“I’m interested in making art that displaces the powers that tell us who we can be and who we can’t be."
Untitled (Thwart the Law) is an unabashed emblem of protest steeped in Barbara Kruger’s distinctive feminist rhetoric. By contrasting superimposed found images with terse subversive stat.mes nts in Kruger’s trademark Futura Bold Oblique typeset, the present work startlingly transfixes the gaze and the mind. Kruger was a pivotal member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists influenced by Conceptual and Pop Art who utilized appropriation and collage techniques to reveal the constructed nature of images, producing work that often resembled advertising. An exceptionally contemplative example of Kruger’s signature mode, Untitled (Thwart the Law) was notably executed in 1987 after she became the first female artist to gain representation at Mary Boone Gallery. Imitating a multiple exposure film technique, Untitled (Thwart the Law) is a rebellious call to defy and dispute sociopolitical hierarchies of power in graphic form.
Having grown up during the golden age of American advertising, Kruger began her career as a graphic designer for Condé Nast magazine Mademoiselle in the late 1960s after studying for a year under Diane Arbus and Marvin Israel at Parson’s School of Design in New York. The artist remained in the commercial editorial world into the mid-1970s, during which t.mes she developed a keen understanding of the effect of manipulating text and images and their “codes of seduction” as the artist would later say, or their powerful ability to engage and provoke desired responses in viewers. Kruger first experimented with photo and text collages in 1977, and later developed a signature style using large-scale black-and-white images from popular media overlaid with emphatic text in 1979. The following decade proved enormously successful for Kruger; she gained significant gallery representation and widespread recognition in the art world which encouraged the production of Untitled (Thwart the Law) and other radically defiant works. Describings her practice in 1989, Kruger states, “I’m interested in making art that displaces the powers that tell us who we can be and who we can’t be." (Barbara Kruger with David Deitcher in “Resisting Arrest,” Artforum, New York, February 1991, Vol. 29, No. 6, p. 84)
“If there is a consistent motive in Kruger, it is to question any assumed authority, to suspect any univocal position; and if there is a consistent.mes thod, it is to proceed by implication in the strongest sense—to trace the ties to capital, power, words, and images that bind us all.”
Notably published in The Yale Law Journal in 1988, Untitled (Thwart the Law) depicts three images layered with captivating translucent effects centering an introspective female protagonist seemingly lost in pensive contemplation. A soaring urban building with repetitive strips of windows grounds the composition, overlayed by the traditionally beautiful woman veiled by an eerie chain-link fence. Above, Kruger’s signature red banners read “Thwart the Law” and “Baffle the Father,” stinging mottos of disapproval for the institutions which mandate societal expectations. Kruger seemingly uses femininity to empower with this concentrated strategy; the mottos suggest a directive to free the woman from her caged mind and daringly act against the constricting sociopolitical forces. The phrases similarly absorb the viewer into an internal exchange, insisting they consider and confront the powers that make inequitable decisions for the population. “If there is a consistent motive in Kruger,” notes Hal Foster, “it is to question any assumed authority, to suspect any univocal position; and if there is a consistent.mes thod, it is to proceed by implication in the strongest sense—to trace the ties to capital, power, words, and images that bind us all.” (Hal Foster, “Seriously Playful” in Alexander Alberro et.al., Barbara Kruger, New York 2010, p. 17)
Kruger’s Untitled (Thwart the Law) excites with influence from the experimental Surrealist photographs by Man Ray and Dada works by Hannah Höch laden with social critique. The Surrealist.mes ntality was steeped in the subconscious mind and dream-like, eccentric compositions. The subconscious is alluded to in the present work; it’s as if the viewer is bearing witness to the female figure’s thoughts consuming her mind. The layered imagery in Untitled (Thwart the Law) is synonymous with Man Ray’s evocative ‘rayographs’ and photographic manipulations, blurring the line between fiction and reality. Similarly, Hannah Höch’s innovative photomontages forged a path for Kruger’s imaginative work with advocative suggestions.
An exceptionally engaging example from Kruger’s oeuvre, Untitled (Thwart the Law) powerfully subverts authority and supports disobedience in the name of equal opportunity. As such, the present work exemplifies Kruger’s consistent challenge to social, political, and sexual boundaries, encouraging viewers to question traditional socio-cultural structures. “All art contains a politic, as does every conversation we have, every deal we make, and every face we kiss. Whether producing collects ively or individually, we are responsible for the meaning which we create. I see my work as a series of attempts to ruin certain representations, to displace the subject and to welcome a female spectator in the audience of men.” (Barbara Kruger quoted in Masako Kamimura, “Review: Barbara Kruger: Art of Representation”, Woman's Art Journal Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1987, P. 40) Untitled (Thwart the Law) is a skillful addition to Kruger’s longstanding dedication to interrogate the systems which form and define our identities.
Barbara Kruger: Part of the Discourse | Art21 "Extended Play"
