1 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:22,020 ["Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse"] 2 00:00:26,420 --> 00:00:29,520 How come any piece of canvas with pigment on it 3 00:00:29,520 --> 00:00:30,660 gets to be called art? 4 00:00:32,760 --> 00:00:35,660 There are so many ways of making art, 5 00:00:36,760 --> 00:00:40,580 some of them more available to a general public than others. 6 00:00:42,660 --> 00:00:45,260 I remember going to galleries when I was young-- 7 00:00:45,260 --> 00:00:46,820 totally intimidated! 8 00:00:47,640 --> 00:00:50,420 Certain works have to be decoded. 9 00:00:51,240 --> 00:00:55,239 I think the availability of my work was important to me, 10 00:00:55,239 --> 00:00:58,670 because I was that viewer who didn’t understand-- 11 00:00:58,670 --> 00:01:00,300 who didn’t know the codes. 12 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:17,140 Performa approached me, 13 00:01:17,140 --> 00:01:19,729 and the skatepark came up in conversation. 14 00:01:19,729 --> 00:01:22,200 I just go, "Oh that would be so cool." 15 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:24,079 "Money talks." 16 00:01:24,620 --> 00:01:25,680 "Whose values?" 17 00:01:30,180 --> 00:01:32,280 These are just ideas in the air, 18 00:01:32,300 --> 00:01:35,200 and questions that we ask sometimes-- 19 00:01:37,280 --> 00:01:40,100 and questions that we don’t ask but should ask. 20 00:01:44,440 --> 00:01:46,409 I grew up in Newark, New Jersey. 21 00:01:46,409 --> 00:01:48,270 My mother and my father, 22 00:01:48,270 --> 00:01:50,660 neither of them have college degrees. 23 00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:53,980 We lived in a three-room apartment 24 00:01:53,980 --> 00:01:55,360 and I slept in the living room. 25 00:01:57,060 --> 00:02:01,770 I was always very aware of how where we’re born, 26 00:02:01,770 --> 00:02:04,540 what we are given, and what is withheld from us 27 00:02:04,540 --> 00:02:06,960 determines who we can be in the world. 28 00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:10,120 I came to New York. 29 00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:12,040 Went to Parson’s for a year. 30 00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:14,880 Started working as a billing clerk 31 00:02:15,520 --> 00:02:18,060 and then a telephone operator. 32 00:02:19,200 --> 00:02:21,500 Living in Newark and later New York, 33 00:02:21,519 --> 00:02:24,360 maybe you didn’t read the tabloids but you saw them everyday 34 00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:27,049 in the subway and everywhere. 35 00:02:27,049 --> 00:02:30,260 All of a sudden, I heard there were jobs at Condé Nast. 36 00:02:30,260 --> 00:02:31,409 I was lucky-- 37 00:02:31,409 --> 00:02:34,540 I got hired as a second designer. 38 00:02:34,970 --> 00:02:36,920 If you didn’t get people to look at those pages, 39 00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:37,800 you were fired. 40 00:02:38,250 --> 00:02:39,260 Cropping pictures. 41 00:02:39,260 --> 00:02:40,520 Choosing fonts. 42 00:02:41,400 --> 00:02:44,320 When I first started I thought, "Oh I want to be art director," 43 00:02:44,320 --> 00:02:46,020 but it was a different world. 44 00:02:46,540 --> 00:02:49,880 I was like a chimney sweep compared to the other people who worked there. 45 00:02:50,800 --> 00:02:52,140 I really took time off 46 00:02:52,140 --> 00:02:56,200 and tried to figure out what it might mean to call myself an artist. 47 00:02:57,200 --> 00:02:58,700 I remember saying to people, 48 00:02:58,709 --> 00:03:02,829 "Can I just be an artist by working with pasteup and magic marker?" 49 00:03:02,829 --> 00:03:04,260 "No, you can’t do that." 50 00:03:04,760 --> 00:03:08,080 I realized I could use the fluencies as a designer 51 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:09,440 to make my work. 52 00:03:10,510 --> 00:03:13,200 I like fonts that cut through the grease-- 53 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:17,400 the, sort of, clarity of those sans serif fonts. 54 00:03:19,220 --> 00:03:22,420 I felt that red capture one’s attention. 55 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:27,820 In most cases, I could not afford to print these images in color. 