Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an Americanneo-conceptual artist, based inHoosick,New York. Her work focuses on the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertisingbillboards, projections on buildings and other structures, and illuminated electronic displays.
Holzer belongs to thefeminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, and was an active member ofColab during this time, participating in the famousTimes Square Show.
Holzer was born on July 29, 1950 inGallipolis, Ohio.[1] Originally aspiring to become an abstract painter,[2] she took general art courses atDuke University (1968–70) and then studied painting, printmaking, and drawing at theUniversity of Chicago before completing her BFA atOhio University in 1972. After taking summer courses at theRhode Island School of Design in 1974, she entered its MFA program in 1975.[3] She moved to Manhattan in 1976, joined the Whitney Museum'sIndependent Study Program, and began her first work with language, installation and public art.[2] She received her MFA from RISD in 1977[4] and was an active member ofColab from 1977 to around 1981,[5] participating in the famousTimes Square Show and other Colab projects.
Holzer is known as a neo-conceptual artist.[2] Most of her work is presented in public spaces and includes words and ideas,[6] in the form ofword art[7][8] (also known as text art.[9]). The public dimension is integral to Holzer's work. Her large-scale installations have included advertising billboards, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, and illuminated electronic displays.LED signs have become her most visible medium, although her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including street posters, painted signs, stone benches, paintings, photographs, sound, video, projections, theInternet, T-shirts forWilli Smith, and a race car forBMW. Text-based light projections have been central to Holzer's practice since 1996.[10] From 2010, her LED signs started becoming more sculptural. Holzer is no longer the author of her texts, and in the ensuing years, she returned to her roots by painting.[11][when?]
Holzer only uses capital letters in her work and frequently words or phrases are italicized. She has stated before that this is because she wants to "show some sense of urgency and to speak a bit loudly".[12]
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. Other female contemporaries includeBarbara Kruger,Cindy Sherman,Sarah Charlesworth, andLouise Lawler.[13]
The subject of Holzer's work often relates to feminism and sexism. Her work discusses heavy subjects such as sexual assault against women. She has said that she gravitates towards subjects such as this due to family dysfunction she has experienced and because she claims "we don't need work on joy."[12]
Installation in lobby at7 WTCDetail of 7 WTC installationJenny Holzer, "Xenon" from The National Security Archive
Holzer's initial public works,Truisms (1977–79), are among her best-known.[14] They first appeared as anonymous broadsheets that she printed in black italic script in capital letters on white paper and wheat-pasted to buildings, walls and fences in and around Manhattan.[3] These one-liners are a distillation of an erudite reading list from the Whitney Independent Study Program, where she was a student.[15] She printed otherTruisms on posters, T-shirts and stickers, and carved them into stone benches. In late 1980, Holzer's mail art and street leaflets were included in the exhibitionSocial Strategies by Women Artists at London'sInstitute of Contemporary Arts, curated byLucy Lippard.[16]
In 1981, Holzer initiated theLiving series, printed on aluminum and bronze plaques, the presentation format used by medical and government buildings. TheLiving series addressed the necessities of daily life: eating, breathing, sleeping, and human relationships. Her bland, short instructions were accompanied by paintings by American artistPeter Nadin, whose portraits of men and women attached to metal posts further articulated the emptiness of both life and message in the information age.[17]
Inflammatory Essays was a work consisting of posters Holzer created from 1979 to 1982 and put up throughout New York.[18][19] The statements on the posters were influenced by political figures includingEmma Goldman,Vladimir Lenin, andMao Tse-tung.[18] In 2018 an excerpt from that work was printed on a card stitched onto the back of the dressLorde wore to theGrammys; the excerpt read, "Rejoice! Our times are intolerable. Take courage, for the worst is a harbinger of the best. Only dire circumstance can precipitate the overthrow of oppressors. The old & corrupt must be laid to waste before the just can triumph. Contradiction will be heightened. The reckoning will be hastened by the staging of seed disturbances. The apocalypse will blossom."[19] Others at the Grammys wore white roses or all-white clothes to express solidarity with theTime's Up movement; Lorde wrote, "My version of a white rose — THE APOCALYPSE WILL BLOSSOM — an excerpt from the greatest of all time, jenny holzer."[19]
Light Lines at the Guggenheim Museum in 2024.
