Who is Barbara Kruger?
Barbara Kruger is an an American conceptual artist who was born in 1945 in Newark, New Jersey. Her artwork criticizes everything that is wrong with the stereotypical society. Additionally, she encourages viewers to reflect and generate discourse by challenging typical ideas about gender, sex, religion, consumerism, greed, and power that are fueled by the mass media.
Kruger's Art
Kruger creates her unique art by combining images with provocative text. She directly addresses her audience to contemplate the current state of our society by using vigilance, humor, and empathy. Her artwork aims to expose and undermine the power dynamics of identity, desire, and consumerism—which lead to the promotion of esoteric philosophical debates. As shrinking attention spans collide with the voyeurism and narcissism that define contemporary life, her powerful installations invite viewers to reconsider how we relate to one another.
Digital photos from Barbara Kruger's exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute
Art and Empathy
In "On the Limits of Empathy," Juliet Koss examines the relationship between empathy and Barbara Kruger's work and describes the history behind various theories related to Einfühlung. In the article, Juliet refers to the concept of Einfühlung (aesthetic empathy) which is the activity of "feeling into." While interpersonal empathy mainly concerns other human beings, Einfühlung describes an embodied response to an object, environment, or image (i.e. human artifacts) and was developed using overlapping ideas within philosophical aesthetics, perceptual psychology, art, optics, and architectural history. Theorists once believed one's capacity for aesthetic judgment is built upon the level of their cultural and intellectual background as well as their gender; however, this elitist perspective became unsubstantial due to the creation of mass media. The emergence of mass media allowed individuals of various statuses to experience the feeling of Einfühlung in movie theaters and museums.
The resurgence of empathy is often interpreted as "a distancing from rigorous intellectualism of poststructural discourse and the allegiances of identity politics." However, Juliet states "Empathy appears to promise a constructive theoretical approach that values emotional, as much as rational understanding and allows for the possibility of bridging radically different subject positions, both within and across historical periods and geographical zones." As humans, we are all connected. We are connected through evolution, nature, and the art that represents human life as well as human environments. Art provokes a special type of empathy that can be cultivated into real-life compassion, therefore, leading to the creation of kinder communities and promoting cultural understanding.
Sources
Koss, Juliet. “On the Limits of Empathy.” The Art Bulletin, vol. 88, no. 1, 2006, pp. 139–157. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/stable/25067229.
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