Jenny Holzer's conceptual art practices and visual communication of social issues

Jenny Holzer

Many artists seek to have a powerful influence on the public through the drama and communicative elements of their work. Neo-Conceptualist artist Jenny Holzer is certainly among those artists whose strong social and moral values motivate them to speak out on important social and political issues. Holzer's background shows that the artist found her artistic calling after her first two years in college. She was born in 1950 and first pursued her education at Duke University in liberal arts before realizing what she truly wanted to achieve was an education in fine arts and painting. She was awarded a B.F.A. (Bachelors of Fine Arts) at Ohio University in 1972 and an M.F.A. (Masters of Fine Arts) from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977, according to The New York Times "Forums." This paper delves into Holzer's themes -- in particular, her truism themes -- her materials, the communication that radiates out from her artwork and the emotions she stirs in the hearts and minds of those who see her works.

Paragraph 2: Why does Holzer create these extraordinarily stark and shocking images using words based on her truisms? In a New York Press interview with art critic Paddy Johnson -- prior to her show at the Whitney Museum in New York -- Holzer, a native New Yorker, said that her art is a reflection of her view of the world and society. "I try to marry form, function, information, beauty, time, transcendence, realism, legibility, phantoms and more -- and then make sure the stuff works" (Paddy, 2009, p. 1). In answering Johnson's question ("…what are the more useful capacities art can service today… ), Holzer explained that she wants to be "…useful somehow to justify my existence. I don't think art has to be useful, at least in any straightforward way." She went on to explain that while she isn't doing art to be a "service" to anyone, good art "…can be responsive, alive to and so truthful about what's around, and that is potentially helpful" (Paddy, p. 2). Is she doing what she is doing to shock people? She asserted that for the audience, "…Being awestruck, dumbstruck and transfixed by art can be dandy. And being aroused, stunned, terrified, lulled, intrigued, confounded, freed, schooled and euphoric is a lot, and art can do that and more" (Paddy, p. 2).

Paragraph 3: As to how the artist created her works, from Holzer's own words she describes how she created the "Redaction, Hand and Map" paintings that were on display at the Whitney. These images become Holzer "truisms" linked to the truism phrase; she has works that speak volumes as to the truth without her classic ironic and starkly belligerent phrases. Her "Redaction" work demonstrates that cruelty and war go together hand in hand. She was horrified at the photos (making the rounds on the Internet) of Iraqi detainees having been tortured and otherwise humiliated by American troops in Baghdad. So she searched "…for declassified and other sensitive material on the war… and the treatment of detainees" and she retrieved those materials through the "Freedom of Information Act." Then she "…silk-screened the pages that seemed most representative and telling" -- and under the title, "Detainee Summary," on the document she blocked out the summary and the list of names with black ink seemingly splashed onto the page inartistically as through a censor for the government didn't want people to see the truth. By showing the splotchy, hideously black print of a left hand (that depicts fingers that seem to have pieces torn from the skin) she is making her statement about the unconscionable acts of cruelty perpetrated during war and in this particular genre her truism phase has transitioned into art and text. Clearly this work was designed to shock but in perhaps more of a subtle way than some of her truisms. This is what she had in mind when she wrote truisms like these: a) "Abuse of Power Comes As No Surprise"; b) "The Breakdown Comes When You Stop Controlling Yourself And Want The Release Of A Bloodbath"; c) "You Are Caught Thinking About Killing Anyone You Want"; and d) "Animalism Is Perfectly Healthy" (Art History Archive). In 1982 Holzer cleverly and carefully married art and technology. She used nine of her truisms on the huge electronic signboard in Times Square, which was an L.E.D. machine that flashed each individual truism at "…forty-second intervals" (Art History). She was thus able to reach a large audience by combining "…a knowledge of semantics with modern advertising technologies"; and according to the Art History website she established herself "…as a descendant of the conceptualist and Pop Art movements" (p. 2).

Paragraph 4: Who is the audience for Holzer's truism work? How is it experienced and presented? The public for the most part has been the audience for Jenny Holzer. When Holzer began presenting posters with "anonymous aphorisms" (i.e., truisms) in the streets of lower Manhattan in 1977 (on walls, lampposts, manhole covers and public phone booths), they actually represented what Holzer termed a "universe of opinion" to be "navigated by individual viewers on their own" (Bertens, et al., 2002). Surprising statements like "USE WHAT IS DOMINANT IN A CULTURE TO CHANGE IT QUICKLY" and "YOU ARE CAUGHT THINKING ABOUT KILLING ANYONE YOU WANT" caught pedestrians off-guard and made a statement at the same time. They were, according to Bertens, "…intended to indoctrinate or sell, amuse, instruct, enlighten, connect (lamely), or confound," and moreover they were designed to "…provoke thought about these conflicting voices" and to "calculate surprise" (174).