed by the images signifier. Semiotics can be seen in many of Barbara
Kruger s images, I Shop Therefore I Am is one of the many. She uses Rene Descartes philosophical phrase, I think, therefore I am to create her own parody. I Shop Therefore I Am, created in 1987 is a feminist critique of representation; specifically images of woman that are constructed by a predominantly male media and that help to shape the way women see themselves. It was an attempt to deconstruct the pressures of consumerism on women and to expose and challenge the notion of identity formation through acts of consumption. These thoughts reinforce the dualist view of male/female. There are assumptions made on how females and males act and are viewed in the world. According to this interpretation, women shop because they feel that it is necessary in order to be a woman. If they do not follow this lifestyle then they are not the ideal women in the society that creates this perception. The particular word choice Kruger used signifies an entire feeling of obligation that women have to participate in the world of constant consumerism. One of the most interesting art series created by Barbara Kruger is a sequence of bus stop posters. In each poster, we see a black- and- white photographic image of a person looking out at us. Their eyes gently meet ours, but their poses are ambiguous if not generic. They hold more or less affectless countenances that bespeak little on their own.
But a large red rectangle positioned across the person s chest exclaims Help! charging their poses with a plaintive urgency. (Alberro, 2010) Each image is of a man with a statement suggesting that he has worked hard and this hard work is finally paying off, but at the end of the statement viewers are startled with the words, I just found out I m pregnant. Since it is biologically impossible for a male to be pregnant we as viewers know that Barbara is trying to tell us something with the use of these particular words and images. The image with the well- dressed businessman reads, I ve worked hard. Business is booming and I ve decided to enter politics. The campaign is going really well but I just found out I m pregnant. What should I do? If the image were of a woman the shock value would totally disappear because it is obviously not unordinary for a woman to be pregnant. On the one hand, Kruger s move here is simple: she leads her viewer through a comfortable and familiar process of identifying the text as the voice of the male subject pictured in the photograph, only to radically explode the viewer s habituated complacency through a precisely orchestrated disconnection between the person pictured and the accompanying story (Alberro, 2010). By using a male subject Barbara is creating a new way to get attention for this series. She broke any and all social codes by using a male as the main subject for the images. On the other hand, what Kruger achieves with the improbable textual imposition of a pregnancy upon the images of male bodies is to insist on the presence of female subjects despite their absence from view, interrupting the presumption of a masculine subjectivity as the ground of the representation (Alberro, 2010). A possible reason for using a man in this series is to, yes get attention because it is so crazy, but also to change how people feel
about abortion. If the text was suggesting that this man s girlfriend was pregnant and a child will only hinder his career then some people may say that leaving his girlfriend and unborn child is necessary and best for him. If it were a woman in the situation this poster portrays then she would more likely be judged for wanting to abort her pregnancy, even if it means giving up a successful career. Another image of Barbara s that semiotics is present is You Are a Very Special Person. Barbara did not use a human being for the focus of the image; instead she makes the focus point a crown. Symbolically crowns are worn by royalty and represent power, authority, immortality, righteousness, glory, and honor. When a person wears a crown people know that they are considered special and worthy enough to wear it. By adding the text you are a very special person Barbara is likely attempting to send the message that there are people in the world who feel that they are more special than others and deserve to be treated as if they were in a sense royalty. Reaching this conclusion is possible because of the image and the particular word choice in this work of art by Kruger. Barbara Kruger s work has influenced people all over the world since her popularity grew in the 1980s. Her unique and controversial style will be studied for decades. She is able to send a message to her audience through the use of images and words. The messages are not necessarily clear- cut and often open for interpretation,
which is something that personally I enjoy most about her artwork. Although Kruger is best known for her feminist work she has done an array of projects on many different subjects. Barbara Kruger stated, "Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different." (Kruger, 2003) I expect to see her continue to influence people with her distinctive style and inspire new artists to do things that are not necessarily seen as the right way of creating messages through art.
References Alberro, A., Gever, M., Kwon, M., & Squiers, C. (2010). Barbara kruger. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. Barbara kruger online gallery. (2010). Retrieved May 10, 2011, from Artnet Worldwide Corporation website: http://www.artnet.com/artists/ barbara- kruger/ Berger, A. A. (2012). Seeing is believing (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Kruger, B., & Linker, K. (1990). Love for sale. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Kruger, B., & Lisa Phillips. (2003). Money talks. New York, NY: Distributed Art Publishers. Schroeder, J. E., & Borgerson, J. L. (2005). An ethics of representation for international marketing communication. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. (Original work published 2004) Vettese, A., Fabbri, P., & Pierni, M. (2002). Barbara kruger. Palazzo delle Papesse.