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Thetis - Vulnerability vs Adapting and Surviving  How does Duffy portray both the vulnerability of women and their ability to adapt and survive in this poem? 

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Thetis - Vulnerability vs Adapting and Surviving  How does Duffy portray both the vulnerability of women and their ability to adapt and survive in this poem? 

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In every stanza, the first few lines contain the words that describe the women's power, like adjectives of the description and the actions they took. Also, the poet employed a variety of alliterations at the last words with simple phrases in the lines, such as "jungle-floored, meateater, raw", these gave an effect of emphasization of women's ability and lyrical feature. So it easily gains attraction and focus from readers. But in the last lines, the words depict the downfall of the women, creating tension by mentioning vigorous actions and critical weapons which arouses the mood of fear. However, these contrasts made the vulnerability of women more appearing. From that, we can consider Duffy's purpose to criticize the paradox of women as they appear weak and give up even they are strong enough to defeat men.

Teacher's feedback:

Some good comments in response to each part of the task and you demonstrate some understanding of the poem. Can you be more specific with some of your comments? E.g. provide a quotation to support them or add a little more detail to your explanations.

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How does Duffy explore the theme of greed and the consequences of avarice in ‘Mrs Midas’?

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How does Duffy explore the theme of greed and the consequences of avarice in ‘Mrs Midas’?

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Group responce to Medusa articles (first one)

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Group responce to Medusa articles (first one)

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Lee Vitsory - The World’s Wife - Context and Allusions

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Course Concepts (communication part in group work)

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Course Concepts (communication part in group work)

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Barbara Kruger Artwork Analysis - Masato Shibayama

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There are more iconic years: 1945, which marked the end of a world war, and 1968, with its roiling protest movements. But 1990 also marked an important social and political moment. The Soviet Union was falling apart. HIV became one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States. And the U.S. was heading toward a war with Iraq - the first one, led by President George H.W. Bush.

"It was Bush 1 and everyone was wearing flags," recalls artist Barbara Kruger. "And, omigod, the war. It was just horrific."

It was in that climate that the artist painted a mural on the south facade of what was then known as the Temporary Contemporary, the Little Tokyo branch (now known as the Geffen Contemporary) of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles. The nearly three-story-high mural, in ways both oblique and direct, tackled issues of power, corruption, gender and race.

In its design, the mural "Untitled (Questions)" was inspired by the U.S. flag. Except that in lieu of stripes, it featured nine questions rendered in grab-you-by-the-eyeballs capital letters: "WHO IS BEYOND THE LAW? WHO IS BOUGHT AND SOLD? WHO IS FREE TO CHOOSE? WHO DOES TIME? WHO FOLLOWS ORDERS? WHO SALUTES LONGEST? WHO PRAYS LOUDEST? WHO DIES FIRST? WHO LAUGHS LAST?"

The piece remained in place for two years - well into 1992, when it served as backdrop to the Los Angeles riots. During that uprising, Los Angeles photographer Gary Leonard famously captured a group of National Guardsmen walking along Alameda Street in front of Kruger's mural. It made her questions seem all the more urgent.

It stands for MOCA, its history and role in the city. It encourages us to engage...It shows us how an artist can create a timeless, unafraid truth.

Kruger is now reprising the work in advance of the midterm elections - this time on MOCA Geffen's north facade.

On Tuesday morning, her ash-blond curls float in the breeze as she surveys the large-scale letters that are beginning to materialize on the Temple Street side of the building. The questions they so forcefully ask remain strikingly relevant. Of that, she says, "It's tragic and sad that there is still resonance on these issues."

The new version of "Untitled (Questions)" is expected to be completed by this weekend and will remain on view through the presidential election in 2020. It will be accompanied by a series of voter registration efforts led by the museum. And it is the first initiative undertaken by new MOCA director Klaus Biesenbach, who starts his job in an official capacity on Monday.

The work, he states via text message, "comes to mind as one piece that, in a way, stands for MOCA, its history and role in the city. It encourages us to engage and mobilize to participate. It shows us how an artist can create a timeless, unafraid truth, and beauty that does not age."

