The (Dis)enchantments Of Love

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (under the skin, thin skin, skin deep, thick skin, skin tight, skinned alive), 2003

1. Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

2. Discredited by modern opinion, love's sentimentality must be assumed by the amorous subject as a powerful transgression which leaves him alone and exposed; by a reversal of values, then, it is this sentimentality which today constitutes love's obscenity.

Roland Barthes

Musique Du Jour: I've Got You Under My Skin, The Sun Spots and This Is Not A Love Song, Nouvelle Vague

Would You Like To Leave A Message?

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - Untitled (Question), 1991


Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in. I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty. I want people to be drawn into the space of the work. And a lot of people are like me in that they have relatively short attention spans. So I shoot for the window of opportunity.

Barbara Kruger

Musique Du Jour: America is Waiting, Brian Eno and David Byrne

Render Unto Ceasar

Barbara Kruger (b. 1945) - I shop therefore I am, 1990

"I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

Mark Twain

"There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either."

Robert Graves

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."

Pablo Picasso

"There are people who have money and people who are rich."

Coco Chanel

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."

Woody Allen

"It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money."

Albert Camus

"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."

Voltaire

"When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life: now that I'm old I know it is."

Oscar Wilde

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may be said to be living apart."

e. e. cummings

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

Dorothy Parker

Eleven Mirrors (November Special)

Hans Memling - Earthly Vanity (c. 1485)

Giovanni Bellini - Naked Young Woman in Front of the Mirror (1515)

Parmigianino - Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (c. 1524)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Narcissus (1598-99)

Peter Paul Rubens - Venus at a Mirror (c. 1615)

Georges de la Tour - The Penitent Magdalen (1638)

Diego Velasquez - Venus at her Mirror (1649-51)

Jean- Baptiste Greuze - The Broken Mirror (1763)

Rene Magritte - Dangerous Liaison (1926)

Pablo Picasso - Girl Before a Mirror (1932)

Barbara Kruger - Who's the Fairest of them All? (date unknown)

"The mirror reflects all objects without being sullied."

Confucious