The medium of modern computer systems became an important component in Holzer's work in 1982, when the artist installed her first large electronic sign on the Spectacolor board in New York'sTimes Square.[20] Sponsored by thePublic Art Fund program, the use oflight-emitting diodes (LEDs) allowed Holzer to reach a larger audience. The texts in her subsequentSurvival series, compiled in 1983–85, speak to the great pain, delight, and ridiculousness of living in contemporary society.[21] She began working with stone in 1986; for her exhibition that year at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, Holzer introduced a total environment where viewers were confronted with the relentless visual buzz of a horizontal LED sign and stone benches leading up to an electronic altar. Continuing this practice, her installation at theGuggenheim Museum in 1989 featured a 163-meter-long sign forming a continuous circle spiraling up a parapet wall.[20] This installation was re-imagined by the Guggenheim in 2024 for her show,Light Line.[22]
In 1989, Jenny Holzer released theLaments series to theDia Art Foundation in New York; this installation consisted of columns of colored lights and carved marble and granite tops that made up the laments.[23] Holzer uses the passages she had read while being a part of theWhitney Independent Study Program by simplifying them for public consumption and applying them to her phrases. This series not only provokes thought in her audience through the constant reminder of death and sorrow but also exposes them to sources they normally wouldn't come across.[24] In an interview Holzer mentions that she uses the first person "I" simply to give the impression that a dead person is speaking and therefore make the installation more interesting to her audience.[25] InLaments Jenny gave a voice to 13 different dead individuals, to say everything they might not have gotten the opportunity to while alive.[26] She touches on topics like motherhood, violation, pain, torture, and even death on a personal level to these 13 individuals. AlthoughLaments focuses mostly on the darkness of humanity and the tragedies we face daily there is also hidden optimism in the 13 laments.[27]
In 1989, Holzer became the second female artist chosen to represent the United States at theVenice Biennale in Italy (Diane Arbus was the first, shown posthumously in 1972). At the 44th Biennale in 1990, her LED signboards and marble benches occupied a solemn and austere exhibition space in the American Pavilion; she also designed posters, hats, and T-shirts to be sold in the streets of Venice. The installation,Mother and Child, won Holzer the Leone D'Oro for best pavilion. The original installation is retained in its entirety in the collection of theAlbright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the organizing institution for the American Pavilion at the 1990 Biennale.
After taking a break from the art world, Holzer returned with controversy in 1993. Holzer came out with herLustmord[28] series, taking the title from the German word meaning "sex murder". Holzer created the series as a response of the Bosnian War, specifically the widespread rape and murder of women. The work feature three poems[29] that retell sex crimes from the perspective of the victim, the observer, and the perpetrator.Lustmord has taken many different forms from texts written in blue, black, and red ink on the skin, to theLustmord Table, a series of different bones of the body laid on a wooden table, with silver bands wrapped around them, engraved with the text of the three poems.
While Holzer wrote the texts for the bulk of her work between 1977 and 2001, since 1993, she has mainly been using texts written by others, including literary texts from such authors as Polish Nobel laureateWislawa Szymborska,Henri Cole (USA),Elfriede Jelinek (Austria),Fadhil Al Azzawi (Iraq),Yehuda Amichai (Israel),Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine), Khawla Dunia (Syria), andMohja Kahf (Syrian American). As of 2010, Holzer's work has been focused on government documents, concerning Iraq and the Middle East.[11] Using texts from a very different context, more recent projects have involved the use of redacted government documents[30] and passages from declassified U.S. Army documents from the war in Iraq. For example, a large LED work presents excerpts from the minutes of interrogations of American soldiers accused of committing human rights violations and war crimes in Abu Ghraib prison — making what was once secret public and exposing the "military-commercial-entertainment complex".[31]
Holzer's work often concerns violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death; the artist often utilizes the rhetoric of modern information systems to address the politics of discourse.[32] Her main aim is to enlighten, illuminating something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.[32]
Critic Samito Jalbuena has written that the artist's public use of language and ideas often creates shocking juxtapositions — commenting on sexual identity and gender relations ("Sex Differences Are Here To Stay") on an unassuming New York movie theater marquee, for example — and sometimes extends to flights of formal outrage (such as "Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise" in lights over Times Square).[33]
Inflammatory Essays (1979–82), an installation comprising texts and manifestos, which were originally printed on colored paper and wheat-pasted around the streets of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Inflammatory Essays is included in the permanent collections ofPérez Art Museum Miami.[34]
Living Series (early 1980s), using monumental media such as bronze plaques and billboards.
Under a Rock (1986), a series juxtaposing electronic messages with poetic phrases etched on stone benches and sarcophagi.[35]
Da wo Frauen sterben, bin ich hellwach (1993), cover photograph and portfolio in edition number 46 ofSüddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.[37]
Please Change Beliefs (1995),[38] an interactive work created for theinternet art galleryadaweb, incorporating several of the artist'sTruisms.[39]
Protect Me From What I Want, the 15th work commissioned for theBMW Art Car Project. Painted on aBMW V12 LMR, the titular refrain is written in metal foil and outlined with phosphorescent paint. Phrases written on the car's side-pods are "You are so complex, you don't respond to danger" and "The unattainable is invariably attractive". The car's rear wing reads "Lack of charisma can be fatal" and "Monomania is a prerequisite of success". The car was withdrawn from the1999 24 Hours of Le Mans race, but saw active competition in the 2000Petit Le Mans in the U.S., finishing fifth overall.
Xenon for Bordeaux and Paris (2001 & 2009), text projections on various landmarks, most notably theLouvre Pyramid, originally created for the 2001 Festival d'Automne. The Louvre projection was repeated in 2009 in honor of the pyramid's 20th anniversary.[40][41]
Terminal 5 — In October 2004, the dormantEero Saarinen-designedTWA Flight Center (now Jetblue T5) atJohn F. Kennedy International Airport hosted an art exhibition calledTerminal 5,[42] curated by Rachel K. Ward[43] and featuring the work of 18 artists.[44] Holzer's work was displayed electronically on the terminal's original departures-arrivals board. She had wanted the work projected onto the building's exterior, but airport officials denied the request, saying the projection could interfere with runway operations.[43]
I Was In Baghdad Ochre Fade*, (2007), Oil-on-linen transcriptions of torture documents from the Iraq War; part of theRenaissance Society 2007 group show, "Meanwhile, In Baghdad..."[47]
For SAAM (2007), Holzer's first cylindrical column of light and text, created from white electronic LEDs and featuring texts from four of the artist's series —Truisms,Living (selections),Survival (selections) andArno; commissioned by theSmithsonian American Art Museum.[48]
Redaction Paintings (2008), reproducing declassified memos, with much of the text blacked out by censors.
For Leonard Cohen (2017), a series of large-scale light projections on Silo no 5, one of Montréal's most iconic architectural structures., created in conjunction with theMontreal Museum of Contemporary Art's exhibitionLeonard Cohen – A Crack in Everything. The installation featured phrases fromLeonard Cohen's poems and songs, projected in both French and English for five nights only, starting on November 7, the first anniversary of Cohen's death, through November 11, 2017.[49]
IT TAKES A WHILE BEFORE YOU CAN STEP OVER INERT BODIES AND GO AHEAD WITH WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO. From The Living Series (1989), twenty-eight white granite benches with inscriptions, part of theMinneapolis Sculpture Garden
Installation for Schiphol (1995), permanent installation atAmsterdam Airport Schiphol, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Erlauf Peace Monument (1995), outdoor installation with texts memorializing lives lost and peace gained in World War II inErlauf, Austria
Allentown Benches (Selections from theTruisms andSurvival series) (1995), United States Courthouse, Allentown
Installation for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) Permanent Installation, located off the main room of the Guggenheim Bilbao, with tall LED columns of text in English (red, on the front side) and Basque (blue, on the back side)
Oskar Maria Graf Memorial (1997),Literaturhaus, Munich
Ceiling Snake (1997), 138 electronic LED signs with red diodes over 47.6 meters, permanently installed at theHamburger Kunsthalle
Bench (From theSurvival Series of 8 benches) (1997), bench made of green marble at the Faulconer Gallery,Grinnell College; Portuguese inscription: NUM SONHO VOCE ENCONTROU UM JEITO DE SOBREVIVER E SE ENCHEU DE ALEGRIA. (IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY.)
