Artist Barbara Kruger -- a Term Paper

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Describe and evaluate one of the artist's works: title, material, size, year completed, subject matter, content, style

Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face) is a photograph dated 1981-1983 depicts a classical, Grecian bust of a beautiful woman's symmetrical head in white against a black background. The jagged words of the confrontational, angry subtitle of the work exist in photographic fragments against the side of the bust. The image is traditional, but the words are potentially inflammatory, as if the statue is speaking back to the gazing viewer. The words seemingly attempt to drive the viewer away, although the gaze of the bust is gentle. The viewer cannot escape the words, even while the viewer gazes at the head of the woman.

Discussion of the meaning of the work: What is the artist trying to say?

Usually, a statue is silent, while the gazer observes and judges the statue. However, in this photograph, the statue speaks back to the viewer, claiming its own status as a speaking subject.

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This act is significant, given that women have traditionally been the subjects, rather than the creators or critics of great art. By creating a self-referential photograph, Kruger commits a radical feminist act of creating a female subject in the form of a traditional work of male-created sculpture. The statue speaks back to the voyeuristic gaze of the viewer, who is in a privileged, male position of gazing back at the woman, and presumably judging the woman's beauty.

Discussion of how the work of art reveals contemporary (current) concerns or interests?

The work is postmodern in that it makes use of traditional cultural elements but forces the viewer to regard standards of feminine beauty and art in a new way, because of the way these words and images are rearranged.

An image of the artwork you are describing

Image available at http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/541.html

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