Contribution of Barbara Kruger to women's movement

Introduction

This paper focuses on the personality of Barbara Kruger with exploration of her work particularly between 1960 and 1966 followed by discussion on her work particularly between 1960 and 1966, the factors of motivation and then an appraisal of her work with relevance to the context of time.

Thesis Statement:

Barbara Kruger has laid milestone in the field of arts pertaining to women in a male oriented society but much needs to be done in order to accomplish her mission in true spirit.

Discussion and Analysis

Overview of the person:

Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist born in New Jersey on June 26, 1945. She studied art at Syracuse University and at the age of 19 she decided to pursue a career in arts. She was an artist by all means. She continued further studies in art at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Among her colleagues Diane Arbus, a talented photographer, and Marvin Israel a commercial artist are prominent. Barbara Kruger's family belonged to the working class and initial neighborhood also comprised of working class families. She got transferred to the Parsons School of Design in New York after completing a year in Syracuse University and there she became a colleague of Diane Airbus who was a documentary photographer. Another prominent colleague of Barbara Kruger was Marvin Israel who was a graphic designer and famous as art director of a popular magazine Harper's Bazaar. Marvin Israel is a significant personality in the timeline of Kruger's career as he was the first person to encourage Barbara to develop a professional portfolio and he inspired her by motivating her that she is special than others and has abilities to outperform in the field of arts.

By 22, she had been appointed chief designer of Mademoiselle Magazine and for 11 years held various senior positions in art departments at women's fashion magazines owned by Condé Nast in New York City. Kruger's background as a commercial graphic artist affected her later work as a conceptual artist and social critic. In her photomontages she examines and confronts the world of advertising and mass media, as well as stereotypes and clichés. In the early 1970s Kruger worked on large abstract paintings and soft sculptures in the form of woven and sewn fiber wall hangings; she described the latter as "very decorative, very gorgeous, very sexualized." Her assemblages on canvas often incorporated found materials that were "feminine" in nature, such as patches of quilted fabric and feathers (Grosenick, Pp. 282).

Exploration of work:

In 1974, Kruger held her first solo exhibition at the Artists Space in New York City. That same year she was named film critic for Artforum magazine. Throughout her multifaceted career, Kruger has continued to write art, film, and television criticism, to curate shows, and to publish poetry and participate in poetry readings. In 1976 she left New York City for California, where she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, among other institutions, and was a visiting artist at the California ...