Barbara Kruger is a contemporary artist who uses photographs (sometimes appropriated imagery) along with provocative statements. Oftentimes this imagery is not viewed as a traditional gallery piece, but in the context of a billboard (as an advertisement for example). I am attracted to the aesthetics of her work as well as the compelling juxtapositions of image and text that she uses. Their resulting meanings (generally socially or culturally pointed in nature) are also quite intriguing.
Historical context
Time of work and style...
This work was produced in 1987, although the illustration style, hairstyles, and clothing of the two children pictured seem to reference an earlier time which is not contemporary. My guess would be that the children pictured are plucked from a mid-century advertisement or illustration. It is particularly graphic in terms of media, and is likely a serigraph in a fairly commercial style (common of Kruger’s work).
Cultural context
The culture that it was created by and for...
As aforementioned, Kruger’s images have a commercial resonance due to their formal language of high contrast, superimposed text, and large scale. As Americans, we are used to seeing similar images on billboards and in magazines. However, some of Kruger’s images (this one in particular) use imagery from print sources of the past. Both figures are Caucasian and the text is in English, so one might assume the work is produced by and for a Western culture.
Social context
Social conditions of the time and place that the work was created in and for...
This particular piece was produced in the 1980s – a time known for both excess and innovation, and by some standards progress. Kruger’s image seems to both simultaneously question and accept gender stereotypes of the times prior to and coinciding with the time it was produced. Though I was just a child at the time this was produced, I remembered seeing (and hearing) about how the role of women was changing – yet again. Strains of Dolly Parton singing “9 to 5” provided the background theme song for briefcase-toting Day to Night Barbie (fashionable in both the workplace and at night!) that I played with waiting for my own mother to return home from her job. With shoulder pads flared I saw women literally attempting to stand shoulder to shoulder with men in the workplace at the time. Kruger’s piece seems to nod to my memories, as well, as to question whether or not these changes were really taking place. Had women really come all that far or had we just surrendered our Rosie the Riveter pose to the boys once again?
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