Jenny Holzer, Selections from Truisms, Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Laments, and Child Text, 1991
From the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:
In 1977 Holzer created Truisms, her first all-text compositions. She typed “one-liners,” had them printed commercially, and pasted them up as posters on the street. Later, Holzer placed her words on such familiar, ubiquitous objects as LED signs, T-shirts, and stickers. Variously insightful, hostile, or comic, these words and phrases express multiple viewpoints and arouse multiple responses. As the artist intended, numerous people have read her words and been amused, challenged, or provoked.
In 1990 the Museum of Fine Arts commissioned Holzer to create this LED sign for the collection. The artist chose to include excerpts from seven different series created between 1977 and 1990, each selection appearing in a different typeface and format. The words stream at varying speeds, and the tone is constantly changing-aggressive to mild, authoritative to questioning, practical to fear inducing. The result is a blend of familiarity and confusion that puts Holzer’s artwork squarely in the modern age of advertising slogans, newspaper headlines, and sound bites.
I am obsessed with these “Truisms” because they are exactly what I do. I’m always writing short phrases that depict simple and powerful, sometimes offensive and provocative, ideas. It’s nice to look at this series because it feels like finding a connection to another human on an artistic level. If you went through my notebooks you would find so many “truisms” scrawled between notes and doodles. In fact, I had even been thinking lately about creating t-shirts with phrases like these on them! (Although I had no name for them) I would love to sell them, but I don’t know if anyone would buy them…
Reblogged from cavetocanvas
