Editor's note: The National Gallery of Art provided
source material to Resource Library for the following article or
essay. If you have questions or comments regarding the source material,
please contact the National Gallery of Art directly through either this
phone number or web address:
In the Tower: Barbara Kruger
September 30, 2016 - January 22,
2017
The striking works
of Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945) are featured in an exhibition at the
National Gallery of Art, Washington. On view September 30, 2016, through
January 22, 2017, In the Tower: Barbara Kruger is the first exhibition
in the Tower Gallery in three years, renewing the series devoted to the
presentation of works by leading
contemporary artists. The exhibition presents fifteen of Kruger's profile
works -- images of faces and figures in profile over which the artist has
layered her attention-grabbing phrases and figures of speech -- from the
early 1980s to the present, varying in scale from magazine-size to monumental.
(right: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget
everything), 1987/2014, screenprint on vinyl, overall: 274.32 x 342.05
cm (108 x 134 11/16 in.). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the
Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta
Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund,
Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith © Barbara Kruger)
Inspired by the Gallery's recent acquisition of Kruger's
Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything) (1987/2014),
the exhibition centers on the artist's profile works, among her strongest
commentaries on cultural production. They present Kruger's distinctive direct-address
texts (using active verbs and personal pronouns) that confront the viewer
head-on and contrast with the underlying images of (mostly passive, often
female) figures looking off the picture plane, and receiving or denying
the viewer's attention. This tension creates conceptual works of great visual
power.
Kruger's works are by turns so strong, shocking, or humorous
that they grab the viewer's attention. This is due to her signature style
which includes pronouncements printed in white Futura Bold Italic typeface
across red bands reminiscent of the Life and Look magazine
banners from the golden age of picture magazines. Kruger's text slashes
the black-and-white images beneath, effectively shattering the clichés
represented in both words and images. Using the language, color, image,
and scale derived from the media-saturated world she queries, Kruger's work
illuminates and interrupts cultural tropes to encourage an active visual
readership.
"Barbara Kruger's profile works count among her most
iconic images," said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery
of Art, Washington. "We are delighted to present to our visitors from
around the world this exhibition featuring such an outstanding artist."
Exhibition Highlights
Among the key works on view are Kruger's Untitled (Your
gaze hits the side of my face) (1983) that served as inspiration for
Craig Owens's 1983 essay, "The Medusa Effect, or The Specular Ruse."
At the time they were made, Kruger's 1980s works powerfully engaged and
promoted theoretical discussion of "the gaze" around the construct
of the viewer and the subject of representation. More broadly, these works
resound with the use of the profile in the genre of portraiture in the long
arc of history, while also probing matters of identity in contemporary philosophy.
For this work and others, the exhibition will present Kruger's original
paste-ups to illuminate the artist's process.
Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything) (1987/2014), acquired for the Gallery by the Collectors Committee
and a group of generous patrons, presents an image of a woman in profile,
lying prostrate and receiving medical treatment to her eye through a large,
funnel-like device. Over the image are three red bands with the artist's
admonitions emblazoned in white text that warn against the pleasures and
perils of our "truthy" photography-based mass media and the knowledge,
beliefs, and memories that it imparts.
Untitled (Half Life) (2015),
a monumental wall work measuring fifty-five feet wide and twenty-five feet
high and covering the entire west side of the Tower Gallery, was created
by the artist for the exhibition. As visitors enter the large Tower Gallery
they will confront the stare of the floor-to-ceiling, black and white female
face, half in profile and the other half covered by a sculptural mold. On
the upper right of the image read the words "Half Life" in white
letters on a block of red.
A new five-minute film will feature excerpts from an interview
with the artist discussing works in the exhibition. Made possible by the
H.R.H. Foundation, the film will play continuously in the anteroom of the
Tower Gallery.
Related Programs
Kruger, a professor in the art department at UCLA since
2006, has long maintained a commitment to teaching as a part of her practice.
In December she will visit the National Gallery to talk with high school
art students from DC Public Schools. The students will participate in education
programs throughout the fall with Gallery educators, studying Kruger's work
in the Tower exhibition and exploring the construction of identity in artworks
across the museum's collection. This program marks the first time that an
artist with an exhibition currently on view has worked with local students
at the Gallery, and highlights Kruger's commitment to teaching and inspiring
the next generation.
As a former film and television critic for Artforum, Kruger
has acknowledged a deep interest in the moving image. In December the Gallery
will feature an extensive film series, "Barbara Kruger Selects,"
chosen by the artist around the theme of the show and the artist's methodologies.
Exhibition curator Molly Donovan, associate curator, department
of modern art, National Gallery of Art, will present a lecture on Sunday,
October 23, 2016, at 2:00 p.m.
About Barbara Kruger (b. 1945)
Kruger's higher education began at Syracuse University
and continued at Parson's School of Art and Design in New York, where she
studied with Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel in 1966. Beginning in 1967 Kruger
worked as a layout editor at Condé Nast for twelve years, including
posts at Mademoiselle, House and Garden, and Aperture. In
1969 Kruger began to make her own art while also writing poetry and film
and television reviews. A decade later she had developed her "picture
practice" with photographs repurposed from 1940s-1970s manuals and
magazines that she overlaid with her own texts or commonplace phrases. The
completed works alter her found materials, inscribing her admonitions and
questions over the images to stimulate and rouse the viewer from passive
acceptance.
Kruger's background in design is evident in these works,
for which she is internationally renowned. Owing to her interest in the
public arena and the everyday, Kruger's work has appeared on billboards,
bus cards, posters, T-shirts, matchbook covers, in public parks, and on
train station platforms. Recent work has included immersive installations
of room-wrapping images and text, and multiple-channel videos.
Prior to teaching at UCLA, Kruger taught at California
Institute of the Arts, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the
University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 Kruger received the Golden Lion
for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Her work was featured in
the Whitney Biennial in 1973, 1983, 1985, and 1987; the Venice Biennale
in 1982, 1993, and 2005; and Documenta 8 in 1987. Notable solo exhibitions
include P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York (1980); Institute of Contemporary
Art, London (1983); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1985); Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles (1999, traveled to Whitney Museum of American Art in 2000);
South London Gallery (2001); Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2005); the
Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2008); the Museum Of Modern Art, Oxford (2014),
and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (2012-2016). Kruger lives
and works in Los Angeles and New York City.
Resource Library readers may
also enjoy:
Read more articles and essays concerning this institutional
source by visiting the sub-index page for the National
Gallery of Art in Resource Library
Search Resource
Library for thousands of articles and essays on American art.
Copyright 2016 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.