Certainly, MOCA has special resonance for Kruger, the L.A.-based artist known for bold, graphic works, often rendered in a palette of red, white and black, that play with the tropes of mass media to deliver punchy political messages. Among her most famous pieces is a 1989 work that features a photographic image of a young woman's face split between positive and negative, bearing the phrase "Your body is a battleground." (It is on view at the Broad museum.)

Kruger, who was born in Newark, N.J., but has been hanging out in L.A. for teaching gigs since the late 1970s and moved here in 1990 (she's on the faculty at UCLA), has a long trajectory with MOCA. For starters, she was at the debut show in 1983: an exhibition of painting and sculpture titled, easily enough, "The First Show." This was in the days when MOCA's formal Grand Avenue location did not yet exist and all exhibitions were held at the Temporary Contemporary, an old warehouse that had once housed police cruisers and was repurposed as an exhibition space by Frank Gehry.

"People in this city didn't realize what a gem this building was," she says. "It was able to shape-shift and be altered in brute, really material ways. It wasn't a precious over-designed museum."

MOCA has been important to Kruger in more direct ways too. In 1999, the museum held the artist's first major museum retrospective. "I had never been asked to do a show on this scale before," she notes. "It changed my life to be able to have this space."

She has also served on the museum's board of trustees - from 2008 until 2012, when she resigned during the tumultuous directorship of Jeffrey Deitch. The museum has since weathered another spate of troubles, including the recent firing of curator Helen Molesworth and the departure of director Philippe Vergne, but Kruger says she feels "hopeful" about MOCA's future under Biesenbach.

"I think this is a great trajectory for him and for Los Angeles," she says.

It's tragic and sad that there is still resonance on these issues.

Barbara Kruger

With "Untitled (Questions)," Biesenbach is resurfacing a work that is intimately connected with the museum's history. Though, when it was first proposed, it was not without controversy.

Kruger's original design featured the Pledge of Allegiance surrounded by her questions. But community groups in Little Tokyo took issue with the work. The mural faced the spot where tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were shipped off to internment camps during World War II. And in those camps, internees were forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The dialog with the community, she says, was a process that she welcomed. And it resulted in an alteration to her design: there would be no Pledge, only questions.

"The questions were always on the work," she says. "This never appeared as a pledge without those questions. I don't think irony is that powerful."

In his review of the work in 1990, Times art critic Christopher Knight described it as a "huge and startling painting," one in which the viewer is "pointedly addressed as an active participant in disputatious public life."

In many ways, the reprise of Kruger's mural reflects what has changed and what hasn't in the nearly three decades since Kruger first painted it.

The greatest shift has perhaps occurred within the media landscape, which Kruger, a self-professed "news junkie," follows closely. The unifying effect of a single newscast or newspaper has been replaced by a fragmented echo chamber of partisan cable news shows, Twitter feeds and conspiracy sites. Moreover, people often experience life through the screen of their smartphones - often with themselves in the frame.

"What's the importance of that tchotchke on the wall if we're not standing in front of it?" says Kruger. "This is not a criticism; it's an observation. It's how our approach to culture has changed. It makes us so vulnerable to manipulation. When the camera becomes mirror of choice, you lose sight of the big picture."

In addition, technology has made it easier than ever to produce images and disseminate them. The types of text-and-image collages that Kruger once painstakingly created by harvesting graphics from old books - "I remember looking for images in the used bookstores on Sawtelle," she notes - can now be manufactured in seconds on a meme-making website.

Kruger's work, as a result, has also evolved - often jumping off the wall into installations that respond to architecture.

This includes a long-term installation at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., which wraps every imaginable surface of the basement area (escalators included) in words, as well as a dramatic piece for a freight elevator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The latter features a dire quote by George Orwell - "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever" - paired with an image that shows the bottom of a man's shoe.

