Photo by Cheryl Dunn

Jenny Holzer in front of "For the Guggenheim" at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 2008

Andy Warhol Mark Rothko Frank Gehry Lawrence Weiner J Goya Investors Indulge Appetite for Luxury Dealer Holly Solomon’s Papers Headed to Smithsonian Phillips de Pury Makes Its (Small) Mark

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Jenny Holzer has been wrenching language off the page and into the world since the ’70s, when she first garnered attention for her text-based work Truisms (1977–79), a series of one-liners such as “Money creates taste.” Whether wheat-pasted or projected, Holzer’s works reveal, in the words of Wislawa Szymborska (whose poems have been appropriated by the artist), that there are “letters up to no good” and “clutches of clauses so subordinate they’ll never let her get away.” But the absence of language can be equally chilling, and lately Holzer has turned her attention to the suppression of words. Her recent “Redaction Paintings” reproduce memos released to the public practically with tongs, much of their information blocked out by censors. At her first major US exhibition in 18 years, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, viewers have the chance to absorb Holzer’s commitment to social justice, unwavering throughout her 30-some years of making art. For behind her cerebral approach, the artist’s primary concern is human welfare. As Benjamin Buchloh points out in his interview with Holzer in the following pages, “No linguistic articulation could claim to be exempt from its participation in ideological interests.” This is largely true, Holzer agrees, but adds: “I think that screaming can come straight from the body. The person screaming might have been hit courtesy of an ideology.” —Claire Barliant

Benjamin Buchloh: If my memory is correct, you started out as a painter at some point?

Jenny Holzer: I began with a little bit of everything including printmaking, conceptual work, assemblage, video, bad sculpture, inscrutable public pieces, and painting. I did try to become a painter proper at RISD.

BB: Would it be correct to suggest that it wasn’t language at that time, but rather the shift into public architectural space that was at the forefront of your reflections on how to challenge painting and transcend its traditional parameters?

JH: When I was unable to paint well enough, language returned as a way for me to continue working. I’m not sure that I wanted to challenge painting as much as I just wanted to make something decent for people. I wanted a lot simultaneously: to leave art outside for the public, to be a painter of mysterious yet ordered works, to be explicit but not didactic, to find the right subjects, to transform spaces, to disorient and transfix people, to offer up beauty, to be funny and never lie. I needed to offer something to be able to tolerate myself and to justify trying to become an artist. After some time in New York City, I focused on what traditional painting couldn’t do in public spaces and used language to carry the greater part of my content. Eventually, though, I tried to bring part of what appears in, say, a Rothko painting, into architecture and out to the public. I went some distance toward that with the warm amber LED installation in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2001, and with light projections in a number of cities. Text was there along with the light and the light’s effect on people.

BB: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, you participated in the activities of a number of art collectives in New York, some of which were cofounded by you, such as the Offices of Fend, Fitzgibbon, Holzer, Nadin, Prince, and Winters. Collectives such as Group Material and Colab followed your example slightly later.

JH: I’d like to take credit for being early, but Colab existed before I joined. I was a founder of the short-lived Offices, which was heavier on concept and absurdity than action. We had business cards and did one show in LA where Peter Fend surprised Frank Gehry, but I’m not sure what else we achieved.

BB: In hindsight, how do you view the extraordinarily utopian and optimistic character of the collectives with which you were involved?

JH: I know the most about Colab, so I’ll talk about that. Colab was utopian, optimistic, occasionally squabbling, sincere, and practical. Working en masse or in small units let us realize complicated shows that none of us could have managed alone, when no one else was offer-ing to support this sort of activity. Because we organized the exhibitions—often in spaces no one wanted—we didn’t need to be cautious about content. Because most members liked to make and present work with outside-world versus art-referential subjects, it was relatively straightforward to imagine and stage big exhibitions about difficult subjects in public zones. I liked working with other artists because so much of my practice was solitary.