Jenny Holzer.

• Author: Flynn, Patrick JB
• Position: Artist - Interview

Jenny Holzer is a visual artist who speaks to us in so many words--words chosen to confront us with some frightening aspects of our culture. Her art is not a thing of beauty to behold, but an idea expressed through a public voice using many modes of communication--electronic signs, plaques, tractor hats, engravings on stone benches, billboards, T-shirts, and television ads. At times she even enlists the controlled comforts of the art museum or gallery to convey her messages.

Holzer grew up in the heartland of the United State. She was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. In 1975, she entered the master of fine arts program at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she worked on abstract paintings, In 1977, she moved to New York City, where her work and her ideas about art changed dramatically. Holzer abandoned painting and hit the street in favor of a more direct and politically charged art. She quickly became a significant player in the postmodern art movement.

Holzer's work has played a key role in the development and expansion of contemporary art, and over the past decade has grown increasingly confrontational, forcing her audience to deal with the volatile subject matter of war, violence, racism, rape, sex, disease, birth, and death. Her work has traveled the world: She's had major exhibitions in Paris, London, Vienna, and Berlin, as well as exhibitions throughout the United States. Her messages have been presented in such high-impact public spaces as Candlestick Park, San Francisco; Times Square, New York; Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas; Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1990, she became the first woman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale with a solo exhibition. She is now represented by the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York City, and lives with her daughter and husband, also an artist, in upstate New York.

Q: Why did you abandon traditional methods such as painting and printmaking in favor of work that uses language and signs?

Jenny Holzer: When I was in graduate school I had done some public things, but they were unsuccessful. They didn't mean anything, they were abstract. I started writing on my paintings, but that didn't work either. So when I came to New York the painting fell away and the writing became dominant. I then figured out how to take this writing public--I thought posters would be appropriate. It made sense as a public project.

Q: Did your posters relate to your painting at all?

Holzer: No. My paintings featured "found" language not particularly relevant. It was with the "Truisms," when I started from the beginning to write about subjects important to me, that the writing began to come around.

Q: In the late 1970s, your work appeared on the streets of New York as posters displaying short, sometimes contradictory, statements--aphorisms you call "Truisms." Abuse of power comes as no surprise. An Elite is inevitable. Any surplus is immoral. Money creates taste. What was the idea behind this work? Why the contradictions?

Holzer: I wrote them a number of different ways. I made a list of things that I wanted to hit upon, and then I would try to write to those subjects. Other times, I would read something that would elicit a "Truism." Sometimes it was as simple as thinking of people I knew and trying to write a version of what came out of their mouths. The reason I wrote from every point of view-Far Left, Far Right, common-sense, lunatic--was that I thought it was a more accurate way of portraying people's beliefs, and maybe a better way than always having didactic or dogmatic stuff. I thought that--and this is utopian--it might be a more effective way to have people consider these issues and not turn them off. A lot of times when something is identifiably Right, or Left, the people who agree with it will agree with it, and the people who don't will dismiss it instantly. I thought it might be more mysterious and less off-putting if a universe of opinion were laid out, with all sentences equally weighted--which in a way is a sign of respect for the audience. Each person coming to this universe will have to find his or her way through it. It's trusting the viewer to come up with the right solution, given an array of options.

Q: So clearly you identified with some of the "Truisms."

Holzer: Oh, yes, and some of them were completely reprehensible, but I thought they were all believable. I could imagine someone saying and feeling it.

Q: Why do you rely almost exclusively on language in your work, as opposed to pictures?

Holzer: I came to language because I wanted to be explicit about things, but didn't want to be a social realist painter. I...