Classroom Activity

Text and Art

Students will examine the work of artist Barbara Kruger and consider how visual media, such as in print and advertising, can be constructed to influence viewers' perceptions and behaviors. Students will create their own works of art combining text and image to voice a perspective, as inspired by the work of Kruger.

A grainy black and white photograph showing a close-up of a woman’s profile is overlaid with three horizontal red bands with white text at the top, center, and bottom edges of this horizontal composition. The woman seems to lie down and look up at a metal instrument, perhaps a piece of medical equipment, with a long, eye-dropper-like tube extending close to her face. Her cheeks and profile appear between the central and bottom bands of text. Lit from our left, she has dark eyebrows and eyelashes, a straight nose, and her lips are closed. She seems to have pale skin and her hair is covered by a fold of fabric, perhaps a hat. The eye we see is open and the metal instrument points to the bridge of her nose, seeming to close in on her right eye. Light colored fabric behind her could be the uniform of a person standing opposite us. The red bands have white lettering saying, “Know nothing” across the top; “Believe anything” across the center; and “Forget everything” across the bottom.
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), 1987/2014, digital print on vinyl, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith, 2014.38.1

Grade Level

Subject

Language

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), 1987/2014, digital print on vinyl, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith, 2014.38.1

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (You thrive on mistaken identity), 1981, photograph, 60 × 40 in. (152.4 × 101.6 cm), Matthias Brunner.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Memory is your image of perfection), 1982, photograph, 61 × 34 in. (154.94 × 86.36 cm), Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Museum purchase with proceeds from Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Art Auction 2002, International and Contemporary Collectors Funds, and funds from Nancy B. Tieken.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We have received orders not to move), 1982, photograph, 69 ¾ × 47 ½ in. (177.17 × 120.65 cm), Susan Bay-Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Charisma is the perfume of your gods), 1982, photograph, 49 × 48 in. (124.46 × 121.92 cm), Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. Purchased with funds provided by Carl R. Gerber (OC 1958), in memory of Elizabeth Ann Gerber.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face), 1983, photograph, 55 ¼ × 40 ⅞ in. (140.34 × 103.82 cm), Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your creation is divine, Our reproduction is human), 1984, photograph, 72 × 48 in. (182.88 × 121.92 cm), Phyllis and William Mack.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We don’t need another hero), 1987, silkscreen on vinyl, 108 ⅞ × 209 ³⁄₁₆ × 2 ½ in. (276.54 × 531.34 × 6.35 cm), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Gift from the Emily Fisher Landau Collection.

A grainy black and white photograph showing a close-up of a woman’s profile is overlaid with three horizontal red bands with white text at the top, center, and bottom edges of this horizontal composition. The woman seems to lie down and look up at a metal instrument, perhaps a piece of medical equipment, with a long, eye-dropper-like tube extending close to her face. Her cheeks and profile appear between the central and bottom bands of text. Lit from our left, she has dark eyebrows and eyelashes, a straight nose, and her lips are closed. She seems to have pale skin and her hair is covered by a fold of fabric, perhaps a hat. The eye we see is open and the metal instrument points to the bridge of her nose, seeming to close in on her right eye. Light colored fabric behind her could be the uniform of a person standing opposite us. The red bands have white lettering saying, “Know nothing” across the top; “Believe anything” across the center; and “Forget everything” across the bottom.
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), 1987/2014, digital print on vinyl, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith, 2014.38.1

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Love is something you fall into), 1990, silkscreen on vinyl, 64 ½ × 156 in. (163.83 × 396.24 cm), Hall Collection.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Love is something you fall into), 1990, silkscreen on vinyl, 64 ½ × 156 in. (163.83 × 396.24 cm), Hall Collection.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (A picture is worth more than a thousand words), 1992, silkscreen on vinyl, 82 × 123 in. (208.28 × 312.42 cm), Private Collection of Lauren and Adam Nathanson.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (The future belongs to those who can see it), 1997, silkscreen on vinyl, 85 × 60 in. (215.9 × 152.4 cm), from the Chris and Dori Carter Collection.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Think of me thinking of you), 2013, digital print on vinyl, 96 × 75 ½ in. (243.84 × 191.77 cm), Private Collection of Diane von Furstenberg.

Discussion

  • How would you describe Kruger's imagery?
  • Why do you think the artist uses text alongside images? How does the text change or relate to the image it is paired with?
  • How does visual media as seen in print and advertising influence perception and behavior?
  • How can art be a vehicle for social critique?

Background

I am interested in working with pictures and words because I think they have the power to tell us who we are and who we aren't, who we can be and who we can never be.

Barbara Kruger

Seeing is no longer believing. The very notion of truth has been put into crisis. In a world bloated with images, we are finally learning that photographs do indeed lie.

Barbara Kruger

Artist Barbara Kruger worked as a layout editor at Condé Nast for 12 years, including posts at Mademoiselle, House and Garden, and Aperture. In 1969 Kruger began to make her own art while also writing poetry, film, and television reviews. A decade later she had developed her "picture pratice" with photographs repurposed from vintage manuals and magazines, which she had overlaid with her own texts or commonplace phrases. The completed works alter her found materials, placing her statements and questions over the images to rouse the viewer. Owing to her interest in the public arena and the everyday, Kruger's work has appeared on billboards, bus cards, posters, T-shirts, matchbook covers, and train station platform advertisements.

In the above work, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), these admonishing phrases are placed across a photograph of a woman lying down and receiving an unknown medical treatment to her eye through a funnel-like device. Kruger's works often confront the idea of representation, particularly as found in mass media.

Watch the short film below to view artist discuss her work and her artistic practice:

Activity

Have students brainstorm as a class about topics or social issues they are interested in and on which they have a point of view. Discuss relevant concepts like propaganda and media bias.

Students can sketch out a few initial ideas to explore in a poster that combines text and art and then work in pairs to give feedback about which idea to pursue. Students will then use their found images, stencils, and construction paper to translate their ideas. Students should write a short artist's statement that explains intent, challenges, and achievements in their works of art.

Materials: Images from magazines and newspapers; lettering stencils; black and red markers; black and red construction paper; scissors; glue; poster board or heavy paper; rulers; cutting boards

See sample artworks below:

National Core Arts Standards

VA:Cn10.1.HSIII Synthesize knowledge of social, cultural, historical, and personal life with art-making approaches to create meaningful works of art or design.

VACr3.1.HSII Engage in constructive critique with peers, then reflect on, re-engage, revise, and refine works of art and design in response to personal artistic vision.

VA:Re7.1.HSIII Analyze how responses to art develop over time based on knowledge of and experience with art and life.

VA:Re7.2.HSII Evaluate the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and behaviors of specific audiences.

 

You may also like

Educational Resource:  Beyond the Frame: Dorothea Lange

We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

Educational Resource:  Exploring Identity through Modern Art

How do artists draw on memories and experiences to create art that reflects their identities? How does an artist’s connection to place spark inspiration? Through guided looking, sketching, and writing activities, students will consider how artists explore identity through their art.

Educational Resource:  Breaking the Rules

What is modern about modern art? Students investigate how artists "break the rules" when they depart from realistic representation, use innovative techniques, and engage the viewer as a partner in creating meaning-making.