Barbara Kruger
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. 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.
If you own a work by Barbara Kruger
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 costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
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.