Barbara Kruger b. 1945

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist known for her black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions. Kruger was born in 1945 in Newark, New Jersey, and studied at Syracuse University. She then went on to study art and design at Parsons School of Design. After graduating, Kruger obtained a job as a graphic designer with Condé Nast Publications, and later for magazines such as House and Garden, Mademoiselle, and Aperture.

Kruger's work as an artist was inspired by feminism and critiques consumerism and desire. Her most well known slogans are Your Body is a Battleground and I Shop Therefore I Am, which are intended to both seduce and accuse the viewer. Kruger has stated that, "making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary." Her work has been featured on billboards, bus cards, posters, public parks, train stations, and other public spaces. She has had a number of retrospectives and showed at the Venice Biennale in 1982 and 2005 and the Whitney Biennial in 1983 and 1985. Kruger currently lives and works in New York and Los Angeles.

Barbara Kruger has work featured in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Related categories: The Pictures Generation, Feminist Art, Identity Politics, CalArts, Text, Related to Fashion, California Art, Appropriation, Gender, Provocative, Cultural Commentary, Mixed-Media, Popular Culture, Work on Paper, United States, Engagement with Mass Media, Political