5 Works by Barbara Kruger on Gender and Feminism

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist whose career spans over 40 years. Even though most of her masterpieces were created in the 1980s and 1990s, Kruger’s art is still important and relatable in the present day. The timelessness of her works comes from the fact that she explores ever-present themes such as feminism, consumerism, and politics. Materialized in the appropriation of advertising language and pop culture imagery, Kruger’s artistic style also makes her art approachable and relevant in contemporary society.

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist born in 1945 in New Jersey. Even though Kruger attended Syracuse University, and later Parsons School of Design in New York, she never completed her formal education. Instead, she began to work as a graphic designer for major companies like Condé Nast Publications and Mademoiselle magazine. This experience had a great impact on her artwork. Kruger learned to employ techniques of mass communication and advertising to immediately engage with the viewer.

By creating dynamic combinations of black and white photographs with direct and catchy captions, she encourages the viewers to think. Thanks to her job in advertising, Kruger was also aware of how short the attention span of an average person was, so she predominantly used personal pronouns (e.g. I, You, We), thus arousing interest. Furthermore, her engaging typography such as Futura Bold Oblique and Helvetica Ultra Compressed made her captions look even more attractive. The former was inspired by the Bauhaus style, while the latter was a form of neo-grotesque design.

Finally, the main goal of Kruger’s art is to address cultural, social, and political issues. She tackles constructions of power, consumerism, and capitalism in order to promote questioning of established norms and preconceived notions. By exploring feminism, gender roles, and identity, Kruger underlines the presence of social injustice, marginalization, and discrimination in contemporary society. Due to the relevance and permanence of Kruger’s themes, most of her capital works, which were created decades ago, are still of vital importance.

Your Body Is a Battleground is a photographic silkscreen on vinyl created in 1989 for the Women’s March on Washington. This year was marked by political turbulence, since the newly elected president of the United States George H. W. Bush had repeatedly displayed his opposition to the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Bush’s stance caused public outrage resulting in numerous protests against this new wave of anti-abortion laws.

Kruger’s work depicts a bisected face of a woman overlaid with text. This stark divide in positive and negative exposure, as well as the bold caption with the possessive pronoun your, instantly attracts the viewer’s attention. The artist makes it clear that the critical issue of reproductive freedom is everyone’s concern. By conveying a message on an extremely personal level, Kruger underlines the grotesque intrusion of privacy by the legal system. While courts are supposed to discuss matters of public and abstract nature, anti-abortion laws trespass on women’s bodies and their choices regarding them. Therefore, the caption Your body is a battleground alludes to this intruding objectification of women where their bodies have literally become the object of political battle.

The contrast between positive and negative exposure can be interpreted as a visual representation of pro-choice and pro-life stances. The dark side illustrates all of the harmful and terrifying aspects of illegal abortion. When numerous states such as Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma overturned the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, Kruger responded by creating a new version of this work for the New York magazine. While keeping the original image, she added a new caption: “Who becomes a “murderer” in post-Roe America?”

Another important aspect of Kruger’s art is her critique of consumerism. Deliberately using a simple black-and-white image of a hand that is enclosed in a confined space with a red frame, Kruger succeeds in emphasizing the text. Bold and thought-provoking, and again with the personal pronoun I, the caption instantly communicates with the viewer making them feel like the work refers entirely to them.

Created in 1987, this work is a par excellence example of Barbara Kruger’s use of subtle humor and sarcasm. She playfully modifies Rene Descartes’ famous quote “I think, therefore I am,” so it becomes more suitable for the values of the contemporary consumer-driven society. This work is a visual criticism of a society that is defined by the possession of material things. One is no longer determined by their thoughts, but rather by what one owns.

Therefore, for an individual to virtually exist, they need to consume things. Unfortunately for consumers and fortunately for companies of various kinds, the process of shopping is a never-ending one. There are always new and presumably better goods to acquire, so a person can never be fully satisfied with themselves. As a result, consumerism has degraded the notion of identity to the level of a mere object that can only be built and improved by material things. In these terms, I shop therefore I am has become a modern-day philosophy slogan of chronically frustrated people.

3. You Are Not Yourself  

You Are Not Yourself is an artwork Kruger made in 1981. Serving as a fine example of Kruger’s interest in the complex relationship between feminism, gender roles, and identity, it depicts a woman holding a shattered mirror with the reflection of her perturbed expression. The words “you are not yourself” are laid over the photograph in a collage-like manner. This fusion of image and text unambiguously refers to the problem of identity and femininity in contemporary society.

A well-known quote by Simone de Beauvoir comes to mind: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” It refers to the fact that society doesn’t allow women to be their natural and authentic selves. Being a woman is a preconceived notion, that every person born female needs to consent to. Therefore, only when a woman lives up to certain standards and assumes roles determined by her gender, is she accepted by society as its respectable female member.

Confronted with her distorted reflection, the portrayed woman realizes that she cannot recognize herself, since she has been a social construct from the day she was born. The shattered pieces allude to the numerous duties and tasks that are imposed on women. These broken parts cannot fit into a whole, thus proving that a woman cannot be all that her family, society, and culture expect her to be. From her visual appearance to the choices she makes, a woman should always act according to the set of socially accepted behaviors that are considered desirable for her based on her sex. Therefore, this work can be interpreted as Kruger’s visual representation of how unattainable and unrealistic it is to try to master the concept of femininity.

When it comes to gender roles, Barbara Kruger is equally interested in exploring masculinity as well as femininity. We Don’t Need Another Hero is a silkscreen on vinyl from 1987 that depicts a young girl curiously looking at a boy who is flexing his muscles. Kruger employed a Futura typeface for the text that overlays the image.

By combining five simple words with an image that evokes the style of a 1950s advertisement, Kruger gives her social commentary on traditionally accepted notions of masculine and feminine. While the girl in the work looks like she is trying to convey a sense of admiration, she only manages to express an exaggerated curiosity. Moreover, the boy looks equally awkward in his attempt to impress. He fails in trying to simulate a masculine man who’s taking pride in his vigor. The boy’s artificial pose and strained facial expression underline his uneasiness about waiting for approval.

Here, Kruger visually represented the internalization of gender roles that occurs early in childhood. In children’s attempts to imitate the adults, they adopt behaviors and attitudes that presumably correspond to their gender. Therefore, the boy needs to prove himself through his physical capacity, while the girl should be fascinated by this display of masculinity and power. Kruger’s caption “We Don’t Need Another Hero” criticizes society’s preconceived notion of what young boys and girls are supposed to act like.

1. Not Stupid Enough 

Barbara Kruger used a black and white photograph of Marilyn Monroe for Not Stupid Enough. By combining a close-up of her face with ironic slogans, Kruger expresses her feminist critique of set standards of beauty and attractiveness that are established within American culture. The text box in the center reads “Not stupid enough,” while other captions that frame the photo include the words “not nothing enough,” “not skinny enough,” “not good enough,” and “not ironic enough.”

Kruger’s critical use of these slogans alludes to unattainable, and thus absurd, expectations that are placed upon women. With her image omnipresent in mass media, Marilyn Monroe has been a beauty icon for many generations. Inevitably, ordinary women became self-conscious about their appearance, feeling like they were not good enough in mastering femininity. Therefore, Kruger does not only condemn society’s obsession with putting pressure on women to achieve this concept of female perfection but more broadly, she lambasts the impact that consumerism has on women as well. By constantly comparing themselves, women engage in consumption. Shopping emerges as the only solution to the problem of inadequacy.

Conversely, Barbara Kruger expresses her dissatisfaction with the way female celebrities are represented in media in general. Not only is that ideal image of a public figure harmful to ordinary women, but it is harmful to that public person herself. These ironic slogans refer to the belittling comments about Monroe that she persistently received during her lifetime. Labeled as a dumb blonde, Monroe was ridiculed just as much as she was celebrated. Thereby, Kruger underscored the hypocrisy of the mass media where even a person who was chosen as an embodiment of many beauty ideals cannot live up to its standards.