AI Ways of Seeing: Homage Barbara Kruger

Part Five: Exploring the AI Style of Conceptual Artist Barbara Kruger

I am excited to present the fifth installment of the AI Ways of Seeing medium.com series, which is exploring art somewhat in the iconoclastic tradition of the great book by John Berger, Ways of Seeing (1972, Penguin Books). This book was hugely influential in my intellectual and creative development.

In it, Berger provides essays in words, but also visual essays. Like those, this one is a visual essay. You are requested to look and see, but not think too much. Experience.

Before we get going here, you might like to see the previous essay in the series:

AI Ways of Seeing: Homage Robert Mapplethorpe

About Our Artist’s Style

Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist best known for her association with the Pictures Generation exibition.

This is the first conceptual artist style in this series. I prefer the abstraction of paint and had some concerns about attempting a photo-realistic style, but the results seem satisfactory.

On a personal level, Kruger’s work was immensely important to me. In 1986 I was just getting started with visual art, I was at University — and I have clear memories of Kruger being spruked by classmates. We were post-Moderns, then.

All right, here we go. Rmember this is about seeing, not thinking. Don’t opinionate, experience. There’s always plenty of time for opinion later.

Figure 1 Homage Barbara Kruger, It was never your body, Digital/Algorithmic, 4096x4096px, Serial Number 00419–4267157364

Figure 2 Homage Barbara Kruger, It was never your body, Digital/Algorithmic, 5120x3840px, Serial Number 00422–2888752694

Figure 3 Homage Barbara Kruger, Chaos is your karma, Digital/Algorithmic, 4096x2048px, Serial Number: unknown

Figure 4 Homage Barbara Kruger, Are you insane, Digital/Algorithmic, 2560x2048px, Serial Number unknown

Figure 5 Homage Barbara Kruger, Retain Therapy or Fentanyl, Digital Algorithmic, 3072x2048px, Serial Number unknown

Figure 6 Homage Barbara Kruger, It can’t get much worse, Digital/Algorithmic, 2816x1408px, Serial Number: e8950ffc-985c-4b9c-a7d9–2aef9166b809

Figure 7 Homage Barbara Kruger, Shithole Country, Digital/Algorithmic, 2816x1408px, Serial Number: bc05e58a-d0ed-4413-ac7e-0d563428016e

Figure 8 Homage Barbara Kruger, It was never your body, Digital/Algorithmic, 1792x2304px, Serial Number: 307e5873–2b5a-4a58-ac12–7ab72131f9a8

Figure 9 Homage Barbara Kruger, It was never your body, Digital/Algorithmic, 1792x2304, Serial Number: f2d4c6b0-cfc8–464a-9b68-f148881819e6

That’s all for now.

If you enjoyed this visual essay, you might like to read about my Spaceship Earth AI Project:

The Spaceship Earth AI Project