Love for Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger

"Love for Sale: The Words and Pictures of Barbara Kruger" is a 1990 survey of Kruger's photomontage work. It pairs her black-and-white images with the bold red-and-white text she overlays on them, and it comes with a critical essay by Kate Linker.

The 88-page hardcover book was the first monograph-scale survey of Kruger's mature work. It traces her move from magazine paste-up and design to the large-scale photostat pieces built from found photographs and blunt, second-person captions -- lines like "I shop therefore I am" -- that made her a central figure of 1980s appropriation art. Linker's essay situates the work within feminist theory and the critique of mass media and advertising that runs through it. Harry N. Abrams published the book in 1990.

Kruger trained as a graphic designer and photo editor at Condé Nast publications before turning that layout vocabulary against advertising itself. "Love for Sale" remains one of the standard references on her work from the period.