Jenny Holzer

by Joan Simon

Jenny Holzer (b.1950) is one of the most significant artists to work in the public realm since the 1980s. Starting on the streets of New York with simple fly-posters, she has gone on to disseminate her truisms, slogans, memorials and poems through a variety of media. They are enunciated by an unstable register of personae, be it ad-man, stand-up comedian, torturer, victim or evangelist. The sites for her work range from T-shirts and golf balls to dazzling electronic signboards at baseball stadiums. Her work uses language to investigate the nature of ideologies as conscious and unconscious formations about identity and experience. Her complex and poetic texts can be shocking, humorous and intriguing in content. At the same time she draws on Minimalism's use of industrial materials and deploys scale, movement and light to create art of great formal power and beauty. In the Survey, art critic and academic David Joselit surveys Holzer's changing oeuvre, from the first appearance of the streetwise Truisms in the late 1970 to her large-scale installations in museums worldwide. Joan Simon, curator of Holzer's first solo US museum exhibition, discusses with the artist her use of language and its relationship to visual form. In the Focus, Slovenian cultural theorist and philosopher Renata Salecl takes an in-depth look at Holzer's Lustmord series, which was precipitated by the events in the former Yugoslavia and boldly addresses the atrocities committed in war. For the Artist's Choice, the artist's fragmented, unexpected language is mirrored in Samuel Beckett's Ill Seen Ill Said , which the artist has chosen alongside extracts from Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti. A text by the artist on her literary influences accompanies a selection of her signature texts in the Artist's Writings section.

Genres: Art, Poetry, Nonfiction, Feminism, Art History

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

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".

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

“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”

[J Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Ash]

can’t explain it but i love her and hate her at the same time… rly into Art Books right now

[vani]

Hey does anyone know what page/line/volume/chapter/paragraph in chapter "all things are delicatey connected" on?
Thanks x

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

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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[Mills College Library]

709.73 H7625 1983