black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

If I bring up political power, personal power, it sounds like they’re my terms, and they’re not.
BARBARA KRUGER

Political Sound Term
I’d always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.
BARBARA KRUGER

Morning Race Sunday
I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.
BARBARA KRUGER

Artist People Thinking
Memory is your image of perfection.
BARBARA KRUGER

Memories Perfection
It’s really hard for me to use the term ‘history’ in the singular, because it suggests a reductivist view of how moments and events congeal and reflect the passage of time. I’d rather stick to the pluralness of ‘histories’ in order to suggest the simultaneity, the parallel forces at work, which produce lived experience.
BARBARA KRUGER

History Order Views
Money talks. It starts rumors about careers and complicity and speaks of the tragedies and triumphs of our social lives.
BARBARA KRUGER

Careers Rumor Tragedy
It entered the visual vocabulary of photographers, painters and sculptors and focused on what pictures and words look like and what they can mean.
BARBARA KRUGER

Looks Mean Vocabulary
Look, we’re all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I’ve chosen to make my work about that insanity.
BARBARA KRUGER

Crazy Insanity Looks
Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud!
BARBARA KRUGER

Art Ideas Light
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.
BARBARA KRUGER

Good Hard Mind Practice Time Work
Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different.
BARBARA KRUGER

Different Ideas Space
But I really resist categories – that naming is a closing down of meaning. Women’s art, political art – those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I’m resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.
BARBARA KRUGER

Art Feminist Political
I’m trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.
BARBARA KRUGER

Artist Ideas Trying
What I’m trying to do is create moments of recognition.
BARBARA KRUGER

Moments Recognition Trying
Images are made palpable, ironed flat by technology and, in turn, dictate the seemingly real through the representative.
BARBARA KRUGER

Made Real Technology
Belief is tricky because left to its own devices, it can court a kind of surety, an unquestioning allegiance that fears doubt and destroys difference.
BARBARA KRUGER

Belief Differences Doubt

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Barbara Kruger Quotes