Graphics Year 2 : Ethical Designers

Background

Barbara Kruger is a 69 year old American artist, born in Newark, New Jersey. Her art in mostly black and white, and has red wording over the top, often in the 'Futura Bold Oblique' or 'Helvetica Ultra Condensed' fonts. The wording usually has 'you','I','We' or 'they' and address issues to do with power, identity and sexuality. Kruger has often been labeled as a feminist postmodern artist, along with the likes of Jenny Holzer and Cindy Sherman.

Art

This is a piece of Barbara Kruger's artwork. It's easy to see that it is her artwork, because almost if not all of her artwork consists of black, white and red. The black and white image by itself would be quite plain, but by putting the block red text over the top, she's made the image a lot more powerful and bold. The image is two tone, you have one fairly normal looking black and white side, and then you have a side which looks quite reversed and negative. With the words 'Your body is a battleground', it makes me think of an actual battleground. It reminds me of this because the negative side of the image looks a bit like night vision, which you associate with battlegrounds.

She uses actual photographs in her art, which I think makes it more real and makes you take it more seriously. The photographs have been edited to make them black and white, and I think that the right amount of imagery has been used. If they had used more I don't think the pictures would have had the same effect that they do on people, because they would just be overloaded with pictures and writing.

The first thing you look at on the pictures is the block red text, and once you have read that you then look at the image behind it. I think that this hierarchy is good because the writing has powerful words and phrases that relate to the images in some kind of way, so if you were to look at the image first it wouldn't make as much sense.

I think Barbara used computer programmes like Illustrator and photoshop to create and edit the image. I think the most successful piece of the image is the writing, because I think it really helps to convey the message that she wants to get across, but I think one of the reasons that it is so successful is because it is paired with the black and white image behind it, because the image itself is relevant to the writing, but they way in which it has been edited and the fact that it only consists of black and white just makes the whole piece look so much better.