Martha Rosler: An Artist for the Mass

The purpose of art is to make people think; wake them up. In Roland Barthes’, Image, Music and Text, he distinguishes between the work and text writing, “the one is displayed, the other demonstrated;...the work can be held in the hand, the text is held in language, only exists in the movement of discourse” (157). The text is where the audience engages with the work, too becoming thinkers and “author”. This is an idea at the forefront of Martha Rosler’s work, allowing her to create art for the mass, calling attention to the problems of society through engaging her audience in thinking  about domestication and semiotics.

Examples of Works: Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975

Vital Statistics of a Citizen - Simply Obtained Bringing the War Home

Barthes writes that, “the Text, it reads without the inscription of the Father …. The metaphor of the Text separates from that of the work: the latter refers to the image of an organism which grows by vital expansion, by development…; the metaphor of the Text is that of the network” (Image, Word and Text 161).