Kate Linker - The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger

Kate Linker’s explication of Barbara Kruger’s artwork in her article, “Love for Sale” has further helped my ability to delve into art, specifically conceptual art, and attempt to expose deep meaning. Up until now, I rarely looked at a piece of artwork and assumed that it was conveying notions of societal predispositions. I typically looked at the piece of artwork for what I saw it as. For instance, I typically looked at a picture or painting of a woman and assumed that the reason was to employ beauty, serenity, etc. This article has certainly swayed my thinking, in a positive way of course, to really explore what the deep meanings of different pieces could be. That being said, Kruger’s artwork is certainly very different from “conventional” artwork in the sense that her work exhibits text and typically a very sarcastic concept of societal norms. Nevertheless, my take on a piece of artwork will, from this point on, constructively require more critical thought as to what the implications of creating the piece were and how those implications relate to society, people, politics, rhetoric, etc.

I really enjoyed Linker’s idea that Kruger creates artwork that “exists less as a ‘body’ than a network of social relations.” It is very easy to look at a picture or statue of a woman and insinuate that piece is about that specific woman, but that is not what Kruger is attempting to do. My newly adapted take on artwork does not include taking the easy way out. Kruger’s mission is to “erode the impassivity engineered by the imposition of social norms” and she does so by using a picture of a statue of a woman with inflammatory text, for example, to encompass an entire system of female social relations, rather than just depicting a single woman. In doing so, she “welcomed the female spectator into the audience of men” and “ruin(ed) certain representations.” She confronted orthodox ideas and stereotypes, inserted an askew meaning, and broke down conventional exemplifications to include females in a male dominant conversation. I am very fond of Kruger’s use of ideological clichés to poke fun and provoke people’s conventional thoughts of what they see in the piece of art.

I also really enjoyed Linker’s examination of Freudian psychology in terms of Kruger’s artwork. I believe that thinking of psychological ideas in creating a piece of artwork will certainly make people look at that piece differently and a more stimulating way.

The artwork I chose is a Banksy piece that I believe depicts a societal network of social relations that challenges one to think critically and which involves psychological tendencies that will sway one’s opinion on the piece. I think Banksy is similar to Kruger in that they both employ sarcastic and thought-provoking artwork with textual rhetoric that ultimately erodes universally collective thoughts and challenges the conventional thoughts and ideas of society and the world.