What do you think?
Rate this book
Jenny Holzer
Now in Paperback Jenny Holzer gained widespread recognition when texts from her Truisms series appeared on a vast electronic advertising board overlooking Times Square. Throughout her career, Holzer has intrigued audiences by placing her provocative messages in unexpected contexts, including posters, metal plaques, stone benches, electronic signs, television spots and Web sites. Her canny melding of the mediums of mass culture with an unadorned, emphatic language is perfectly attuned to an age of advertising slogans, headlines and sound bites. Yet despite the very public nature of much of her work, Holzer has also created more intimate pieces for display in galleries and museums. Her stunning installation at the 1990 Venice Biennale was awarded first prize and brought the artist international acclaim, proving that Holzer's art is equally compelling wherever it is shown--in a setting calculated to reach the masses or in the most rarefied art spaces. This book features a complete collection of the artist's writings, up to and including her 1996 text for a monument in Erlauf, Austria, accompanied by color photography of the entire range of her installations and projects. In an insightful essay and a lively interview with the artist, Diane Waldman traces the history of Holzer's series of writings and the varied environments in which they have appeared. The volume is rounded off with a chronology, exhibition history and bibliography.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
1 person is currently reading
126 people want to read
About the author
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
119 books3 followersThe Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City.
It hosts a permanent collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art.
It hosts a permanent collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 9, 2008
This is the best book I've read all year. I won it on EBAY for 5.99, and it's in immaculate condition.
I've always been fascinated with artwork that plays with language or incorporates language, from Brueghel's "Flemish Proverbs" to the conceptualist works of Kosuth, to what I consider the most fascinating language artist alive, the subject of this book.
Holzer's work is examined chronologically, and depicted in luscious photographs, from the seminal RISD stages where the artist was playing with abandoning art to a public forum (paintings Holzer created and left on a beach, arrangements of squares of bread left for pigeons in strange geometrical patterns) through her breakthrough with her TRUISMS (ex. "MONEY CREATES TASTE," "PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE IS ESCAPISM," "LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL") through her more manifesto-like/shouting INFLAMMATORY ESSAYS, and onto her LIVING SERIES (where she moved towards poetic rather than aphoristic modes of expression) and beyond.
The works are presented in many different languages and in many different countries (in TIMES SQUARE, on the JumboTron in San Francisco, on public buses, on trains in Germany, on walls of homes in other European cities). Artists have rarely even TRIED to make their work this public...I applaud the democratic, artistic mind that believes expression is something which can actually be done outside a gallery or a museum...and that the art object might be something which holds no real commodity value (many of these were just xeroxed messages on copier paper) but hold ideational and cultural value. I think of the Futurist painters in Russia hanging their paintings from trees on a suburban street, and I suppose some of the sixties conceptualists did move their work into a public forum, but this was rarely work that had the sort of direct engagement that Holzer's work asks of the reader/viewer, and these were still works of art with price tags attached.
It's great because you see many of these works photographed on New York City streets where they have been edited and commented upon by anyone with a pen or marker in their pocket...it's fascinating to see where people delete, where they underscore, and where they just plain tear the thing to shreds. All of this is beautiful engagement. This often gives the works a new serendipitious beauty, incidentally, especially when the works have been plastered up palimpsestically over scads of other posters for various concerts, lectures, public service messages, etc.
I'm really taken by this artist, and Diane Waldman has done a fantastic job of trying to contextualize the work and the artist without getting out the butterfly pins and the killing jar which some critics seem to need.
It's fascinating to see how Holzer appropriates and mimics the means of presentation of all sorts of viral media, and inoculates these "authoritative" means of expression with subversive jolts of sanity.
She has presented these works in ephemeral paper, as bronze plaques, as marble benches left in public parks, on sarcophagi...her work seems an almost scientific study of the concept of durability and how humans perceive durability. Some light can be shed on this by a statement she makes in an interview with Waldman where she says she wants the truisms to sound as though they've been in constant use for a hundred years or more. I think she succeeds very well at that, very often. I've encountered Holzer's language being used by people who are completely unaware of its provenance on more than one occasion. Good viral language will get around like that.
I'll close with one of Holzer's very antagonistic INFLAMMATORY ESSAYS...one which seems to engage directly the simian hardware we all unfortunately carrry around, in dreams or in unguarded moments of extreme emotion...