Truisms selections on permanent LED displays and carved into stone benches outside of Gordy Hall on the campus ofOhio University, Athens, Ohio, installed 1998[50]
There is a permanent LED sign along the top of the Telenor building in Oslo, Norway, installed in 2002.[51]
Untitled (1999), installation for Isla de Esculturas, Pontevedra, Spain
Historical Speeches (1999), 4-sided electronic LED sign with amber diodes, permanently installed at theReichstag, Berlin; the piece displays a selection of speeches given in the Reichstag andBundestag, and plays for 12 days without repeating itself
TheBlack Garden of Nordhorn, the artist was commissioned to redesign a memorial to the fallen of Germany's three previous wars, including World War II. Next to the existing monolithic monument, she designed a circular garden consisting of concentric rings of plantings and pathways.[53]
Installation for the U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building, Sacramento (1999), a collection of statements on law, justice, and truth gathered from various sources and inscribed on 99 paving stones on the ground floor of theRobert T. Matsui United States Courthouse in Sacramento, CA.[54]
Wanås Wall (2002), inscriptions on stones on the grounds ofWanås Castle, Knislinge, Sweden
Serpentine (2002), electronic LED sign with blue diodes, permanently installed at theToray Building, Osaka
For Pittsburgh (2005), Holzer's largest LED project in the United States boasting 688 feet of blue LED tubes attached to two edges of the roof of theDavid L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh
For Elizabeth (2006), permanent outdoor work for theVassar College campus consisting of twenty backless and armless granite benches, inscribed with the poetry of alumna and Pulitzer Prize-winnerElizabeth Bishop[55]
For 7 World Trade (2006), permanent LED installation in the 65-foot-wide, 14-foot-high wall in the lobby of7 World Trade Center
For Novartis (2006–07), permanent LED installation atNovartis HQ, Basel, Switzerland
VEGAS (2009), LED installation commissioned for the parking lot ofAria Resort & Casino, Las Vegas
Bench (2011), marble bench atBarnard College; English inscription: "Stupid people shouldn't breed." / "It's crucial to have an active fantasy life."[57]
715 Molecules (2011), commissioned installation atWilliams College consisting of a 16 ½ -foot long and 4-foot wide stone table and four benches, the surfaces of which have been sandblasted with 715 unique molecules[58]
At theMassachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007, Holzer presented a series of mixed media silk-screen prints; each of the 15 same-size, medium-large canvases, stained purple or brown, bears an all-black, silk-screened reproduction of a PowerPoint diagram used in 2002 to briefPresident Bush,Donald Rumsfeld and others on theUnited States Central Command's plan forinvading Iraq. Holzer found these documents at the Web site of the independent, nongovernmentalNational Security Archive (nsarchive.org), which obtained them through theFreedom of Information Act, and has used them as source material for her work since 2004.[61] Other paintings depict confessions or letters from prisoners of all kinds and their families (parents pleading that the Army discharge rather than court-martial their sons); autopsy and interrogation reports; or exchanges concerning torture, as well as prisoners' handprints and maps of Baghdad.[13] The censor's marks are unmodified and the large sections of obscured text leave only sentence fragments or single words, echoes of the original content.[62] Holzer concentrates on documents that have been partially or almost completely redacted with censor's marks.[30]
Based on a declassified report on US special forces' activity at a base inGardez, Afghanistan, a 2014 series of paintings explores the story ofJamal Nasser, an 18-year-old Afghan soldier who died in US military custody.[63]
Holzer's first dance project was in 1985, "Holzer Duet ... Truisms" withBill T. Jones. In 2010, she collaborated with choreographerMiguel Gutierrez for the Co-Lab series at theInstitute of Contemporary Art, Boston. There were 10 dancers who performed in a room in which Holzer's words were projected along the walls.[64]
