Barbara Kruger

Artist

1945-01-26

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. Her work combines bold text and imagery to examine power, media, and identity.

Quotes by Barbara Kruger

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.
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It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized.
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I like suggesting that 'we are slaves to the objects around us,' that 'plenty should be enough,' or that the 'buyer should beware,' within the context of conventional selling space.
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I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.
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Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be a drag. Especially if you choose to surround yourself with friends and not acolytes.
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All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.
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Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in.
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I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It's the girl thing to do-you know, instead of pulling out a gun.
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I've always been very tied to language.
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Money talks. It starts rumors about careers and complicity and speaks of the tragedies and triumphs of our social lives.
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I think that art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook. I'm trying to be affective, to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level.
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I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.
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You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.
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Warhol's images made sense to me, although I knew nothing at the time of his background in commercial art. To be honest, I didn't think about him a hell of a lot.
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It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.
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