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Creativity Quote by Barbara Kruger

"I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes, I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty"

About this Quote

Kruger’s best trick is making the hard stuff look easy. She’s telling you, almost with a shrug, that her work is aimed at the gnarly architecture of power and social behavior, yet she refuses to bury that ambition under virtuoso visual gymnastics. That refusal isn’t modesty; it’s strategy. In a culture that loves to equate difficulty with seriousness, Kruger flips the hierarchy: conceptual density, formal clarity. The “low degree of difficulty” is a deliberate aesthetic of legibility.

Read in the context of her signature style - stark black-and-white images, declarative Futura text, the visual grammar of ads and headlines - the line doubles as a critique of the art world’s gatekeeping. High difficulty can function like a velvet rope, signaling taste and expertise while quietly discouraging the uninitiated. Kruger sidesteps that whole economy. She borrows the language of mass persuasion precisely because power speaks in mass language: slogans, commands, intimacy that isn’t earned. By keeping the presentation blunt, she forces the viewer to confront content rather than admire craft as an escape hatch.

There’s also a sly admission here about complicity. If your subject is social power, your work can’t pretend to float above social systems. Kruger’s pared-down presentation mirrors the mechanisms she interrogates: direct address, quick capture, minimal friction. The subtext is bracing: if the message lands fast, you don’t get to claim you “didn’t get it.”

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TopicArt
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Kruger, Barbara. (2026, February 19). I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes, I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-deal-with-the-complexities-of-power-and-40310/

Chicago Style
Kruger, Barbara. "I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes, I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty." FixQuotes. February 19, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-deal-with-the-complexities-of-power-and-40310/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes, I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty." FixQuotes, 19 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-try-to-deal-with-the-complexities-of-power-and-40310/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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Complexities of Power and Simplicity in Visual Art - Barbara Kruger
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About the Author

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Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is a Artist from USA.

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