Barbara Kruger
BARBARA KRUGER was born on January 26, 1945, in Newark, New Jersey. Kruger’s earliest artworks date back to 1969. These included materials using large woven wall hangings of yarn, beads, sequins, feathers, and ribbons, which embodied the feminist’s comeback of arts and crafts during this period. By 1979, Kruger stopped taking photographs and began to employ found images in her art, mostly from mid-century American print-media sources, with words collaged directly over them. These early collages, in which Kruger expanded techniques she had perfected as a graphic designer, introduced the artist’s on-going political, social, and especially feminist provocations and commentaries on religion, sexuality, racial and gender stereotypes and power. Career in magazine design[edit]
Kruger was born into a lower-middle-class family[1][2][3] in Newark, New Jersey. Her father worked as a chemical technician, her mother as a legal secretary. She graduated from Weequahic High School.[4] After attending Syracuse University and studying art and design with Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel at Parsons School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications. She initially worked as a designer at Mademoiselle Magazine and later moved on to work part-time as a picture editor at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications.[5] In her early years as a visual artist, Kruger crocheted, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objects, some of which were included by curator Marcia Tucker in the 1973 Whitney Biennial.[3] From 1977, Kruger worked with her own architectural photographs, publishing an artist's book, "Picture/Readings", in 1979.[6]
Artistic practice[edit]
Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists which she was interleaved by Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman.[6] Like Holzer and Sherman, in particular, she uses the techniques of mass
Kruger was born into a lower-middle-class family[1][2][3] in Newark, New Jersey. Her father worked as a chemical technician, her mother as a legal secretary. She graduated from Weequahic High School.[4] After attending Syracuse University and studying art and design with Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel at Parsons School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications. She initially worked as a designer at Mademoiselle Magazine and later moved on to work part-time as a picture editor at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications.[5] In her early years as a visual artist, Kruger crocheted, sewed and painted bright-hued and erotically suggestive objects, some of which were included by curator Marcia Tucker in the 1973 Whitney Biennial.[3] From 1977, Kruger worked with her own architectural photographs, publishing an artist's book, "Picture/Readings", in 1979.[6]
Artistic practice[edit]
Addressing issues of language and sign, Kruger has often been grouped with such feminist postmodern artists which she was interleaved by Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine, Martha Rosler, and Cindy Sherman.[6] Like Holzer and Sherman, in particular, she uses the techniques of mass