108Barbara Kruger, a text-based artist, has long worked with
the reassembly of words derived from mass media contexts,
drawing out her own messages from this material. In the
early years of her career, her works juxtaposed images
and text and received widespread attention. Since the
mid-1990s, her radius of activity expanded to include site-
specific installations and video works. Some years ago, she
claimed in an interview that ‘what the media have done
today is make a thing meaningless through its accessibility.
And what I’m interested in is taking that accessibility and
making meaning’.▼^1 As she here suggests, her interest
in harnessing media utterance and using it in her work
has always been understood in the context of the artist’s
career. After going to Parsons School of Design in New
York in 1965, she landed a job as a designer at a magazine,
overseeing and editing photos for about ten years, acquiring
the expression techniques of mass media—all of which
became the basis for creating her unique style.‘Kruger Style’ and Advertising Techniques
Beginning work in 1969, her distinct style – combining black-
and-white images, red rectangular frames, and a concise
yet intense text – was in full swing by the 1980s. With its
simple form and bold contrasts, she achieves a monotony in
her frequent use of only three colours which makes people
focus on something other than colour, that is, her messages.
Her favourite typefaces Futura and Helvetica also focus on
the delivery of messages in an objective and clear way.
In her early days, she reproduced images found in old
magazines and photography. After processing the image,
words were overlaid across the image. The words, once
clichés taken from advertising, were reborn as statements
imbued with socio-political criticism. In phrases less than
ten words – such as ‘Your comfort is my silence’, ‘You delight
in the loss of others’, ‘I shop therefore I am’ – texts are
combined with images, her works leave a deep impression.
Untitled(Your Body is A Battleground), a work connected to
the women’s rights movement, was produced in April 1989
in Washington, D.C., when a massive women’s rally against
the abortion ban was held, and which was then pasted
throughout the streets like a poster. Thirty years later, even
in remote foreign countries, black-and-white images and
matching phrases still resonate. This may be because they
chime with reality in South Korea, where the constitutional
discordance adjudication on the criminality of abortion was
made in April this year. Her messages have targeted social
issues such as gender, class and race, as well as issuessurrounding political power, in addition to desire and mass
consumerism promoted the media.Texts that Stimulate Vision and Hearing
Untitled(Forever), a notable work that reveals the artist’s
longstanding interest in architecture and space, is an
installation that fills the walls and floors of the exhibition hall
with words. Entering the gallery, visitors will face the letters
“YOU” in a huge font size inside an oval block mirror image.
Below that, there is a quote from Virginia Woolf’s book A
Room of One’s Own (1929). The rest of the walls and floors
are filled with sentences quoted from George Orwell’s 1984
(1949), in which each strap of black and white intersects
and contrasts, maximising visual stimulation. Surrounded
by large letters, it is a strange sight that can only be
encountered in a movie.
These letters, whose size might be measured in metres,
prompt one to think about the act of reading itself rather
than the message it tries to convey. Most of the printed
materials we encounter in our daily lives – such as books,
magazines, leaflets, and posters – have a human scale: the
size of letters within 10pt, spaces between letters and lines,
a pragmatic system that enhances legibility in a small range
where the eyes move. As the text grows in size, this system
does not work properly: the reading experience approaches
the viewing experience, and other aspects of the text begin
to emerge.
The text of Untitled(Forever) stimulates hearing as well as
vision. Reading is translated from the inside into the voice,
leading to a sensory experience. It is probably because
‘“Reading” a text means converting it to sound, aloud or
in the imagination’▼^2 , as noted by Walter Ong. The voice
may sound different from person to person; the unified
pattern and the contrasts achieved between light and
shade, however, remind visitors of a coercive attitude or a
commanding tone.
The sense of unfamiliarity – in which letters seem to speak- is also because the work is installed in an exhibition space
set apart from external reality. In fact, we are frequently
exposed to huge texts in the landscapes of our daily lives:
the big words on billboards, banners, signboards, a large
outdoor advertising structure that we tend to meet in the
streets. Those big words, however, disappear at the time
of their occurence, like a landscape passing in a window.
Similarly, of all of Barbara Kruger’s site-specific works, the
type of work that sits in the city – such as the street and
the exterior walls of buildings – has received relatively low
attention.
