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Jenny Holzer: Truisms And Essays
Artwork by Jenny Holzer.
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Jenny Holzer
54 books118 followersJenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.
Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.
Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.
Holzer wrote texts herself for a long time between 1977 and 2001. However since 1993, she has been mainly working with texts written by others. Some of these are literary texts by great authors such as the Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, Henri Cole (USA), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria), Fadhil Al-Azawi (Iraq), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). She also uses texts from different contexts, such as passages from de-classified US Army documents from the war in Iraq. For example, a large LED work presents excerpts from the minutes of interrogations of American soldiers who had committed human rights violations and war crimes in Abu Ghraib, making what was once secret public. Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.
Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.
Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.
Holzer wrote texts herself for a long time between 1977 and 2001. However since 1993, she has been mainly working with texts written by others. Some of these are literary texts by great authors such as the Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, Henri Cole (USA), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria), Fadhil Al-Azawi (Iraq), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). She also uses texts from different contexts, such as passages from de-classified US Army documents from the war in Iraq. For example, a large LED work presents excerpts from the minutes of interrogations of American soldiers who had committed human rights violations and war crimes in Abu Ghraib, making what was once secret public. Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 1, 2017
My favorite living artist. This book has a nice collection of her work. She creates large series of art pieces and sometimes books/showcases only print or display very small excerpts, but this book includes a significant percentage of each series so that you really get a sense of what each one entails and how Holzer works as an artist.
August 28, 2017
Jenny Holzer's artwork is Good. I am knocking back a star because the interview with Joan Simon is Bad ( or more just boring), and I have to treat this as a book sort of
November 4, 2018
Ms Holzer is known for her textual art, with which she displayed brief texts in public area ("TECHNOLOGY WILL MAKE OR BREAK US","WAR IS A PURIFICATION RITE","SEPARATISM IS THE WAY TO A NEW BEGINNING"). Plenty of them are listed here but they somehow lose their power in this printed form. The opening interview is also one of the least interesting ones in this series but it's somehow compensated by the other writings of Ms Holzer, in the section "Artist's Writings".
March 30, 2008
start anywhere with Jenny Holzer -but this or LAMENTS would be my choice, since i can't find "Writing = Schriften" here.
Holzer is text as art in the most literate and graphic and expansive sense. There is plenty of theory out there about JH, but i don't try to comprehend it and you don't need it. She makes language a dimensional experience in her installations, and/but the texts work on the page as well as the reader become the site of the installation.
Holzer is text as art in the most literate and graphic and expansive sense. There is plenty of theory out there about JH, but i don't try to comprehend it and you don't need it. She makes language a dimensional experience in her installations, and/but the texts work on the page as well as the reader become the site of the installation.
July 3, 2021
I've always been a big fan of Truisms, but this book opened up Jenny Holzer's other work, her inspiration, and some of her personal history of the context of her art at the time. The interview and essays opened up her work, even though the images in the book fall a little flat since her work is more in the public space and experiential.
November 14, 2018
“savor kindness because cruelty is always possible later”
“life is not a rehearsal”
“ it is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender”
“life is not a rehearsal”
“ it is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender”
December 7, 2022
Huge fan of Jenny’s work! A very strong presentation of her work with good writing. Whenever she is interviewed I am always fascinated to read her perspective about how she sees her work.
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September 28, 2024can’t explain it but i love her and hate her at the same time… rly into Art Books right now
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August 19, 2025Hey does anyone know what page/line/volume/chapter/paragraph in chapter "all things are delicatey connected" on?
Thanks x
Thanks x
March 6, 2021
Some really great, in-depth essays and analysis, and a LOT of Holzer art I hadn't seen before -- I was previously most familiar with her Truisms, which don't feature in this collection. I'm very impressed by the photography -- the art portrayed is very much meant to be experiential, and the photographer managed to somewhat successfully convey the experience of being there, rather than getting caught up in portraying the full text of each piece. Gorgeous, high quality book.
February 16, 2008
My kind of woman - Ms. Holzer uses her WORDS as ART. Beautiful, visual, memorable. Check it out. Includes her truisms - powerful.
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October 10, 2014709.73 H7625 1983
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews