Artist: Jenny Holzer Series: Inflammatory Essays Type: Offset Lithograph, Print Series Dates: 1979-1982 Opening Line: "Destroy Superabundance." Dimensions: 17" x 17" (432mm x 432mm) Color: Blue Signed: UNSIGNED About: Printed at Millner Bros., New York and published by the artist in an unlimited edition. In the 1970s Holzer abandoned her practice as an abstract painter in order to make more explicit statements and to establish more direct contact with a larger audience than would visit galleries. Her art began to appear in the form of texts on posters which were exposed on the streets like fly-posters. In Jeanne Siegel's article and interview with the artist Holzer stated: ‘From the beginning, my work has been designed to be stumbled across in the course of a person's daily life. I think it has the most impact when someone is just walking along, not thinking about anything in particular, and then finds these unusual statements either on a poster or in a sign.’ What I tried to do, starting with the Truisms and then with the other series, was to hit on as many topics as possible. The truism format was good for this since you can concisely make observations on almost any topic. Increasingly I tried to pick hot topics. With the next series ‘Inflammatory Essays’, I wrote about things that were unmentionable or that were the burning question of the day. In contrast to the ‘Inflammatory Essays’ which consist of paragraphs of text, ‘Truisms’ were statements confined to a length of one line which were either displayed together on a poster or broadcast as a continuous light display. In preparation she read ‘Mao, Lenin, Emma Goldman, various religious and right wing fanatics, miscellaneous American anarchists and some “folk” crackpot literature’. Her intention was to ‘write things that were very hot - in tone and subject matter - to (hopefully) instill a sense of urgency in the reader. I wanted the reader to jump, at least, and maybe consider doing something useful.’ To this end the posters were first ‘wheat-pasted in the streets of Manhattan. They were placed wherever posters normally appear’ but the choice of text was not always arbitrary. ‘Sometimes I'd choose certain texts for certain neighbourhoods. It was fun to put particularly frightening ones uptown.’ Each week Holzer pasted up a different poster. In order to make clear that a new poster was on display she had them printed on paper of different colours and ‘to let the viewers know that the posters were part of a series, I made each poster exactly 100 words long and 20 lines’ (letter to the compiler). |