To point out one more thing, the intensity of the experience
presented by Untitled(Forever) seems to be related to the
fact that the text is “real”. It stands out when compared to
the work of Jenny Holzer, a text-based artist, who applies
text to the front of the building with a projection. The sense
of text is relatively weak as if the flickering properties of light
was inherited by letters and messages; Kruger’s text, fixed on
the wall, on the other hand, has a weight that seems to exist
in reality.
Of course, it can be dismissed as the simple act of affixing
a digitally printed letter to a wall. However, comments such
as these overlook the issues of production that arise when
the scale of a work grows. Installation involves construction
elements such as adhesion and film weight, but also
qualitative elements such as image resolution. Barbara
Kruger’s attempt at large-scale installations owed much to
the development in printing technologies. Kruger once noted
in an interview, ‘I need incredibly precise measurements to
try and sync up how I want to visually and retinally engage
the viewers. One great advantage about digital printing
and working in video is that I have a chance to do these
immersive environments, which are huge opportunities for
me’. She also emphasised the method when making her
early works, adding, ‘It’s not a collage, but a paste-up that
cuts and attaches images’.▼^3The Context in which a Message Aims
Attempts to convey a fresh and provocative meaning can
hardly be out of touch with the social context in which
the text is first used. A good understanding of the context
enhances the power of the message; in the opposite case,
the meaning becomes ambiguous, failing to be delivered in
the same way. The same is true of Barbara Kruger’s work.
Kruger’s new work Untitled(Plenty Should Be Enough) was
installed using Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, with the text
translated from her critical comments on mass consumerism
and modern desire. The vertical text, which is 6m high, does
not touch the meaning like an arrow, incapable of reaching
the target. Other Korean alphabet works, such as Untitled
(Please Laugh Please Cry), and some English language
works, also confuse visitors with their ambiguous messages.
One might be generous with this, considering the broader
constraints of language: if messages were always delivered
correctly, such enormous effort to communicate with the
world would not be necessary.108 ART PRISM_EXHIBITION A CONSTANT STREAM OF PROVOCATIVE WORDSBarbara Kruger, a text-based artist, has long worked with
the reassembly of words derived from mass media contexts,
drawing out her own messages from this material. In the
early years of her career, her works juxtaposed images
and text and received widespread attention. Since the
mid-1990s, her radius of activity expanded to include site-
specific installations and video works. Some years ago, she
claimed in an interview that ‘what the media have done
today is make a thing meaningless through its accessibility.
And what I’m interested in is taking that accessibility and
making meaning’.▼^1 As she here suggests, her interest
in harnessing media utterance and using it in her work
has always been understood in the context of the artist’s
career. After going to Parsons School of Design in New
York in 1965, she landed a job as a designer at a magazine,
overseeing and editing photos for about ten years, acquiring
the expression techniques of mass media—all of which
became the basis for creating her unique style.
‘Kruger Style’ and Advertising Techniques
Beginning work in 1969, her distinct style – combining black-
and-white images, red rectangular frames, and a concise
yet intense text – was in full swing by the 1980s. With its
simple form and bold contrasts, she achieves a monotony in
her frequent use of only three colours which makes people
focus on something other than colour, that is, her messages.
Her favourite typefaces Futura and Helvetica also focus on
the delivery of messages in an objective and clear way.
In her early days, she reproduced images found in old
magazines and photography. After processing the image,
words were overlaid across the image. The words, once
clichés taken from advertising, were reborn as statements
imbued with socio-political criticism. In phrases less than
ten words – such as ‘Your comfort is my silence’, ‘You delight
in the loss of others’, ‘I shop therefore I am’ – texts are
combined with images, her works leave a deep impression.
Untitled(Your Body is A Battleground), a work connected to
the women’s rights movement, was produced in April 1989
in Washington, D.C., when a massive women’s rally against
the abortion ban was held, and which was then pasted
throughout the streets like a poster. Thirty years later, even
in remote foreign countries, black-and-white images and
matching phrases still resonate. This may be because they
chime with reality in South Korea, where the constitutional
discordance adjudication on the criminality of abortion was
made in April this year. Her messages have targeted social
issues such as gender, class and race, as well as issues
surrounding political power, in addition to desire and mass
consumerism promoted the media.Texts that Stimulate Vision and Hearing
Untitled(Forever), a notable work that reveals the artist’s
longstanding interest in architecture and space, is an
installation that fills the walls and floors of the exhibition hall
with words. Entering the gallery, visitors will face the letters
“YOU” in a huge font size inside an oval block mirror image.
