The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum that opened its doors in 1929 and has been able to present thousands of art pieces in its exhibits. The art that is contained in this museum is from hundreds of different artists and is able to show pieces from various time periods. The museum was beautifully able to organize pieces of art based on different time pieces and make them into separate exhibits, each exhibit was similar yet vastly different.
When entering a large empty room, there was a piece that caught my eyes; with many words on the wall and the main emphasis of the art piece was the word you. This art piece was created by the artist Barbara Kruger called Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You. It is a very recent piece where she renovated the museum area and was able to express her thoughts and ideas through this piece. This is a common theme within Barbara Kruger pieces of art. She has a nontraditional approach to her pieces and aims to change the perspective of the viewer on a given topics. Some topics her work examines is stereotypes and consumerism and then tries to have the viewer interpret the piece. The piece I chose is in the museum from July 16, 2022 to January 2, 2023 just in time for this assignment making it most fitting to choose. Barbara Kruger explores the behaviors of consumerism in this piece specifically. Addressing that individuals who consume goods and services in a large quantity will be better off, stimulating production and economic growth. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face.” This is the dark connotation behind her messages.
Going through expressionism Barbara targets emotion to convey and help engage with the viewer as opposed to reality. By, using a black and white and strong words such as “war” and different sizes of words she adresses consumerism. The originality and uniqueness is what drew me to this piece. Seeing that this piece is only here for about six months fitting the time line of the semester made it perfectly fitting for this assignment. With almost every other piece in the museum either being something physical like a bed or some kind of chair or some paintings on the wall. The way the words were displayed caught my attention and had me for the longest as opposed to everything else. A question I have is what made place all the words in the way she did? Very confusing to read at first but then when you take a second to read it speaks louder than all but when taking a second to see what is written it is louder than the other art it is surrounded by.
I love Barbara Kruger, and I love this piece. However, it is a work of contemporary art and has nothing whatsoever to do with Modernism which is a specific aesthetic movement that began in the 1890s and lasted until the outbreak of WWII.