Product Description

For the past three decades, the influential American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer has been challenging viewers' assumptions about the world through language that conveys the multiplicity of often contradictory voices, opinions and attitudes that form the basis of contemporary society. Alternating between fact and fiction, public and private, the universal and the particular, Holzer's work offers an incisive social and psychological portrait of our times. During the last decade, Holzer has shown extensively in Europe but has been less visible in the United States--following a period of wide exposure and pervasive influence beginning in the late 1970s. This volume, which accompanies a major presentation of Holzer's work in various media from the 1990s onward at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, goes a long way towards rectifying this situation, and reintroduces her to the American audience at a timely political moment. Featuring several scholarly essays and an interview with the artist, this volume provides an overview of the work of one of the leading artists of the 80s generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #373141 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-01
• Released on: 2008-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9783775723015
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author
Jenny Holzer was born in 1950 in Gallipolis, Ohio. She first came to prominence in New York in the late 70s and early 80s. Among other awards she has received, Holzer in 1990 became the first woman to ever win the Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited in most every major museum around the world, and she has created installations for public and private sites including the Reichstag and the Times Square Spectacolor billboard in New York.

Elizabeth A.T. Smith has been Chief Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, since 1998. Previously, she was curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she curated exhibitions and public programs in art and architecture since 1983. Her many noteworthy projects include co-curating Cindy Sherman: Retrospective and At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic coverage of a fantastic artist.
The book listed on this page, a monograph on Jenny Holzer by Phaidon Press, is fabulous. It contains information on Holzer's wide and influential art career, from her Truisms posters of the 'seventies to her electronic LED signs, carved stone benches, and virtual art pieces of the 'nineties.

This book is also unique, within the Holzer bibliography, because of the "Artist's Choice" section where Holzer provides excerpts from books and writings that have influenced her, along with explanations of why she's moved by them.

If you're interested in modern art, or women artists, this is a must-read

Jenny Holzer- Protect me from what I can't see
Have you ever stopped to think how many times we are bombarded by truisms everyday? Get this book and you will get a clue. In the Truisms series over exposure to banality reveals how numbed out we all are. Take a cliche like "Children are the hope to the future" and place beside "Children are the most cruel of all". We say and repeat these truisms but do we really realize that they are empty in themselves ? Do we perceive the contradictions ? How we mold reality to suit our needs ? Truisms sooth us with the cushioned feeling of the "generally accepted truth". Jenny Holzer literally splashes intimate thoughts, truisms, activist slogans over the landscape. These truths, half-truths and huge lies stare out at us in billboards, park benches like a conscience made physical. This is art made on the very border of reality and language.