Quotes By Barbara Kruger

I think there are different ways of being rigorous, and I am asking people to be as rigorous in their pleasure as in their criticism.

I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.

There are so many moments and works that influence us in what we do. Movies, music, TV and, most importantly, the profound everydayness of our lives.

You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.

I think people have to set up little battles. They have to demonize people whom they disagree with or feel threatened by. But it's the ideological framing of the debate that scares me.

I've always thought that it's good to watch the news to find out what everybody else is looking at and believing, if only because that's how consensus is constructed.

Prominence is cool, but when the delusion kicks in it can be a drag. Especially if you choose to surround yourself with friends and not acolytes.

I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary.

I'm an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like.

Things change and work changes. Right now I like the idea of enveloping a space and getting messages across that connect to the world in ways that seem familiar but are different.

I feel uncomfortable with the term public art, because I'm not sure what it means. If it means what I think it does, then I don't do it. I'm not crazy about categories.

I had to figure out how to bring the world into my work.

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

If most American cities are about the consumption of culture, Los Angeles and New York are about the production of culture - not only national culture but global culture.

I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

I'd always been a news junkie, always read lots of newspapers and watched the Sunday morning news shows on TV and felt strongly about issues of power, control, sexuality and race.

I think I developed language skills to deal with threat. It's the girl thing to do-you know, instead of pulling out a gun.

I think that every so-called history book and film biography should be prefaced by the statement that what follows is the author's rendition of events and circumstances.

I just say I'm an artist who works with pictures and words.

I think there are lots of ways to make good work. You can throw big bucks at a project and make what some would call crap, or you can work very modestly with eloquently moving results.

Do you know why language manifests itself the way it does in my work? It's because I understand short attention spans.

I'm living my life, not buying a lifestyle.

What makes the production of my work so expensive? The whole installation thing - the construction, the objects, the technology. It really adds up.

Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.

Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in.

It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized.

All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.

Look, we're all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I've chosen to make my work about that insanity.

Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.

Warhol's images made sense to me, although I knew nothing at the time of his background in commercial art. To be honest, I didn't think about him a hell of a lot.