Love For Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger, Love for Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990).
Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1945.
After attending Syracuse University, the School of Visual Arts, and studying
art and design with Diane Arbus at Parson’s School of Design in New York,
Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications. Working for
Mademoiselle Magazine, she was quickly promoted to head designer. Later, she
worked as a graphic designer, art director, and picture editor in the art
departments at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications. This
background in design is evident in the work for which she is now
internationally renowned. She layers found photographs from existing sources
with pithy and aggressive text that involves the viewer in the struggle for
power and control that her captions speak to. In their trademark black letters
against a slash of red background, some of her instantly recognizable slogans
read “I shop therefore I am,” and “Your body is a battleground." Much of
her text questions the viewer about feminism, classicism, consumerism, and
individual autonomy and desire, although her black-and-white images are culled
from the mainstream magazines that sell the very ideas she is disputing. As
well as appearing in museums and galleries worldwide, Kruger’s work has
appeared on billboards, buscards, posters, a public park, a train station
platform in Strasbourg, France, and in other public commissions. She has taught
at the California Institute of Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
and the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in New York and Los
Angeles.~ The Barbara Kruger Webpage
