This Artwork Changed My Life: Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Your body is a battleground)”

November 24, 2020

Barbara Kruger, professor in the UCLA Department of art, is internationally known for her distinctive image and text pieces. Kruger has been active in a range of fields, including video and audio installation, photography, sculpture, architecture, and graphic design as well as in critical writing, curatorship, and various forms of public advocacy. 

Barbara Kruger Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989 "The Inaugural Installation" at The Broad, Los Angeles

"Elephant and Artsy have come together to present This Artwork Changed My Life, a creative collaboration that shares the stories of life-changing encounters with art. A new piece will be published every two weeks on both Elephant and Artsy. Together, our publications want to celebrate the personal and transformative power of art.

Out today on Elephant is Nkgopoleng Moloi on Simone Leigh’s Brick House.

 

You might imagine the moment when artwork changes your life to be in the hall of a grandiose gallery. Standing in front of 

Michaelangelo’s David (1501–04), for example, stunned by its sheer magnitude; seeing Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1510), your feet aching from being firmly planted in front of the painting; or having an epiphany while contemplating in the Rothko room at Tate Modern.

 

But I have never actually seen the piece of art that has meant most to me in person. That’s because I’ve never been to Los Angeles, where the 9-foot square silkscreen print of Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989) is displayed at The Broad. I have only ever seen reprints on postcards, T-shirts, the sides of buildings, and hanging in bedrooms. But that doesn’t seem to matter: Purposefully anti-hierarchical, Barbara Kruger’s work shows that a meaningful interaction with art doesn’t have to be cultivated in a traditional setting.

 

And that is exactly how I first encountered her work, or rather a tribute to her work, in a moment when I most needed to see it."— Isobel van Hagen, Nov. 24, 2020

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Artsy website.
Read more about Barbara Kruger.

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