Striking, powerful and immediately recognizable. These are just some of the many words that are often used to describe Barbara Kruger’s art. As a successful multi-faceted artist, Kruger has spent her career writing criticism about movies and television, publishing and editing books, teaching, curating exhibitions, and of course designing a broad range of objects, from billboards to T-shirts. Yet, her most popular and impactful works are the many graphic posters created throughout her career. Black and white photographs covered by aggressive phrases in bold typefaces has become Kruger’s signature look. She uses provocative photos to attract viewers, and accompanies the photo with a direct, harsh statement. Best described as a “social commentator …show more content…
As a spokesperson for feminism, many of Kruger’s pieces during this time dealt with representations of femininity, and often attacked stereotypes. She would use photographs of women in "static or supine poses, displayed according to cliched conventions of popular representation” (____62) and would contrast these pictures with a feminist statement overtop. In her 1981 design known as “Your gaze hits the side of my face”, a female statue is shown facing away from the viewer, not making eye contact, and exhibiting the “male gaze” so often seen in the media. Kruger explores how damaging the male gaze can be by using the woman as a statue, which enforces the idea of men confining women by believing they are nothing more than sexual objects to be appreciated visually (___pandamoniam fap). In another work titled “We don’t need another hero” (1985), a young girl pokes and looks amazed by the muscles of a young boy. Showing that even as a child, females are trained to look at men as powerful, and men are trained to be strong. Wanting to change the restrictive definitions of gender, Kruger states “we don’t need another hero” to express that we do not need to continue fitting into these molds (___). For the 1989 reproductive rights protest and the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C., Kruger created Your Body Is a Battleground
Barbara Carrasco is an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles. Her works range from pen and ink drawings, to paintings, to posters and countless murals. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Barbara Carrasco is considered to be a renegade feminist. Her art is known for critiquing, dominant cultural stereotypes involving socioeconomic, race, gender and sexuality.(Revision history statistics "Barbara Carrasco" 2017)She is known for bringing awareness to the Chicano art movement and their sexist attitudes sometimes seen in Chicano art. Barbara Carrasco works in advocating to change treatment of women. I decided to do my research paper because I believe that there's a difference between how a Chicano depicts and paint images and how a Chicana depicts and paints images. As a Latina woman, learning about Barbara Carrasco
In recent headlines, an American businesswoman was sent home from work without pay for not wearing the required heel height shoe to work. This woman quit her job to take a stand for women’s rights, and within a matter of days, other women began sharing stories of how it was required by their offices to wear a minimum heel height also. This is just a small example of the unfair stipulations placed on women in today’s patriarchal society. Lucille Clifton, an avid women right’s advocate, has dedicated the majority of her life to the progression of women’s rights through her writing. In her poem, “homage to my hips,” Clifton uses “hips” to symbolize women and their desire for equality in today’s male dominated world. Clifton’s poem attempts
Hips are used as a symbol to reveal the power of a women body’s. Hips are mighty, free, and seductive. Hips are used for childbearing, only a female power. Lucille Clifton’s, a supporter of African Americans and feminism, believes that women have the same power as men. Anything men can do women can do the same, even better. Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips” rebuts the division of labor mechanism instilled in our society that isn’t politically correct; thereby taking a powerful stance in her confident belief that woman can do the same as men.
On a cold winter morning on January 30th in 1912 a baby girl was born to the proud parents of Maurice and Alma Wertheim. Her name was Barbara. She would someday come to be known as Barbara Tuchman, narrative historian and writer.
These mediums range from photography, graphic design, and re-appropriated magazines; however, she mostly known for her work using her graphic design skills along with the use of re-appropriated pop culture photos to illustrate twenty-first-century consumerism and ideals. Her work could be described as editing modern advertisements with slaps of (font) text on them to make a statement that criticizes Western ideals (Independent). This medium is vital to what Kruger works within. By using appropriated magazines and pithy phrases, she is able to express a dialog with the people of today because it is relatable. Kruger understands her audience. She captures the human mind in a few words. She understands that society has long had a short intention span and she capitalizes on it.
Women have been an important role in society whether or not it is not remarked to the public eye. Oppression against women is never-ending along with violent acts constantly being pursued on them for over a century which is not only crucial but it is lessening their value worldwide. The suggestion of women’s emotions being a barrier for them to be equal to men is falsified, there is not one predicament that prevent a woman from being equal than a
Art could be displayed in many different forms; through photography, zines, poetry, or even a scrapbook. There are many inspirational women artists throughout history, including famous women artists such Artemisia Gentileschi and Georgia O’Keeffe. When searching for famous female artists that stood out to me, I found Frida Kahlo, and Barbara Kruger. Two very contrasting type of artists, though both extremely artistic. Both of these artists are known to be feminists, and displayed their issues through painting and photography. Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger’s social and historical significance will be discussed.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
Feminism and political issues have always been centered on in the art world and artists like to take these ideas and stretch them beyond their true meanings. Female artists such as Hannah Höch, who thrived during the Dada movement in the 1920s in Germany and Barbara Kruger who was most successful during the 1980s to 1990s in the United States, both take these issues and present them in a way that forces the public to think about what they truly mean. Many of Kruger’s works close in on issues such as the female identity and in relation to politics she focuses on consumerism and power. Höch, like Kruger, also focuses on female identity but from the 1920s when feminism was a fairly new concept and like Kruger focuses on politics but focuses more on the issues of her time such as World War I. With the technique of photomontage, these two artists take outside images and put them together in a way that displays their true views on feminism and politics even though both are from different times and parts of the world.
...e multiplicity of meaning embedded in these works suggests the importance of the body as a liminal site, a site of inscription and meaning making, in both historical-contemporary and more recent feminist work. It is, of course, unlikely that Antin or Kraus draws directly upon any singular theory explicated in this essay. Both artists are, however, undeniably interested in the formations, constructions, and shifts of subjectivity. Both Carving: A Traditional Sculpture and Aliens and Anorexia address the body’s uncontained boundaries, exploding the dual Cartesian model of interior/exterior self. As feminist artists, both Antin and Kraus are also surely aware of the complexity of discourses around food, self, and the body. Through the artists may not be speaking “to” or “through” any particular theoretical model, they are contributing to these discourses all the same.
People use art to display the beauty found in the world and, because of this, women have been subject to objection through paintings and photography all throughout history. Whether it is a commissioned oil painting from the 17th century or an advertisement from the 20th century, there will always be some type of image that objectifies women. In the book Ways of Seeing John Berger states that a woman “comes to consider the surveyor and surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman,” (Ways of Seeing 46). Berger is saying that women know they are seen as an object purely because they are women. Women in paintings and photography are objectified for the pleasure of the viewer, they are illustrated
Over time, a women’s identity has been seen as powerless and incompetent to achieve anything. This image of women is being created at a young age at young age. For instance, little
Excerpt from K. Conboy, N. Medina and S. Stanbury, eds. Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (401-17). NY: Columbia University Press, 1997.
It is important to see the dominance that this man’s body is pushing onto this woman and what has come from this action. This photo has become an icon to our country and has been recreated many times throughout history to show celebration and love. This photo also shows the strength and control that men have over women, especially at that time. Our society has been working on reversing such stigmas but still hasn’t made definite change in the dominance held by men in many aspects. This photo holds much history and foresight into what happens between the genders and their roles but must be seen through the bodies of those who are expressing dominant
In just a few decades The Women’s Liberation Movement has changed typical gender roles that once were never challenged or questioned. As women, those of us who identified as feminist have rebelled against the status quo and redefined what it means to be a strong and powerful woman. But at...