There are similarities and differences in the ways of seeing demonstrated in John Berger's book Ways of Seeing and the art works in Barbara Kruger's retrospective exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Kruger tends to present images and words that derive their meanings from their unexpected juxtaposition. The meanings that Kruger creates are almost endless because she uses words that do not necessarily connect with the image, or, if they do seem to have obvious connections, force the viewer to think farther about what s/he is looking at. In his sections on advertising, and in other places, Berger discusses the ways that combinations of images and text generate meanings that are not completely obvious. But his primary means of making the "reader" see freshly is the juxtaposition of images from clearly understood contexts.
It is not surprising that the main similarities between the two are related to Berger discussion of advertising, since Kruger started in commercial advertising, "performing serialized exercises with pictures and words" that were probably very much like the advertisements that Berger uses (quoted in Goldstein). One example of this is the advertisement in which a beautiful woman in a towel looks out the window toward a handsome man who is arriving with his Rolls Royce. The text reads, "things happen after a badedas bath" and it is an advertisement for a bath product (145). As Berger says, this kind of advertising "promises a personal transformation through the product it is selling"-- the potential buyer is offered wealth and sex by this advertisement; understanding that possessing the product is merely one element in having all these things (145). As the potential buyer looks at the ad s/he understands that people who can afford Rolls Royces and beautiful homes use this product and that owning it will make him/her more like these people.
Kruger uses her adve...