Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances [Paperback]

Barbara Kruger (Author)

Book Description

Series: Writing Art | Publication Date: July 25, 1994

Who speaks? Who is silent? Who is seen? Who is absent? These questions focus on how cultures are constructed through pictures and words, how we are seduced into a world of appearances: into a pose of who we are and aren't. On both an emotional and an economic level, images and texts have the power to make us rich or poor. In these essays and reviews, written over the last decade, Barbara Kruger addresses that power with intelligence and wit, in the hope of engaging both our criticality and our dreams of affirmation.Barbara Kruger is an artist whose pictures and words engage issues of power, sex, money, difference, and death. Her work has appeared throughout America, Europe, and Japan in galleries, newspapers, magazines, and museums and on billboards, matchbooks, TV programs, t-shirts, postcards, and shopping bags. She has written about television, film, and cultures for Artforum, Esquire, the New York Times, and the Village Voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A thought-provoking critique of television programs and current films in their capacity to influence and shape culture.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Like her work as a visual artist, Kruger's essays, published in such journals as Artforum and the Village Voice, are about the ideological messages encoded in popular culture and how those messages convey certain attitudes toward the roles of women and minorities. Probing such seemingly innocuous television programming as "L.A. Law," "Entertainment Tonight," "The Home Shopping Club," "Good Morning, America," and the Iran-Contra hearings, as well as more subversive cultural products such as the independent films of Yvonne Rainer and Chantal Ackerman, Howard Stern's radio show, and the work of Andy Warhol, Kruger deconstructs media and art and shows how words and images manipulate and obscure meaning as they are force-fed down our throats. Kruger is an important contemporary artist, and her writing, while somewhat dense and polemical, is worthy of examination. Benjamin Segedin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 251 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (July 25, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262611066
• ISBN-13: 978-0262611060
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #494,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remote Control by Barbara Kruger, September 25, 2000

By 

Nate Lacktman (Gainesville, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances (Writing Art) (Hardcover)

Kruger's work is some of her best yet! She is, without a doubt, the most effective and AFFECTIVE artist of our time. Her art aggressively attacks the viewer, as do her written words. She takes control, and forces the reader to reflect on his or her position/experience/actions in life. Influential and powerful, radical, aggressive, and moving, the book is all put together with wit, dark humor, and poetic grace. An outstanding piece of work from an outstanding, talanted artist!

-Nathaniel Lacktman

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book and good seller, December 3, 2011

By 

A. Ullman - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances (Paperback)

Very interesting book for a visual artist to write, I share the same opinion that she does. I love her artwork too. No problem with the seller.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars i really want to like it, October 20, 2005

By 

just some "guy" (philadelphia, pa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances (Paperback)

i really do, but it's so academic at times i just can't get into it. it's not that i'm not an intelligent guy because i am, and it's not that i don't appreciate kruger's work because i do. it's simply that what i most love about kruger is the accessability of her work, and this book was very inaccessable at times. i'm glad i have it in my collection, but i wouldn't call it an "enjoyable" read. it's really more work than fun. i guess it depends on your feelings about kruger if the work is worth it. this is an important book for an art historian or cultural critic, but i would not recomend it as an introduction to kruger.