These types of architectural interventions will be at the heart of a major new survey of the artist's work being organized by the Art Institute of Chicago for the fall of 2020.

"There is no bad space," says Kruger of working three-dimensionally. "People say, 'I can't do this. This is a bad space.' No, it's a challenge."

Curiously, the one thing that hasn't changed much since Kruger first painted her mural in the summer of 1990 are the issues that spurred it. Who has sovereignty over women's bodies? Who is most disenfranchised by the prison industrial complex? How is religion deployed in civic life? These are all issues we continue to debate ... hotly.

With her own questions, Kruger hopes she might spur some alternate thoughts.

"It's creating commentary about living another day," she says. "How the world could be and isn't."
ALSO Artist Barbara Kruger turns a bland building into a screaming statement. Time to listen up After months of turmoil, Museum of Contemporary Art gets a new director with ties to New York's famed MoMA A to-do list for MOCA's new director, Klaus Biesenbach After 18 months in the planning stage - and overcoming many roadblocks -Barbara Kruger's artwork finally adorns the Temporary Contemporary A MOCA retrospective of Barbara Kruger's work asks provocative questions about how we communicate In conversation: Painter Lari Pittman finds beauty in violence and telenovelas. He also has advice for MOCA Sign up for our weekly Essential Arts & Culture newsletter " carolina.miranda@latimes.com | Twitter: @cmonstah

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In advance of the midterms, Barbara Kruger reprises MOCA mural that asks 'Who is beyond the law?'

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There are more iconic years: 1945, which marked the end of a world war, and 1968, with its roiling protest movements. But 1990 also marked an important social and political moment. The Soviet Union was falling apart. HIV became one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States.

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Fig 2.16. Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We Dont Need Another Hero), (1986). Photographic silkscreen/vinyl. 277 x 533 cm. (Kalb 2003: 60)

The late 20th century began a "transitional period of changing economic, social and cultural patterns"(Barker 2012: 203) that were established during modernism; the pre-existent late 19th and early 20th century movement. This transitional period can be known as postmodernism. This research paper elaborates on the key features of postmodernism, namely: intertextuality, parody and pastiche with reference to "committed feminist"(Squiers 1995: 58) Barbara Kruger's work, We Don't Need Another Hero (1987). This analysis of postmodernist features will be done through investigating the socio-economic and cultural domain that it was produced in.

In an attempt to understand intertextuality, parody and pastiche within postmodernism, it is important to recognise the characteristics of postmodernism itself. Postmodernism "can be viewed as a development of modernism which manifested itself during the first decades of the 20th century"(Emeritus 2007: Online). However postmodernism is not driven by a "systematic theory" or a "comprehensive philosophy"(Kvale 1995: 19), but rather the recognition and understanding of the current culture post-1950's, that is identified by blurring the traditional boundaries between culture and art, high and low culture, commerce and art, culture and commerce (Barker 2012: 205). Thus postmodernism is a portrayal of interrelated cultural phenomena(Kvale 1995: 19).

In addition, it is through the "cannibalization of styles from past and present"(Barker 2012: 212) that postmodern culture is able to interrelate cultural differences, as the blurring of historical boundaries and the juxtaposition of previously independent signs produce new codes(Barker 2012: 206). Also, incorporating styles from the past and present does not only show the reflective nature of postmodernism but it also introduces the concept that the artist is a "manipulator of signs more than a producer of art objects" (Wood 2004: 22). Thus by calling something postmodernist, it is less about discovering a quality in it (as it has already been discovered) and more about the viewers idea of it, creating a link between the viewer and the world and their relationship to the world(Ward 2003: 13). This concept can be further explained through the postmodernist feature, intertextuality.

