Barbara Kruger: Untitled

Barbara Kruger presents, for the High Line Art, the large-scale mural Untitled (Blind Idealism Is...), 2016, continuing her unabashed criticism of culture and power.

Untitled (Blind Idealism Is…), 2016, is a large-scale mural by Barbara Kruger, hand-painted on the wall of a building overlooking the High Line at West 22nd Street, visible from the park as well as the street below.

Barbara Kruger: Untitled — Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Blind Idealism Is…), 2016, High Line Commission. Courtesy of Friends of the High Line

Untitled is the new High Line Art commission for Barbara Kruger; continuing her unabashed criticism of culture and power, the mural features the slogan is an adaptation of a quote from Afro-Caribbean philosopher and revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon, which has appeared in multiple works by the artist. The original statement by Fanon, “Blind idealism is reactionary”, suggests that political and religious convictions stem from the situations from which they grow, not from the inherent nature of individual human beings. According to Kruger, the work reflects “how we are to one another” within “the days and nights that construct us.” These texts, along with Kruger’s own writings, resonate with particular potency in today’s political climate.

Barbara Kruger is an american artist who works with pictures and words. She uses the fluency she developed as a graphic designer for publications such Mademoiselle, House & Garden, and Aperture, to inform her work as an artist, insistently addressing the issues of power, property, money, race, and sexuality. Over the past three decades her work has ranged from the photographic merging of image and text, to immersive video installations, to room-wrapping textual exhibitions, to large-scale outdoor displays of words and images. Two of her best-known works – Your body is a battleground and I shop therefore I am – also showcase the feminist overtones of her artworks, and her concentration on women as a lucrative site for advertising and consumerism.

until March 2017
Barbara Kruger
Untitled (Blind Idealism Is...), 2016
New York, Next to the High Line at West 22nd street

Barbara Kruger: Untitled

Barbara Kruger presents, for the High Line Art, the large-scale mural Untitled (Blind Idealism Is...), 2016, continuing her unabashed criticism of culture and power.

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