Holzer had several solo exhibitions in the past several years. In 2014 her work was inJenny Holzer: Projecto Parede at theMuseu de Arte Moderna (MAM) of São Paulo in Brazil in 2014 as well asJenny Holzer: Dust Paintings at Cheim & Read in Chelsea, New York which exemplified her use of government documents as a source for her work. In 2015 she was inJenny Holzer: Softer Targets at theHauser & Wirth, Somerset in Bruton, UK which featured new work and other pieces from the past three decades. Also in 2015 she had a solo exhibition at the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts as well asWar Paintings atMuseo Correr in Venice, Italy. Then in the winter of 2016–17 at Alden Projects in New York, Holzer had the solo exhibitionREJOICE! OUR TIMES ARE INTOLERABLE: Jenny Holzer's Street Posters, 1977–1982, which showed her language-based posters that were pasted on the streets of New York.[69]
Jenny Holzer andChristian Lemmerz: Lust was an exhibition on view from February 2017 to May 2017 at theRanders Kunstmuseum in Randers, Denmark. Holzer was also featured in the exhibitionWoman Now at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia, on view from January 2017 to April 2017; her work was shown alongsideAndy Warhol andJoseph Beuys, among others, in the exhibitionCreature at The Broad in Los Angeles California from November 2016 to March 2017. In February 2017 she was also in thePalm Springs Popup exhibition at Ikon, Ltd., in Santa Monica alongside artists such asRichard Prince,Ellsworth Kelly, andBruce Nauman. From January 2017 through February 2017 she was in theFischl, Holzer, Prince, Salle, Sherman exhibition at the Skarstedt Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Also, in the summer of 2016, Holzer was included inTHE EIGHTIES: A Decade of Extremes exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp in Belgium which explored the New York art scene in the eighties.[69] In 2018, Holzer had the exhibitionArtist Rooms: Jenny Holzer atTate Modern in London.[70] She has the entire second floor ofGuggenheim Museum Bilbao (nine galleries) from March 22 to September 9, 2019 for "Zera deskribaezina" (It is irreversible).
Holzer is one of six artist-curators who made selections forArtistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, on view at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum from May 24, 2019 through January 12, 2020.
Jenny Holzer: Light Line was on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from May 17 to September 29, 2024.
In 2010, Holzer received the Distinguished Women in the Arts Award from theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The annual award – recognizing women for their leadership and innovation in the visual arts, dance, music, and literature – is a bronze plaque originally designed by the artist in 1994, featuring one of herTruisms: "It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender."[74]
In a 2021 interview withLiterary Hub, Holzer said that she "[has] a repressed spirituality", and stated, "I am not religious in any conventional sense, but I am all for applying appropriate feeling that might make for sanity and better behavior."[78] When asked if she considers herself to be a political artist, Holzer stated:
I'm an artist, and a person who is political; I make some separation here. I do not represent that art is as straightforward and immediately effective as voting or doing community work, and I don't think art always can or should be pragmatic and utilitarian. At times, however, art can fuse a dreadful or wonderful reality with dreadful or wonderful representation so that people realize and feel what is, and then act.[78]
Ahead of the2024 United States presidential election, Holzer was one of 165 leading contemporary artists who contributed pieces to Artists for Kamala, an online sale with all proceeds raised going directly toKamala Harris' campaign.[79]
^"Joan Simon: When you first began to show your work you were identified with the Colab collective. Jenny Holzer: Shortly after the Whitney programme I met Colen Fitzgibbon. … With Colen I conspired to make the 'Manifesto Show' (1979). This Colab show had everything from the Futurist Manifesto … to proclamations by any number of artists. … I guess I intersected with the gang for four or five years." Simon, Joan. "Jenny Holzer." InpressPLAY: Contemporary Artists in Conversation, 316–35 (quotation on 332–33). London: Phaidon, 2005.
^Issue: Social strategies by women artists : an exhibition Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held November 14–December 21, 1980. Text by Lucy R. Lippard and Margaret Harrison. Published by Institute of Contemporary Arts, 1980.ISBN090526309X /9780905263090
Heartney, Eleanor; Posner, Helaine; Princenthal, Nancy; Scott, Sue (2013).After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art. Prestel Publishing Ltd. p. 351.ISBN978-3-7913-4755-4.
