“Die fast and quiet when they interrogate you, or live so long that
they are ashamed to hurt you anymore."- Holzer This is the only piece of Holzer’s work that can be found in her home.
Jenny Holzer (
American, b. 1950) is a
conceptual and
installation artist. Holzer’s earned her
Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in
painting and
printmaking from
Ohio University in 1972. She went on to earn her
Master of Fine Arts degree from
Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. It was here at
RISD that Holzer first began to introduce language into her artwork.
Jenny Holzer put her mark on the American art world in 1979 (literally and
metaphorically) when she plastered
New York City with her “
Truisms” posters. Her installations have created a new medium for
visual arts:
text. The words themselves become the images making the viewer at least stop and think for a moment. Even if the response to the text is that it is silly, at least Holzer has made the viewer pause and
ponder. Her phrases may seem like
clichés but they are all written by Holzer.
Holzer’s work began as still text but has now moved toward more advanced
technology. She is currently working on an instillation in conjunction with
Intel and
Sense8 for the
Guggenheim SoHo. With this shift toward technology Holzer hopes to bring her art to the attention of people outside the
art world. Holzer believes that Intel and Sense8 have opposite goals of bring technology into the art world and seeing if it can survive. Either way the use of
technology will certainly bring more people to the attention of Holzer’s work.
"If you want to reach a general audience, it's not art issues that are going to compel them to stop on their way to lunch, it has to be life issues."-Holzer
Holzer’s
installations are both
ephemeral and permanent. Images on scrolling
LEDs and the like are obviously temporary but evidence of their existence lives through
photography. A
granite table inscribed with her words is quite permanent. Her work has moved back to the ephemeral. In response to this shift Holzer says,
“I'm always more at ease when something doesn't actually exist. {laughs}That's my preference. I like things that are just electrical impulse and no more. Not necessarily neutral, but fleeting.”
Holzer’s
The Living Series, in the
Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, inspired music by
Eugene Huddleston.
“Do you try to live by most/any of your truisms?”- kjean
“I live them all. To write them I had to imagine them.”-Holzer
Holzer’s first
World Wide Web project,
Please Change Beliefs can be viewed at: http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/holzer/cgi/pcb.cgi
Those who inspired Holzer:
“My grandmother because she saved me from my grandfather.”-Holzer
Nancy Spero“Her insistence on women's bodies as appropriate subject matter.”-Holzer
Louise Bourgeois
Other artists who use text:
Joseph Kosuth
Barbara Kruger
Victor Burgin
Bruce Nauman
Lawrence Weiner
Other installation artists:
Sandy Skoglund
Andy Goldsworthy
Louise Bourgeois
Martin Creed
Judy Pfaff
Sources and Images:
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/context/artists/holzer/hot_trans.html
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/holzer_jenny.html
http://www.wired.com/wire