"DON'T TALK DOWN TO ME. DON'T BE
POLITE TO ME. DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME
FEEL NICE. DON'T RELAX. I'LL CUT THE
SMILE OFF YOUR FACE. YOU THINK I DON'T
KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. YOU THINK I'M
AFRAID TO REACT. THE JOKE'S ON YOU. I'M
BIDING MY TIME. LOOKING FOR THE SPOT.
YOU THINK NO ONE CAN REACH YOU, NO
ONE CAN HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE. I'VE BEEN
PLANNING WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING. I'VE
BEEN SAVING WHILE YOU'RE SPENDING.
THE GAME IS ALMOST OVER SO IT'S TIME
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE ME. DO YOU WANT TO
FALL NOT EVER KNOWING WHO TOOK YOU?"
I've always been fascinated with artwork that plays with language or incorporates language, from Brueghel's "Flemish Proverbs" to the conceptualist works of Kosuth, to what I consider the most fascinating language artist alive, the subject of this book.
Holzer's work is examined chronologically, and depicted in luscious photographs, from the seminal RISD stages where the artist was playing with abandoning art to a public forum (paintings Holzer created and left on a beach, arrangements of squares of bread left for pigeons in strange geometrical patterns) through her breakthrough with her TRUISMS (ex. "MONEY CREATES TASTE," "PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE IS ESCAPISM," "LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL") through her more manifesto-like/shouting INFLAMMATORY ESSAYS, and onto her LIVING SERIES (where she moved towards poetic rather than aphoristic modes of expression) and beyond.
The works are presented in many different languages and in many different countries (in TIMES SQUARE, on the JumboTron in San Francisco, on public buses, on trains in Germany, on walls of homes in other European cities). Artists have rarely even TRIED to make their work this public...I applaud the democratic, artistic mind that believes expression is something which can actually be done outside a gallery or a museum...and that the art object might be something which holds no real commodity value (many of these were just xeroxed messages on copier paper) but hold ideational and cultural value. I think of the Futurist painters in Russia hanging their paintings from trees on a suburban street, and I suppose some of the sixties conceptualists did move their work into a public forum, but this was rarely work that had the sort of direct engagement that Holzer's work asks of the reader/viewer, and these were still works of art with price tags attached.
It's great because you see many of these works photographed on New York City streets where they have been edited and commented upon by anyone with a pen or marker in their pocket...it's fascinating to see where people delete, where they underscore, and where they just plain tear the thing to shreds. All of this is beautiful engagement. This often gives the works a new serendipitious beauty, incidentally, especially when the works have been plastered up palimpsestically over scads of other posters for various concerts, lectures, public service messages, etc.
I'm really taken by this artist, and Diane Waldman has done a fantastic job of trying to contextualize the work and the artist without getting out the butterfly pins and the killing jar which some critics seem to need.
It's fascinating to see how Holzer appropriates and mimics the means of presentation of all sorts of viral media, and inoculates these "authoritative" means of expression with subversive jolts of sanity.
She has presented these works in ephemeral paper, as bronze plaques, as marble benches left in public parks, on sarcophagi...her work seems an almost scientific study of the concept of durability and how humans perceive durability. Some light can be shed on this by a statement she makes in an interview with Waldman where she says she wants the truisms to sound as though they've been in constant use for a hundred years or more. I think she succeeds very well at that, very often. I've encountered Holzer's language being used by people who are completely unaware of its provenance on more than one occasion. Good viral language will get around like that.
I'll close with one of Holzer's very antagonistic INFLAMMATORY ESSAYS...one which seems to engage directly the simian hardware we all unfortunately carrry around, in dreams or in unguarded moments of extreme emotion...
"DON'T TALK DOWN TO ME. DON'T BE
POLITE TO ME. DON'T TRY TO MAKE ME
FEEL NICE. DON'T RELAX. I'LL CUT THE
SMILE OFF YOUR FACE. YOU THINK I DON'T
KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. YOU THINK I'M
AFRAID TO REACT. THE JOKE'S ON YOU. I'M
BIDING MY TIME. LOOKING FOR THE SPOT.
YOU THINK NO ONE CAN REACH YOU, NO
ONE CAN HAVE WHAT YOU HAVE. I'VE BEEN
PLANNING WHILE YOU'RE PLAYING. I'VE
BEEN SAVING WHILE YOU'RE SPENDING.
