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

Art in America, Nov, 1997 by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve

TNG: That sounds like a grand collage. So those were your main influences at the time?

BK: I guess you could say that. But there are so many moments and works that influence us in what we do. Movies, music, TV and, most importantly, the profound everydayness of our lives. I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.

TNG: Why do you think work about representation became so important in the '80s?

BK: I don't like to decade-ize. It's that category thing again. It's just so sloppy and ahistorical.

TNG: But don't you feel that there are moods of some kind that one can characterize via the appellation of the decade? Certainly it's a shortcut, but it is important to be able to begin to name and analyze a pattern of culture as it is coming into focus.

BK: Of course. But that shortcut is usually not used to name and analyze a cultural pattern. It just becomes a dumb buzzword used by journalists who wouldn't know a cultural pattern if it bit them on the ass.

In the art world, when people refer to the '80s they talk about high rollers, high prices, high on drugs, big paintings, art stars, etc. But to me it was also a time when we saw the emergence of work about representation. Many, but not all, of the artists involved were women. It entered the visual vocabulary of photographers, painters and sculptors and focused on what pictures and words look like and what they can mean. And that play with meaning informs work being done today, whether it's painting, photography, video, installation, or any other arrangement. Decades, like other historical constructs, are composed of pluralities of experiences, and to reduce that complexity to cliches and buzzwords is just dumb--and much less fun.

TNG: So what you are asking is for people to be specific about the pattern rather than using a buzzword or a category.

BK: Yes. For instance, a pattern that became apparent to me is that the women artists who are my peers and younger have generally resisted the hype around "greatness" which so permeates the discourse of artistic achievement. They've resisted certain cliches just as they've resisted buying into their own hype. It doesn't mean we don't think our work is important. It just means we have an understanding of the inflationary aspects of any career.

TNG: But at the same time it's important to be able to appreciate success for what it is. because it is nice, isn't it?

BK: Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be a drag. Especially if you choose to surround yourself with friends and not acolytes. I think the art world is kind of mellow around this stuff compared to the music and movie businesses. It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized. When the art market crashed at the end of the '80s and works were suddenly selling for less, there were artists who took this personally. They didn't see that we're part of a speculative construct which needs art stars and their output but is also at the whim of the larger economic picture.