the art of public address - artist Barbara Kruger - Interview - Cover Story

Art in America, Nov, 1997 by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve

TNG: Aren't you also doing a project Columbus, Ohio?

BK: Yes, I'm doing a series of metal and mosaic floor markers for five new buildings at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University. It's especially interesting to me since a lot of my work talks about money and its impact on the material conditions of our lives. The floor markers are 8 and 10 feet in diameter, and they'll be at the entrance of each building. Some of the quotes they'll contain are from Frederick Douglass; others are phrases like "Money Makes Money" and "Plenty Should Be Enough."

TNG: How does it make you feel to see your work become architecture, given that the power and impact of your work comes not just from content and stylistic choices but how you place your pieces in space, and the manner in which you use buildings and design spaces?

BK: Architecture is my first love, if you want to talk about what moves me--the ordering of space, the visual pleasure, architecture's power to construct our days and nights. And it's another reason why I like L.A. The history of 20th-century architecture is so visible there, not only in large public buildings but in the extraordinary array of important houses by people like Schindler, Neutra, Lautner, Koenig, Ain, Soriano, Gehry. As well as lots of really fabulous knock-offs. This stuff really means a lot to me.

Personal Histories

TNG: How do you feel about the way that you and your generation are being viewed historically, now that you're entering into art-history books?

BK: I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances. There's no singular history, but histories: narratives inflected by the taste and subjectivities of their authors. I'm not saying that there aren't historical facts and events, just that we can expect numerous variations.

Speaking of taste, I'm not at all familiar with Robert Hughes's work, but I had the really good fortune to catch half of the last episode of his opus on PBS. I don't know the title. He puts me down. But still it was great. He walks into Jeff Koons's studio. Jeff strides jauntily toward him. Hughes, from what I could glean, is a man of big khakis and big tastes; everything is a pronouncement of what passes and what fails. Anyway, Jeff is being the perfect gentleman, as usual. Hughes, it seems, can barely contain his rage. They're standing in front of this massive sculpture, and he says something like, "So, what do we have here?" And Jeff says, "It's called Kitty in a Sock, and it's a crucifixion piece." And he says this with a totally straight face. Meanwhile, Hughes's head is exploding. He can't deal! He doesn't know what to do with his face. What great TV! But that's hardly surprising, since PBS is the network that brought us John Tesh at Red Rocks as part of its cultural programming

TNG: Koons is so compelling. His relationship to irony is like Warhol without the sad sm.

BK: I think the distance and irony in Warhol's work are historically and socially grounded in his sexual marginality. I always thought he was kind of manipulative and creepy, exploiting people who needed his approval. But he made really terrific art about exploitation and approval. You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.