THE GAME IS ALMOST OVER SO IT'S TIME
YOU ACKNOWLEDGE ME. DO YOU WANT TO
FALL NOT EVER KNOWING WHO TOOK YOU?"
February 28, 2023
I've been just obsessed with Jenny Holzer for the longest time and had to find something. And this is what I found on the web, as a PDF, throw my ass in jail.
I had the honor of seeing her light works and benches in Guggenheim of Bilbao last summer and I was very impressed by it. Some of her works are beautifully etched in time, I love the old photos, grainy and very 80's, 90's... there's even the iconic pictures of Nirvana with her work. My tumblr is full of her stuff, I think about her work all the time. As an artist who is mainly focused on writing, this is right up my alley. This was a nice introduction of her history, works and techniques, paired with an interview.
Some of my favourites, lately:
In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.
Abuse of power comes as no surprise. (obviously, but I think about it almost every day)
Turn soft and lovely any time you have the chance.
If you behaved nicely the communists wouldn't exist.
Protect me from what I want.
It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.
Just... extremely powerful to me.
I had the honor of seeing her light works and benches in Guggenheim of Bilbao last summer and I was very impressed by it. Some of her works are beautifully etched in time, I love the old photos, grainy and very 80's, 90's... there's even the iconic pictures of Nirvana with her work. My tumblr is full of her stuff, I think about her work all the time. As an artist who is mainly focused on writing, this is right up my alley. This was a nice introduction of her history, works and techniques, paired with an interview.
Some of my favourites, lately:
In a dream you saw a way to survive and you were full of joy.
Abuse of power comes as no surprise. (obviously, but I think about it almost every day)
Turn soft and lovely any time you have the chance.
If you behaved nicely the communists wouldn't exist.
Protect me from what I want.
It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.
Just... extremely powerful to me.
November 8, 2022
Feels odd to read a complete set of anything, when you've always experienced them as little cultural jewels found when panning for content online. Fleck of gold in the stream vs Fort Knox.
Funnily enough when looking at how Holzer put her work into public spaces there's something quite organic and right in how people did so on tumblr and elsewhere a decade ago, as if the project continued with a mind of its own.
Funnily enough when looking at how Holzer put her work into public spaces there's something quite organic and right in how people did so on tumblr and elsewhere a decade ago, as if the project continued with a mind of its own.
March 22, 2012
Jenny Holzer! I started looking into her after coveting some Holzer-based stamps and signs my friend had (stamp: "WORDS TEND TO BE INADEQUATE." and sign: "IN A DREAM YOU FOUND A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY."). This book covered her work through 1996, and her combination of dark poetry and media makes her absolutely my kind of artist.
June 6, 2008
i love art with words.
i love art in public places.
i love jenny holzer.
i love art in public places.
i love jenny holzer.
May 12, 2022
lovely book about one of my favorite artists. got this from the library but I wanna get a copy for my own personal library sometime
Read
August 5, 2015"SPIT ALL OVER SOMEONE WITH A MOUTHFUL OF MILK IF YOU WANT TO FIND OUT SOMETHING ABOUT HIS PERSONALITY FAST
DIE FAST AND QUIET WHEN THEY INTERROGATE YOU OR LIVE SO LONG THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED TO HURT YOU ANYMORE
IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY
BODIES LIE IN THE BRIGHT GRASS AND SOME ARE MURDERED AND SOME ARE PICNICKING
USE WHAT IS DOMINANT IN A CULTURE TO CHANGE IT QUICKLY" --Jenny Holzer, The Survival Series
DIE FAST AND QUIET WHEN THEY INTERROGATE YOU OR LIVE SO LONG THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED TO HURT YOU ANYMORE
IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY
BODIES LIE IN THE BRIGHT GRASS AND SOME ARE MURDERED AND SOME ARE PICNICKING
USE WHAT IS DOMINANT IN A CULTURE TO CHANGE IT QUICKLY" --Jenny Holzer, The Survival Series
February 16, 2008
If you are a fan of the spoken word, brace yourself to become a fan of the written word - Jenny Holzer epitomizes Poetry, Prose, and Art in the most fabulous ways.
=^..^=
mb
=^..^=
mb
August 28, 2008
A book about a great artist.
September 13, 2012
I will always be "reading" this book. I keep it near my desk as a reminder of what is important, and women who have come before us to explain us to the world.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews