| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 美術學系 === 107 === Barbara Kruger's works changed with the evolution of feminism. She ironically deconstructed and reconstructed pictures and words, and critically understood the social mechanisms of daily life construction, consumption, seduction and control. This thesis divides Kruger's works into three categories: "gender discourse", "patriarchal hegemony" and "subject self".
Kruger's works with pictures and words convey gender differences which are meanings under cultural interpretation, and gender forces bodies to become cultural symbols. Male phallus symbolizes power in patriarchal society, and disparaging to female body leads to ideological domination. Stereotypes even facilitate to create standardized subjects. In the patriarchal society, women are the exploited objects, exchangeable commodities, and women are shaped into objects of sexual desire, and lost themselves under the mask of femininity. Body aesthetics makes bodies to become alienated products and consuming objects. The "slim tyranny" of bourgeois is a powerful discipline which culturally standardizes women. Bodies are the struggling fields of power, and women become gloomy silent victims under normative rights. Women should declare a war to patriarchy arbitrary discourse through writing to break the rule of Phallogocentric discourse.
The ironic combination of Kruger's works of pictures and words with humor reveals hidden realities of society and women's unspeakable claims. Women's long-repressed and domesticated minds and bodies are swayed by resonating with Kruger's works, therefore the shackles of rigid bodies and minds are loosened. The works of Kruger's feminine issues complete stage tasks, they are full of great historical significance and value.
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