Barbara Kruger valuation
Futura Bold Oblique, white on red, over a found photograph, saying something you cannot argue with.
Barbara Kruger was born in Newark in 1945 and spent eleven years as a designer and picture editor at Conde Nast, which is where the visual language comes from rather than from art school.
What a work by Barbara Kruger is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Barbara Kruger was born in Newark in 1945 and spent eleven years as a designer and picture editor at Conde Nast, which is where the visual language comes from rather than from art school. From about 1979 she began pairing appropriated black-and-white photographs with short declarative texts in Futura Bold Oblique, white out of red — Your body is a battleground, I shop therefore I am, We don't need another hero — addressed to a you who is never quite identified. The work has run through billboards, bus wraps, magazine covers, building facades and entire room installations.
Because the imagery has been reproduced, licensed, parodied and pirated so widely, distinguishing an authorised work from merchandise, an exhibition poster or an unauthorised reproduction is the first and largest task in any valuation. The unique large photographic works in the artist's red frames from the 1980s lead the market, and the frame is integral. Editions and multiples exist in defined numbers and should be documented. Vinyl installation works exist as instructions and materials rather than objects, and are sold that way.
At a glance
- Born
- 1945, Newark
- Movements
- Feminist art, Conceptual art, Contemporary art
More on Wikipedia.
Posters, protest graphics and the Supreme logo
Some of Kruger's most famous images began as posters. Your Body Is a Battleground was made for the 1989 march on Washington in support of abortion rights, and the posters printed for that event and for other campaigns she supported are collected as historical objects. They are distinct from the photographic works and editions sold through her galleries, and are valued accordingly.
The white-on-red lettering of the streetwear brand Supreme, in use since 1994, is modelled on her style but is not her work, and she has said publicly what she thinks of it. Clothing, stickers and objects carrying that logo have a market of their own, unconnected with hers. The look is imitated widely, so any object presented as a Kruger needs to be traced back to her or to her galleries.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
