Barbara Kruger

In this striking composition, Kruger uses Michelangelo’s masterful rendering of the creation of man in the Sistine Chapel as a backdrop for her razor–sharp text. Kruger constructs a parallel between the biblical creation story, represented by the delicate touch of God's finger to Adam's, and that of a masterpiece of Western art. She expertly contrasts the strident, direct address of the text with the soft luminosity and heavenly focus of Michelangelo’s fresco. The potent intersection of text and imagery suggests that art is a secularized religion that can be bought and sold, provided we believe in its immortality. By using the pronoun "you," Kruger implicates us within the system that peddles faith in the artist.

"I had to figure out how to bring the world into my art," Kruger has said. Adopting the language of advertising and graphic design (her former profession), she came to prominence in the 1980s, a period defined by rampant consumerism in the United States, distilling images and words into compelling missives in which visual culture is never distant from the political, sexual, and economic structures that inform our lives. Kruger's projects have been displayed on billboards, buses, and bus stops and as posters, large-scale murals, and architectural commissions.