Barbara Kruger
[1] She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text.
[10] Kruger's earliest works date back to 1969, when she began creating large wall hangings which incorporated materials such as yarn, beads, sequins, feathers, and ribbons.
[15] Kruger crocheted, sewed, and painted brightly hued and erotically suggestive objects, some of which were included by curator Marcia Tucker in the 1973 Whitney Biennial.
Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists as Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman.
Most of her work deals with provocative topics like feminism, consumerism, and individual autonomy and desire, frequently appropriating images from mainstream magazines and using her bold phrases to frame them in a new context.
[25]Her poster for the 1989 Women's March on Washington in support of legal abortion included a woman's face bisected into positive and negative photographic reproductions, accompanied by the text "Your body is a battleground.
Twelve hours later, a group opposed to abortion responded to Kruger's work by replacing the adjacent billboard with an image depicting an eight-week-old fetus.
These small scale works, the largest of which is 11 x 13 inches (28 x 33 cm), are composed of altered found images, and texts either culled from the media or invented by the artist.
[10] In 1990, Kruger roused the Japanese American community of Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, with her proposal to paint the Pledge of Allegiance, bordered by provocative questions, on the side of a warehouse in the heart of the historic downtown neighborhood.
[9] Kruger had been commissioned by MOCA to paint a mural for "A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation", a 1989 exhibition that also included works by Barbara Bloom, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince.
[29] After participants voiced protests about her design, the artist offered to eliminate the pledge from her mural proposal, while still retaining a series of questions painted in the colors and format of the American flag: "Who is bought and sold?
[30] As part of the Venice Biennale in 2005, Kruger installed a digitally printed vinyl mural across the entire facade of the Italian pavilion, thereby dividing it into three parts—green at the left, red at the right, white in between.
In English and Italian, the words "money" and "power" climbed the portico's columns; the left wall said, "Pretend things are going as planned", while "God is on my side; he told me so" filled the right.
[32] In 2022, as the arguably most important voice in art for Abortion-rights movements, Kruger created a series of new works in response to the leaked Supreme Court documents that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
"[33][34] In 1994, Kruger's L'empathie peut changer le monde (Empathy can change the world) was installed on a train station platform in Strasbourg, France.
To promote Kruger's first retrospective, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, she created 15 billboards and countless wild postings, executed and installed in both English and Spanish.
[9] In support of a public awareness campaign to promote arts instruction in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Kruger covered a bus with phrases like, "Give your brain as much attention as you do your hair and you'll be a thousand times better off"; "from here to there"; "Don't be a jerk"; and "You want it.
[36] In 1984, Kruger created a T-shirt design that featured a blown-up image of a woman's face with text running across the figure's eyes and mouth reading, "I can't look at you ... and breathe at the same time."
[38] Between 1998 and 2008, Kruger created permanent installations for the Fisher College of Business, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, and Price Center at the University of California, San Diego.
In 2024, Kruger was among the 18 artists selected by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to create installations for John F. Kennedy International Airport’s new Terminal 6, set to open in 2026.
Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, the work continues her questioning of power, control, affection, and contempt: still images now move and speak and spatialize their commentary.
[42] In 1997, Kruger produced a series of fiberglass sculptures of compromised public figures, including John F. and Robert F. Kennedy hoisting Marilyn Monroe on their shoulders.
[9] In 2016, Kruger created a work protesting the election of Donald Trump for the cover of New York magazine and participated in a January 20, 2017, inauguration boycott.
She also associated with Julian Schnabel, Marilyn Lerner, Sherrie Levine, Cindy Sherman, James Welling, Nancy Dwyer, Louise Lawler, Sarah Charlesworth, Laurie Simmons, Carol Squiers, Judith Barry, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, Becky Johnston, and Lynne Tillman.
Kruger joined the group called Artists Meeting for Cultural Change in the 1970s, but noted about the experience, "I wasn't a real [sic] active speaker; I was intimidated but also curious.
[57] Kruger's words and pictures have been displayed in both galleries and public spaces, as well as offered as framed and unframed photographs, posters, postcards, T-shirts, electronic signboards, façade banners, and billboards.
In late 2011, Kruger's 1985 photo of a ventriloquist's dummy, Untitled (When I Hear the Word Culture I Take Out My Checkbook), was sold at Christie's for a record $902,500.
[68] Kruger herself had not commented on this issue until a recent lawsuit between Supreme and Leah McSweeney, founder of Married to the Mob (MTTM), a women's street clothing brand.
"[69] Eventually the lawsuits were dropped upon the parties reaching an agreement that McSweeney could continue to use the phrase "Supreme Bitch" as long as it was "not in the way Barbara Kruger does.
