Women's Thoughts and Place in Modern Arts: A Look at Barbara Kruger's Works and Photography

Feminist art is one of the main branches of art and is a substantial artistic movement in the west during the 20th century whose artists move toward challenging art and its identification in connection to gender. Feminist art considers the whole effective elements on the artwork and subjects as emotional conditions of women, women’s rights, violence and discrimination against women, politics and natural environment. It highlights the point that the whole art world is devoted and dedicated to men. Art history confirms this fact. So from this viewpoint, presenting and answering a series of questions, is inevitable. Questions such as these: Why doesn’t the art history include prominent women? Why is a woman’s dignity and position underestimated in art? In what ways can we promote feminist tendencies in art? Should women’s art be different from the one that is produced by the opposite sex? In such a condition, a group of artists appear in art world with the aim of removing and solving ambiguities and on the other hand challenge the present situation by using their ideas and artistic media. Barbara Kruger, the American photographer, is one of the most prominent examples of this case. Kruger, in fact, moved toward criticizing the current condition by using photos and applying its techniques in favor of expanding women’s tendencies. Her photos hold a hidden reality in the subject that what we see is no longer believable and what is seen is not what that is perceived. This article aims to represent such subject matters by considering women’s attitudes in the present age and by taking a look and analyzing Kruger’s photos, works and beliefs.