Jenny Holzer
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Jenny Holzer (born 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio) is an American conceptual artist. She attended Ohio University (in Athens, Ohio), Rhode Island School of Design, and the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Holzer was originally an abstract artist, focusing on painting and printmaking, but after moving to New York City in 1977, she began working with text as art.
The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Street posters are her favorite medium, and she also makes use of a variety of other media, including LED signs, plaques, benches, stickers, T-shirts, and the Internet. Her work has also been integrated into the work of Canadian contemporary dance troupe Holy Body Tattoo.
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[edit] Analysis of work
The arresting quality of Holzer's billboards is an exploitation of urban space, which took its modern form as a space solely for commerce. Accordingly, the viewer is usually prepared to see commercial messages. With Holzer's work, viewers are instead confronted with statements such as "it is in your self-interest to be very tender." These statements reverse the function of advertisements, whose objective is to sell a product to the viewer, often with disregard for their best interests.
As in the case of the popular artist Christo and his large, public, and less confrontational installations, Holzer was concerned with urban space that was being reclaimed and re-gentrified by private interests around 1980. The city of New York had, prior to the 1970s, provided artists with access to public spaces for installations with tax dollars. The city was notorious for going bankrupt in 1976 and public funding for artists was reduced. By 1980, the turnaround from an initimidating, crime-ridden city was already occurring. This change, however, was made possible by corporate investment, and accordingly, Holzer had to negotiate space for an art with no real commercial prospects.[citation needed]
By avoiding any one style of electronic or engraved calligraphy, and instead taking an interest in the appearance of text in a specific font, weight, place, or time, Holzer draws the viewer's attention to text itself. Her work reminds the viewer that any text, including an advertising message or government announcement, is never without a material existence, a place and time, and an author. The 1990 Gulf War inspired Holzer to make art that was more distinctly political. Since then, she has de-emphasized her participation in the American artistic scene.[citation needed]
[edit] Works
- Truisms (1977–) [1] is probably her most well-known work. Holzer has compiled a series of statements and aphorisms ("truisms") and has publicised them in a variety of ways: listed on street posters, in telephone booths, and even, in 1982, on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards, or in 1999 on a BMW V12 LMR race car for the 24 Hours of Le Mans
- Inflammatory Essays (1978–79), in which she brought texts influenced by Trotsky, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Emma Goldman onto the streets
- Living Series (early 1980s), using more monumental media such as bronze plaques and billboards
- Survival Series (1983–1985), with more militant aphorisms, including "Men Don't Protect You Anymore," a phrase reproduced on condoms and street billboards alike
- Under a Rock
- Lament
- Child Text, a piece on motherhood for the 1990 Venice Biennale
- Green Table (1992), a large granite picnic table with inscriptions, part of the Stuart Collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
- Please Change Beliefs (1995) [2], created for the internet art gallery adaweb [3].
- For the City (2005), nighttime projections of declassified government documents on the exterior of New York University's Bobst Library, and poetry on the exteriors of Rockefeller Center and the New York Public Library in Manhattan [4]
[edit] See also
- Similar artists
[edit] External links
- Ground Zero’s Saving Grace Metropolis Magazine - Installation at 7 World Trade Center
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum installation
- Please Change Beliefs Visitors of the website are allowed to evaluate and modify a selection of Holzer's Truisms.
- Blue light special of a different kind tells a good story post-gazette.com - July 20, 2005
- Article with photos about Holzer's light projections in London
- Work of art by Jenny Holzer in Goslar, Germany