Intertextuality refers to the citation of one text within another(Barker 2012: 206), a term coined by Julia Kristeva who further explains that a text is not a "self-contained" or "autonomous" unit, but is produced from other texts(Edgar & Sedgwick 2008: 176). In relation to Barbara Kruger's work We Don't Need Another Hero the image and text related to it has a connotative meaning as its relates to one of the 1942 posters by J. Howard Miller named Rosie the Riveter or more well known as We Can Do It! The Rosie the Riveter poster was created during world war two to recruit women to join the work force. Kruger uses the context in which the Rosie the Riveter poster was produced to give her work a stronger meaning. Kruger plays on the idea that the viewer would recognise the relation between how women were seen in the war and how women are seen after the war in order to interpret her work. However postmodernism also suggests that although a postmodern work may be a "critique of [the] origin" it is "not to return to them" (Wood 2004: 28). Thus the work of Barbara Kruger could also be interpreted as another hero is not needed because the war is over and not to be returned too. Therefore suggesting that Kruger's work is not self-determined and is intertextual, as it references the past to create an awareness in the present (ward:2).

In addition, intertextuality refers to the concept that "there can never be a definitive reading of a text, for each reading generates a new text" (Edgar & Sedgwick 2008: 176). This can be understood through Kruger's work where the intertextual reference as stated is to the Rosie the Riveter poster and the Rosie the Riveter poster is an intertextual reference of women roles in society and the stylistic way of creating posters and the intertextual reference to that would lead to more "allusions to particular programs and oblique references to other genre conventions and styles"(Barker 2012: 206). Therefore, intertextuality in this context means that a rich understanding of the purpose of Kruger's work requires an understanding of other texts (Edgar & Sedgwick 2008: 176).

Furthermore, Kristeva also states that "the interpretation a particular reader generates from a text will depend on the recognition of the relationship of the given text to other texts"(Edgar & Sedgwick 2008: 176). Therefore the recognition of Kruger's work is also determined by the Rosie the Riveter poster as it references the stylistic ways a poster is created; with a picture and a captivating slogan. However Kruger's work gained more recognition from the fact that viewers would be able to interpret the relationship between her work and the 'We Can Do It!' poster as ironic. This concept can be further explained through the postmodern feature, parody.

Parody capitalizes on a set of distinctive qualities in a particular context and "seizes on their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities to produce an imitation which mocks the original"(Jameson 1983: Online). Parody can be further explained through the analysis of Barbara Kruger's work We Don't Need Another Hero. We Don't Need Another Hero is a large-scale photograph of a girl admiringly resting her finger on the arm of a little boy who is clenching his jaw and flexing his right arm muscle(Kalb 2003: 60). Although this image has been stated as an intertextual reference to the Rosie the Riveter poster, it is also a Parody of the 1942 poster. The Rosie the Riveter poster shows a women with a flexed muscle and below it is captioned "We can do it!" which refers to the women of world war two who had to take on the jobs of their husbands and fathers, while they were at war. Thus Kruger's piece parodies the Rosie the Riveter poster by using the 'We Don't Need Another Hero' caption to insinuate that after the war, the world is back to being governed by a patriarchal system. Kruger does this through the opposite gender flexing a muscle and the caption using the pronoun "we" to refer to the male gender whereas in the Rosie the Riveter poster, "we" was referred to the female gender (Kalb 2003: 61).

In addition, Kruger makes compositions of images that contain the properties of crudeness and anonymity of their subjects (Heron & Williams 1996: 318) and diverts the meaning from the original one, this postmodernist technique of taking textual fragments that already exist and modifying them so that the original meaning is different from the one they covey(Barker 2012: 209) is known as bricolage. However Kruger not only uses bricolage in her work but also the postmodernist technique of culture jamming. Culture Jammers attempt to "subvert the semiotics of the media by transforming the message into its own anti-message"(Barker 2012: 209). Thus this can be seen in Kruger's work where the image of the girl admiring the boy flex was not intended to insinuate male dominance but rather a loving, humorous relationship between a brother and sister that would be seen on an advertisement for household needs. Thus, Kruger's work is often "made to double back themselves"(Heron & Williams 1996: 318).

Furthermore, parody is seen in Kruger's work with regard to the locations Kruger chooses to portray her work. Kruger often portrays her work in billboard locations "where messages about money and power were regularly delivered" (Kalb 2003: 60). Kruger purposefully sets her work up in these locations in an attempt to challenge the advertisements around her(Kalb 2003: 60). The billboards around Kruger's work We Don't Need Another Hero might have been advertising a well known movie and their lead actor of the 1980's or an enticing consumer good. However Kruger's message was both apropos and outgunned(Kalb 2003: 60). Therefore, Kruger's stylistic techniques also lead to the success of her work. This can be further explained through the postmodern feature, pastiche.

Pastiche refers to the "mannerisms and stylistic twitches of other styles"(Jameson 1983: Online). This is seen in the work of Barbara Kruger, who has an "unmistakable style"(Weidemann & Larass & Klier 2008: 124), using short but captivating slogans in Futura Bold Italic reversed-out in red, against enlarged low resolution black and white photos(Weidemann & Larass & Klier 2008: 124). Kruger's mixture of typography and photographs is influenced by her background in "graphics and commercial art" (Taylor 2004: 99). Drawing on her own experience with Conde' Nast magazines, Kruger uses the stylistic techniques used in magazine culture in order to relate to the current culture by creating something that would be stylistically recognisable. However Kruger's integration of typography and photographs is not only influenced by her background in design but also by Russian constructivist posters, like the ones designed by the Sternberg brothers in the mid-1920's (Edward 1977: 466). Kruger's work references Russian constructivist posters as what she offers is a "similar form of agitprop, but now backed by resources of modern technology which were not available to the Sternberg brothers, the effect of her work is strident, but undoubtedly highly effective"(Edward 1977: 466).

In addition, the use of pastiche is seen in Barbara Kruger's work through her carefully planned use of space to portray her work. Kruger's work is known to be on a very large scale, however Kruger is also known for "treat[ing] space as a relationship and then enunciat[ing] the mechanisms with it"(Kalb 2003: 60). Kruger uses stylistic techniques seen in the work of American photographer, Sherrie Levine who changed the 'neutral' atmosphere of the art museum from "a space of passive reception into one of active critique"(Kalb 2003: 60). Thus in the same way Kruger "appropriated the means of the advertiser to expose the politics of urban space" (Kalb 2003: 60).

Furthermore, Postmodern practice is more about the social and cultural world of which it is part of rather than the "hermetic enclave of aesthetic self-referencing (art about art , photography about photography)"(Heron & Williams 1996: 315). Therefore another aspect of pastiche is seen in the work of Kruger when one analyses her use of photographs. Barbara Kruger's image in 'we don't need another hero' reflects an idea of an image one can affiliate with the American dream (two smiling children in one household) and it resembles an advertisement for soap or cereal(Kalb 2003: 60).Thus the use of "found images"(Heron & Williams 1996: 318) allows for the text to aggressively demand attention (Weidemann & Larass & Klier 2008: 124). The images form part of the background removing the importance of identity of the children and the quality of the image as "the intension of such work is less about provoking feeling , than provoking thought"(Heron & Williams 1996: 315).Thus in Kruger's work she is able to separate the identity of the children from their photographs and replace it with "pronouns such as 'you' and 'we' to force the viewer into the role of either accuser or accused"(Kalb 2003: 61).Furthermore, within the context of the work We Don't Need Another Hero the boy flexing his muscle would be the accuser and the girl would be the accused.Therefore Kruger uses pastiche in her imagery by referencing the use of found imagery(Heron & Williams 1996: 318).

Therefore, the use of intertextuality, parody and pastiche can clearly be seen in the work of Barbara Kruger's piece, We Don't Need Another Hero. However it is seen through the investigation of this essay that parody is the most prominent feature within the socio-economic and cultural domain of postmodernism as it shows relations towards consumer culture. Socio-economically, this is done by challenging advertisers through using their space to broadcast the art; while culture is parodied through culture jamming and through referencing the underlying patriarchal system.

Bibliography
Barker, C. 2012. Postmodern Culture, in Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Fourth Edition. London: SAGE. (pp. 203-216).*

Squiers, C. 1995. Barbara Kruger, in Aperture. New York: n.p.

Haberer, A. 2007. Intertextuality In Theory and Practice[Online]. Available:< http://www.literatura.flf.vu.lt/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Lit_49_5_54-67.pdf> [cited 10/11/2015]

Kvale, S. 1995. Themes of Postmodernity, in The Truth About The Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World. Edited by Anderson, W. New York: Putnam's Sons Ltd.

Wood, P. 2004. Inside the Whale: An Introduction to Postmodernist Art, in Themes in Contemporary Art. Edited by Perry, G & Wood. P London: Yale University Press. (p5-39).*

Ward, G. 2003. Chapter 1: Postmodernism, in Understand Postmodernism. London: Hodder Headline Ltd.

Edgar, A & Sedgwick, P. 2008. Cultural Theory: Key Concepts. Second Edition. New York: Routledge.

Jameson, F. 1983. Postmodernism and Consumer Society[Online]. Available: < http://art.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/Jameson_Postmodernism_and_Consumer_Society.pdf> [cited 10/11/2015]

Kalb, P.R. 2003. Art sin 1980: Charting the contemporary. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

Heron, L. & Williams, V. (eds). 1996. Illuminations. London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.

Weidemann, C. & Larass, P. & Klier M. 2008. 50 Women Artists You Should Know. London: Prestel

Taylor, B. 2004. Art Today. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

Lucie-Smith, E. 1977. Art Today. London: Phaidon.

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'We Don't Need Another Hero' by Barbara Kruger

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The late 20th century began a "transitional period of changing economic, social and cultural patterns"(Barker 2012: 203) that were established during modernism; the pre-existent late 19th and early 20th century movement. This transitional period can be known as postmodernism.

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Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Your body is a battleground)
1989

Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery New York

Barbara Kruger Interview, excerpt from Critical Inquiry 17, Winter 1991

MITCHELL: Is part of the agenda of your images, then, to re-embody, or to restore the body to these stereotypes?

KRUGER: Yeah-and I hate to get to you on these words, but I wouldn't call it an agenda-but I would say that I am interested in sort of, in not just displacing and questioning stereotypes-of course I'm interested in that - but I also think that stereotype is a very powerful form and that stereotype sort of lives and grows off of that which was true, but since the body is absent, it can no longer be proven. It becomes a trace which cannot be removed. Stereotype functions like a stain. It becomes a memory of the body on a certain level, and it's very problematic. But I think that when we "smash" those stereotypes, we have to make sure and think hard about what we're replacing them with and if they should be replaced.

MITCHELL: If stereotypes are stains, what is the bleach?

KRUGER: Well, I wouldn't say that there is a recipe, and I wouldn't say "bleach." Bleach is something which is so encoded in this racist culture that the notion of whitening as an antidote is something that should be avoided.

MITCHELL: So you just want to stop with the stain.

KRUGER: I don't want to get things whiter. If anything, I would hope when I say that basically to create new spectators with new meanings, I would hope to be speaking for spectators who are women, and hopefully colleagues of mine who are spectators and people of color. Now that doesn't mean that women and people of color can't create horrendous stereotypes also. Of course they can. But hopefully one who has had one's spirit tread upon can remember not to tread upon the spirit of others.

MITCHELL: Most of your work with the problem of difference has focused on gender. Are you interested in or working on problems with ethnicity, since that certainly involves a whole other problematic of embodiment?

KRUGER: Well, I think about that all the time. I think about it in terms of race, and culture. I think about it when I teach. I think about it in a series of posters that I do and of projects for public spaces, but I also-unlike a number of artists-feel very uncomfortable and do not want to speak for another. I basically feel that now is the time for people of color to do work which represents their experience, and I support that, and have written about that work as a writer, but do not want to speak for others. I basically feel that right now people of color can do a better job of representing themselves than white people can of representing them. It's about time.
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Busy going crazy)
1989

Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery New York
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (I shop therefore I am)
111″ by 113″
photographic silkscreen/vinyl
1987

Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery New York

MITCHELL: Let me just take one further step with the problem of word and image, and try to tie it back into the issue of public art. I'm interested in the combining of words and images in the art of publicity and in traditional public art, the old-fashioned monument.

Let me just give you a little background on what I'm thinking here. The traditional public art, say, of the nineteenth century, is supposed to have been universally readable, or at least
it's often invoked that way, as something that the whole public could relate to. Everybody knows what the Statue of Liberty was supposed to mean, what it "says." When modern works of public
art are criticized, they're often characterized as "unreadable" in contrast to traditional works which were supposedly universally popular. The modernist monument seems to be a kind of private
symbol which has been inserted into the public space, as I think you said, the garnish next to the roast beef. So it looks as if modernism kept the monument in terms of its scale, and egotism, and its placement in a public site, but it eliminated the public access to meaning.

This is all a kind of complicated preamble to asking whether it might be possible that word-image composite work-especially coming out of the sphere of advertising and commercial publicity might make possible a new kind of public art. I know this is to bring you back to something you said you're not terribly in love with, or you have some problem with, the whole issue of public art.

But, does this question make sense to you?

KRUGER: Yeah, I think that there is an accessibility to pictures and words that we have learned to read very fluently through advertising and through the technological development of photography and film and video. Obviously. But that's not the same as really making meanings, because film, and, well, television, really, and advertising-even though it wants to do the opposite-let's just talk about television-it's basically not about making meaning. It's about dissolving meaning. To reach out and touch a very relaxed, numbed-out, vegged-out viewer. Although we are always hearing about access to information, more cable stations than ever, . . . . But it's not about the specificity of information, about notions of history, about how life was lived, or even how it's lived now. It's about another kind of space. It's about, as Baudrillard has said, "the space of fascination," rather than the space of reading. "Fascinating" in the way that Barthes says that stupidity is fascinating. It's this sort of incredible moment which sort of rivets us through its constancy, through its unreadability because it's not made to be read or seen, or really it's made to be seen but not watched. I think that we can use the fluency of that form and its ability to ingratiate, but perhaps also try to create meanings, too. Not just re-create the spectacle formally, but to take the formalities of the spectacle and put some meaning into it. Not just make a statement about the dispersion of meaning, but make it meaningful.

MITCHELL: That's what I was hoping you were going to say. My next question was whether you feel there's still some place for the unreadable image or object (which I've always thought of as one of the modernist canons: the idea that an image has mystery and aura and can't be deciphered).

KRUGER: But that's not what I'm saying. That is not what I'm saying.

MITCHELL: You're speaking of another kind of unreadability.

KRUGER: I'm not saying that something should be unreadable. I'm saying that it should be readable, but it should suggest different meanings or that it should give a meaning. I'm saying that what we have now is about meaninglessness, through its familiarity, accessibility, not through its obscurity. Whereas modernism, or what I take it to be (you've used the word), was meaningless to people because of its inaccessibility. 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. I'm interested in dealing with complexity, yes. But not necessarily to the end of any romance with the obscure.

MITCHELL: There was one other question I wanted to ask you, and that's about interviews. The old idea about artists was that they weren't supposed to give interviews. The work was supposed to speak for itself. How do you feel about interviews?

KRUGER: I think that the work does speak for itself to some degree absolutely. But I also feel that we're living in a time when an artist does not have to be interpreted by others. Artists can "have" words. So it's not like I think I'm going to blow my cover if I open my mouth.

MITCHELL: Well, you certainly haven't blown your cover today.

(All rights reserved. Text @ W. J. T. Mitchell. Images @ Barbara Kruger.)

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Barbara Kruger Interview on Race, Stereotypes, Public Art and Interviews (1991)

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Barbara Kruger Untitled (Your body is a battleground) 1989 Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery New York "I hate to get to you on these words, but I wouldn't call it an agenda-but I would say that I am interested in sort of, in not just displacing and questioning stereotypes."