Biographies - Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger has a strong design backround having worked for multiple companies as a Graphic Designer, Art Director and Head of Design. She is internationally known however for her own artwork. Her trademark is layered images of found photography, with bold text in black white and red. Her slogans involve the viewer to question power within society and to open their eyes to what they are being exposed to every day though consumerism among other things. Her images are found within the pages of magazines that try to sell us the ideas that she is asking her viewer to question.

 I find her work which deals with feminism and the pressure on women from society the most interesting. I feel that it is still relevant today even though many of these pieces were created nearly 20 years ago. Her expression of the idea that women are pressured to look and behave a certain way is still an important idea and I feel that it has become increasingly relevant since she created work such as 'Not stupid enough'. Kruger deconstructed images used to advertise and promote beauty and questioned the effect of such images on women.

 'Not stupid enough' highlights the way in which western culture has the ability to leave women feeling completely ashamed and disgusted with the way that they look, through comparing themselves with the beauty ideals that they are bombarded with from the media. The use of Marilyn Monroe's iconic smile combined with text reading “not ironic enough, not good enough, not nothing enough, not skinny enough” works on many levels. Firstly it addresses the teqnique of dismembering women through cropping photography in modern advertising. This is a method of selling the female body which Kruger knew well through experience working for fashion magazines. She has applied this method to highlight Monroe's famous asset. The work also illustrates the way in which our culture ridicules females for putting on weight. Monroe would be considered Plus sized in today's society, yet in her time as a famous young woman, she was the ultimate example of female beauty, portraying the perfect body.

         (Kruger B, 1997, untitled (Not stupid enough), accessed 23 April 2012, http://definitiveme.tumblr.com/fem)