Barbara Kruger Quotes

"I'm living my life, not buying a lifestyle."

"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."

"I think that art is still a site for resistance and for the telling of various stories, for validating certain subjectivities we normally overlook. I'm trying to be affective, to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level."

"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."

"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."

"All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary."

"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."

"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'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."

"I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty."

"Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans."

"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."

"One thing I learned working at magazines was that if you couldn't get people to look at a page or a cover, then you were fired. It was all about how you create arresting works, and by arresting I mean stop people, even for a nano-second."

"I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words."

"Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not."

"I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity."

"Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in."

"I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience."

"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."

"I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It's the girl thing to do-you know, instead of pulling out a gun."

"What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up."

"Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways."

"I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed."

"Even when I was a little girl, I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art. I think my parents took me there once or twice. And what I really remember is the design collection."

"Money talks. It starts rumors about careers and complicity and speaks of the tragedies and triumphs of our social lives."

"I like suggesting that 'we are slaves to the objects around us,' that 'plenty should be enough,' or that the 'buyer should beware,' within the context of conventional selling space."

"If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture."

"I think there are lots of ways to make good work. You can throw big bucks at a project and make what some would call crap, or you can work very modestly with eloquently moving results."

"I don't necessarily think that installation is the only way to go. It's just a label for certain kinds of arrangements."

"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."