56 00:03:28,660 --> 00:03:32,380 I used to go to used bookstores and find old magazines, 57 00:03:32,380 --> 00:03:34,280 and I converted them to black and white. 58 00:03:35,620 --> 00:03:39,300 For us, in 1981, '83, 59 00:03:39,300 --> 00:03:42,799 showing your work was about being a part of the discourse. 60 00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:47,040 When my peer group first started being discussed, 61 00:03:47,049 --> 00:03:48,650 and our work was being sold, 62 00:03:48,650 --> 00:03:54,920 I thought, "Well if my work is developing this commodity status, I had to address it." 63 00:03:59,680 --> 00:04:02,860 Issues about power, value, 64 00:04:02,860 --> 00:04:04,920 unfortunately do not grow old. 65 00:04:18,840 --> 00:04:20,820 Architecture is my first love. 66 00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:23,600 I just spatialize ideas. 67 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:31,380 I know what areas to engage 68 00:04:31,380 --> 00:04:35,480 to activate a space with images and with text. 69 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:43,320 "Think like us." 70 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:45,240 "Hate like us." "Fear like us." 71 00:04:45,320 --> 00:04:47,400 I want my work to create commentary. 72 00:04:47,400 --> 00:04:49,140 [PROTESTOR] --Right to life, your name’s a lie, 73 00:04:49,140 --> 00:04:50,600 --you don’t care if women die. 74 00:04:52,840 --> 00:04:56,700 [KRUGER] I made "Your body is a battleground" to get people to go to the march. 75 00:04:56,700 --> 00:04:58,620 This was for women’s reproductive rights. 76 00:04:59,700 --> 00:05:03,960 I remember calling Planned Parenthood and offering my services, 77 00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:06,240 and they didn’t know who the eff I was. 78 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:09,380 They said, well they were working with an advertising agency. 79 00:05:09,380 --> 00:05:10,560 Oh okay, alright. 80 00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:14,820 So I used this printer named Quirky. 81 00:05:15,500 --> 00:05:17,860 I used to print all these posters with him. 82 00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:22,260 I went out at one or two in the morning 83 00:05:22,260 --> 00:05:25,060 and put these posters up all over town. 84 00:05:29,800 --> 00:05:31,600 Well, of course I’m a feminist. 85 00:05:32,340 --> 00:05:38,440 But I have never been able to consider gender or sexuality apart from class-- 86 00:05:38,440 --> 00:05:41,440 and never thought of class apart from race. 87 00:05:42,180 --> 00:05:44,560 Something to really think about 88 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:48,390 is what makes us who we are in the world that we live in, 89 00:05:48,390 --> 00:05:51,520 and how culture constructs and contains us. 90 00:05:52,240 --> 00:05:54,960 There are stereotypes of the artist 91 00:05:54,960 --> 00:05:57,040 or of the musician. 92 00:05:57,560 --> 00:05:59,860 Those are the kinder stereotypes. 93 00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:07,620 People ask me all the time, can they come to my studio? 94 00:06:07,620 --> 00:06:10,140 And I say, do you want me to put a beret on 95 00:06:10,140 --> 00:06:12,000 and you can photograph me with a big table? 96 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:13,380 I said, no-- no. 97 00:06:13,380 --> 00:06:15,620 I just don’t want to be that person. 98 00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:23,600 There’s enough visual record of me. 99 00:06:24,040 --> 00:06:26,120 You don’t need a million pictures. 100 00:06:27,500 --> 00:06:30,420 What it means to point a camera at another person, 101 00:06:30,420 --> 00:06:32,800 I think that there’s a brutality about that. 102 00:06:45,020 --> 00:06:45,740 "You." 103 00:06:47,660 --> 00:06:50,960 "You know that women have served all these centuries" 104 00:06:50,960 --> 00:06:54,940 "as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power" 105 00:06:54,940 --> 00:06:59,650 "of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size." 106 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:01,640 It’s a Virginia Woolf quote. 107 00:07:04,620 --> 00:07:06,120 I just had to use that.