"Jenny Holzer's Truisms are "truths" that lie at the boundary of truth and our perception of truths in the post-modern landscape. Holzer inserts her truisms into public spaces, on T-shirts, and electronic billboards placed in museums and galleries. As a fixture in public space, they are in jarring juxtaposition to the commodified world around us of mass media, advertising, product marketing, and all the various "non-truisms" that are fed to us everyday. In this sense, the Truisms are an act of artistic mediation, in that Holzer inserts her work and ideas into the real world where they activate critique and analysis of surrounding cultural, economic and political conditions."
Source: http://www.zakros.com/jhu/apmSu03/notes_holzer_cae.html
Source: http://www.zakros.com/jhu/apmSu03/notes_holzer_cae.html
Holzer is a conceptual artist known for her text-based work. She was also part of the feminist wave in the 1980’s. She looked at making narrative and commentary a part of visual objects. Language, Installation and Public Art. Holzer has used projection onto architecture and advertising on billboards that looked at words and ideas presented in public spaces. Her work is intrinsically political, particularly in the feminist movement of the 80’s.
Holzer is one of the best-known female American artists still working today and uses text as the basis of her artworks. Her work usually has a very strong message that causes the viewer to stop and determine the messages behind them. She does this by using accessible and commercial presentation like billboards and large projections onto buildings.
Holzer's text is not always her own as she is known to appropriate slogans, messages and aphorisms in her works. She seeks to provoke the viewer with her subversive texts. She projects, prints and displays her works and has used billboards, benches, condoms, t-shirts, warehouses, walls and city architecture to present her texts. Holzer reflects to the audience the postmodern experience and presents us with texts that relate uncomfortable issues, political standpoints and personal messages. The way Holzer displays her work is fundamental to her work as it informs the message. The strength of Holzers work is when the many elements such as presentation, text, symbolism, medium and materials meet to form meaning.
"Semiotics, in essence, is an attempt to define and explain that feature of human life that rest upon our ability to communicate with one another with the use of signs." (Carter 2006 p.63)
ACTIVITY: Research- Jenny Holzer appropriates the text that she uses in her works- list the sources of her texts and describe 2 in detail.
Holzer is one of the best-known female American artists still working today and uses text as the basis of her artworks. Her work usually has a very strong message that causes the viewer to stop and determine the messages behind them. She does this by using accessible and commercial presentation like billboards and large projections onto buildings.
Holzer's text is not always her own as she is known to appropriate slogans, messages and aphorisms in her works. She seeks to provoke the viewer with her subversive texts. She projects, prints and displays her works and has used billboards, benches, condoms, t-shirts, warehouses, walls and city architecture to present her texts. Holzer reflects to the audience the postmodern experience and presents us with texts that relate uncomfortable issues, political standpoints and personal messages. The way Holzer displays her work is fundamental to her work as it informs the message. The strength of Holzers work is when the many elements such as presentation, text, symbolism, medium and materials meet to form meaning.
"Semiotics, in essence, is an attempt to define and explain that feature of human life that rest upon our ability to communicate with one another with the use of signs." (Carter 2006 p.63)
ACTIVITY: Research- Jenny Holzer appropriates the text that she uses in her works- list the sources of her texts and describe 2 in detail.
Commentary
1. "Holzer has her detractors, notably the former art critic of Time magazine, Robert Hughes, who once likened her to a 17th-century New England matriarch sewing puritanical platitudes onto samplers. But Holzer is careful to keep a distance from her work. None of her proclamations is to be taken to express her own beliefs. The conflicting signals serve as a reminder that the world is never as simple as those with something to sell – be it a product or a creed – like to make out."
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/7481495/Jenny-Holzer-at-Baltic-Gateshead.html
2. "Using recently developed, thinner-than-ever LED signs, “For Chicago” is the first Holzer piece made specifically to lie flat on the floor. Its 11 48-foot-long LED signs, placed parallel about two feet apart, nearly reduce language to pure light. Stand at the end of the piece, and the words seem to flow from your shoes. The whole configuration suggests a lighted runway or weirdly geometric rows of crocuses in a field. As the punctuation-averse artist herself might put it, the piece means to stop you in your tracks and does."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/arts/design/13holz.html?pagewanted=all
3. "Holzer's strength lies in the medium, not the message. Or rather in the dissonance between them – in filling the gallery with a beautiful tinted light that issues from terrible tales of brutality; in presenting savage aphorisms in glowing colour on a city street."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/14/jenny-holzer-baltic-review-cumming
ACTIVITY: Consider the commentary above and answer the following questions:
1. Describe the connection Holzer's work has to popular culture- use the Contemporary Framework in your description.
2. How do you think people in the community viewed this work?
3. Discuss Holzer's use of 'appropriation' - how is this effective in conveying a political message?
ACTIVITY: Both the work of Jenny Holzer and Kathe Kollwitz look war as 'subject matter'. In an extended response explore how both artists approach this topic and how their work is political statement. Compare the different approaches.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/7481495/Jenny-Holzer-at-Baltic-Gateshead.html
2. "Using recently developed, thinner-than-ever LED signs, “For Chicago” is the first Holzer piece made specifically to lie flat on the floor. Its 11 48-foot-long LED signs, placed parallel about two feet apart, nearly reduce language to pure light. Stand at the end of the piece, and the words seem to flow from your shoes. The whole configuration suggests a lighted runway or weirdly geometric rows of crocuses in a field. As the punctuation-averse artist herself might put it, the piece means to stop you in your tracks and does."
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/arts/design/13holz.html?pagewanted=all
3. "Holzer's strength lies in the medium, not the message. Or rather in the dissonance between them – in filling the gallery with a beautiful tinted light that issues from terrible tales of brutality; in presenting savage aphorisms in glowing colour on a city street."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/14/jenny-holzer-baltic-review-cumming
ACTIVITY: Consider the commentary above and answer the following questions:
1. Describe the connection Holzer's work has to popular culture- use the Contemporary Framework in your description.
2. How do you think people in the community viewed this work?
3. Discuss Holzer's use of 'appropriation' - how is this effective in conveying a political message?
ACTIVITY: Both the work of Jenny Holzer and Kathe Kollwitz look war as 'subject matter'. In an extended response explore how both artists approach this topic and how their work is political statement. Compare the different approaches.