Below that, there is a quote from Virginia Woolf’s book A
Room of One’s Own (1929). The rest of the walls and floors
are filled with sentences quoted from George Orwell’s 1984
(1949), in which each strap of black and white intersects
and contrasts, maximising visual stimulation. Surrounded
by large letters, it is a strange sight that can only be
encountered in a movie.
These letters, whose size might be measured in metres,
prompt one to think about the act of reading itself rather
than the message it tries to convey. Most of the printed
materials we encounter in our daily lives – such as books,
magazines, leaflets, and posters – have a human scale: the
size of letters within 10pt, spaces between letters and lines,
a pragmatic system that enhances legibility in a small range
where the eyes move. As the text grows in size, this system
does not work properly: the reading experience approaches
the viewing experience, and other aspects of the text begin
to emerge.
The text of Untitled(Forever) stimulates hearing as well as
vision. Reading is translated from the inside into the voice,
leading to a sensory experience. It is probably because
‘“Reading” a text means converting it to sound, aloud or
in the imagination’▼^2 , as noted by Walter Ong. The voice
may sound different from person to person; the unified
pattern and the contrasts achieved between light and
shade, however, remind visitors of a coercive attitude or a
commanding tone.
The sense of unfamiliarity – in which letters seem to speak- is also because the work is installed in an exhibition space
set apart from external reality. In fact, we are frequently
exposed to huge texts in the landscapes of our daily lives:
the big words on billboards, banners, signboards, a large
outdoor advertising structure that we tend to meet in the
streets. Those big words, however, disappear at the time
of their occurence, like a landscape passing in a window.
Similarly, of all of Barbara Kruger’s site-specific works, the
type of work that sits in the city – such as the street and
the exterior walls of buildings – has received relatively low
attention.
To point out one more thing, the intensity of the experience
presented by Untitled(Forever) seems to be related to the
fact that the text is “real”. It stands out when compared to
the work of Jenny Holzer, a text-based artist, who applies
text to the front of the building with a projection. The sense
of text is relatively weak as if the flickering properties of light
was inherited by letters and messages; Kruger’s text, fixed on
the wall, on the other hand, has a weight that seems to exist
in reality.
Of course, it can be dismissed as the simple act of affixing
a digitally printed letter to a wall. However, comments such
as these overlook the issues of production that arise when
the scale of a work grows. Installation involves construction
elements such as adhesion and film weight, but also
qualitative elements such as image resolution. Barbara
Kruger’s attempt at large-scale installations owed much to
the development in printing technologies. Kruger once noted
in an interview, ‘I need incredibly precise measurements to
try and sync up how I want to visually and retinally engage
the viewers. One great advantage about digital printing
and working in video is that I have a chance to do these
immersive environments, which are huge opportunities for
me’. She also emphasised the method when making her
early works, adding, ‘It’s not a collage, but a paste-up that
cuts and attaches images’.▼^3The Context in which a Message Aims
Attempts to convey a fresh and provocative meaning can
hardly be out of touch with the social context in which
the text is first used. A good understanding of the context
enhances the power of the message; in the opposite case,
the meaning becomes ambiguous, failing to be delivered in
the same way. The same is true of Barbara Kruger’s work.
Kruger’s new work Untitled(Plenty Should Be Enough) was
installed using Hangeul, the Korean alphabet, with the text
translated from her critical comments on mass consumerism
and modern desire. The vertical text, which is 6m high, does
not touch the meaning like an arrow, incapable of reaching
the target. Other Korean alphabet works, such as Untitled
(Please Laugh Please Cry), and some English language
works, also confuse visitors with their ambiguous messages.
One might be generous with this, considering the broader
constraints of language: if messages were always delivered
correctly, such enormous effort to communicate with the
world would not be necessary.ART PRISM_EXHIBITION A CONSTANT STREAM OF PROVOCATIVE WORDS