Barbara Kruger is best known for her text-driven images. Her advertisements juxtapose bold type highlighted in red over simple black and white photographs. Kruger’s untitled advertisement from 1990 shows a woman looking through a magnifying glass. The text is positioned above and below the woman’s face and reads, “It’s a small world… but not if you have to clean it.” From the combination of text and image used, I gather that Kruger is making a commentary on gender roles and societal expectations. The woman’s right eye is distorted, appearing much larger than her left as she peers through the magnifying glass at the viewer. I think Kruger’s message is intentionally ambiguous in that it is intended to make the viewer question what he or she is seeing. In actuality, is the woman’s eye disproportionately larger than the other? Is it really a small world? Who is responsible for cleaning it? This sort of subjective questioning is precisely the aim and focus of Kruger’s work. It seems that Kruger treats photographs and letters as puzzle pieces that she arranges in ways to challenge the viewer.
I think you picked a perfect example of the text/image relationship in Barbara Kruger's work. It definitely comments on feminine expectations when she made the works. The image is clever because we can read it alone with "small world" (i.e. she has to use the magnifying class to see it because the world is so small) but it still works and adds fun commentary when you read the smaller text.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy her work, and I like the fact that she makes us question our lives and the gender roles that society creates. This picture is particularly poignant because everyone thinks a woman's role is just to clean and cook, allowing stereotypes to hinder us from being respected and appreciate.
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