Barbara Kruger : Art History Archive

Shopping, a common activity conducted by almost everyone at least once a month, is such a normal subject in our everyday life, one barely puts any thoughts into the potential semiotic explanations behind it. According to the two essays, “The Signs of Shopping” and “The Science of Shopping,” Shopping has significant impacts on one’s self-identification. It is a two way straight, the consumers’ shopping styles can also influence the economic status of the retails businesses.

Renaissance shopping was “a key moment that brought people of different status, religion, and sex together” (Welch, 2005, p. 303). Through consumption and material culture, one can see the meaning behind both the individual and collective actions of consumers.

The phenomenon of consumerism is quiet powerful due to the impact on individual’s lives. Society has come to the point, happiness is associated with consumption. However, the way consumerism works, is if the items being purchased gives temporary happiness. There individuals are always buying the latest products to remain happy. In the text, “The Cult you’re in” Kalle Lasn, discusses a cult-like nature of consumer culture on Americans. Lasn uses the work ‘cult’ as a metaphor; he does not mean an actual cult but American consumers seem to be in a cult-like nature. The ideal example of Lasns argument is the text, “The man behind Abercrombie and Fitch”, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, goes in great depth of the life of the CEO, Mike Jeffries, of

A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products,

Judith Levine wrote the book “Not Buying It’’.It is a nonfiction book about Judith Levine,along with her friend Paul,to go 12 months(1 year)without shopping . Levine researched consumerism and anti-consumerist movements.Judith Levine was led to write “Not Buying It’; because she thought it was “the confession of a woman any reader can identify with.Someone who can’t live without French roast coffee or SmartWool socks,but someone who has reached their limit with our consumption,and its effects on the earth and everyone who dwells here”.

In society today, consumerism is a major component in the lives of not only Americans, but around the world. People are constantly looking for the next best thing to replace the things they already have. The purpose of this essay is to break down consumerism by using rhetorical analysis on the commercial for Kia’s new crosstrek, the Niro. This commercial relies heavily on the appeal to humor by having unrealistic, comedic actions. Along with humor, it establishes credibility by having a well-known comedic actress, Melissa McCarthy, as the star. The advertisement also plays on a person’s wanting to be a hero by having the commercial title be “Hero’s Journey.”

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

Hunger for luxury items and people’s strife for the brands and items they associate with being beyond reach is paramount for this system. It is this drive for items one can’t have that the author feels is one of the benefits of consumerism. He declares, “…the aspiration of the poor to

Cindy Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey in 1954, but moved to Huntington, New York where she grew up. Cindy went to college at the State University of Buffalo and started as a painter. She soon became frustrated with painting because she had nothing else to express in a painting, so she picked up a camera. Cindy Sherman is known for her photography of conceptual portraits. Conceptual portraits tell a story or illustrate and idea. Cindy would play around with make-up, costumes, and wigs and take on the roles of the house wife, a prostitute, the woman in distress, etc... for these portraits. These portraits would raise the challenging questions about woman in society. Although, this is not what she intended to do.

Like every other artistry representation either through painting, photography, sculpture etc, I find Cindy Sherman's passion for photography rather fascinating. She was born in January 19th, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Her love and passion for art is the reason why I've decided to take interest in her works because she wasn't born into a family of painters, photographers or the family that associated with "art" hence, she carved and turned her interest in art into a global recognition. She was more into painting at her initial age but fell-out of it for photography at Buffalo State College where she met Barbara Jo Revelle who introduced her to conceptual art and other contemporary forms. In my research, I discovered that Cindy Sherman's

Feminism is the advocacy of equal women's rights. Barbara Kruger was born towards the end of WWII, thus beginning the era where women were giving factory work in order to aid the war while the men were fighting overseas. Kruger is a conceptual artist who focused her work on on many aspects of life such as feminism. Kruger confronted her viewers in a instigative manner, causing them to reconsider any preconceived notions. She had a tendency to pair photographs with assertive text that challenged her viewers. Her prints normally consisted of black-and-white photographs overlaid with controversial captions in white-on-red bold font. Kruger sheds light on issues in society that has been deemed as sensitive, has been normalized, or is simply being ignored.

Cindy Sherman was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey and born on January 19th, 1954 but she grew up in Huntington, New York. She is well known by her beautiful photography and her film directing. But she is famous for her conceptual portraits. Conceptual portraits are photographs that try to illustrate an idea or story for the viewers. Sherman started her artistic career with painting in college at Buffalo State University, but as she continued with painting she became frustrated with her results so she tried photography, soon after she fell in love with it. The reason she loved photography was the immediacy of the artwork. When she painted it would take her months to make one painting and it would make her frustrated and she loved with photography

The structure and actions of the pedaling facility allegorize businesses in contemporary society. Both appeal to the materialistic mindsets of people through promises of material comfort to manipulate people to buy their products and conform to their demands. When Bing sees this, and tries to speak out against it, he is faced with the realization that he, as an individual, can do nothing in the face of corporate culture. Brooker’s FMM, in this way, comments on how businesses exploit the materialistic environment commerce develops to influence the desires and choices of individuals, and the futility of individuals trying to speak out against it.

When individuals in contemporary society engage with products they are principally employing them as ‘signs’ rather than ‘things’, actively manipulating them in such a way as to communicate information about themselves to others. It is commonly assumed that these individuals, in their capacity as consumers, engage with products in order to achieve ‘self-construction’, the purpose of their subjectivity. Shopping is not merely the acquisition of things; it is the

Agreeing with Shields (1992), the presumption of shopping no longer included the concepts of utility and need and rather transformed consumption into a cultural event predominated by the emphasis on providing a pleasurable experience by regarding shopping as a leisure activity, thereby demarcating the shoppers among the ones who found pleasure in it and those who did not. It became a significant marker for understanding identities through a series of socially constructed and subjective experiences, while simultaneously peeling the complex layers of the psychological ideologies of desire and want.