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Kind of Blue
Artist
Jenny Holzer
(Born 1950, United States)
Date2012
Medium9 electronic LED signs: blue diodes
DimensionsOverall: 576 × 120 × 7/8 in. (1463.04 × 304.8 × 2.22 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number2012.3
Status
On viewCopyright© Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Category
Label TextJenny Holzer’s art incorporates language in subversive modes of public address, and she is recognized as one of the most important new-media and installation artists of her generation. For Truisms, 1977–79, her first series of such artworks, she anonymously posted broadsides with pithy, intentionally provocative statements around New York City. Ranging from cynical to comic to confrontational in tone, the Truisms often focus on human behavior and the politics of desire, such as MONEY CREATES TASTE and ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE. Holzer famously broadcast the Truisms on a huge screen in New York’s Times Square in 1982, appropriating the ever-present, authoritative voice of electronic advertising. Other iterations of the series have appeared on billboards, benches, T-shirts, and—the format that has become her signature medium—light-emitting diode (LED) strips.
In 2012, the Modern commissioned Kind of Blue, a site-specific work to commemorate the Museum’s tenth anniversary in the Tadao Ando building. On nine LED strips installed on the floor of the central pavilion, lines of scrolling blue text flow across the gallery, transmitting Holzer’s messages. The work’s twelve-hour text loop serves as a “retrospective” of more than three decades of her art by featuring many of her best-known aphorisms, such as YOUR OLDEST FEARS ARE THE WORST ONES and LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL.
Despite the designation “Truisms,” the truth of Holzer’s phrases is relative, prompting viewers to question their own assumptions along with the power structures underlying public modes of communication. The text scrolls through the strips in different patterns and directions and alternates between English and Spanish. At certain times of day, the lines of blue words seem to extend by reflection through the glass wall into the Museum’s outdoor pond, creating the extraordinary effect of a river of language.
In 2012, the Modern commissioned Kind of Blue, a site-specific work to commemorate the Museum’s tenth anniversary in the Tadao Ando building. On nine LED strips installed on the floor of the central pavilion, lines of scrolling blue text flow across the gallery, transmitting Holzer’s messages. The work’s twelve-hour text loop serves as a “retrospective” of more than three decades of her art by featuring many of her best-known aphorisms, such as YOUR OLDEST FEARS ARE THE WORST ONES and LACK OF CHARISMA CAN BE FATAL.
Despite the designation “Truisms,” the truth of Holzer’s phrases is relative, prompting viewers to question their own assumptions along with the power structures underlying public modes of communication. The text scrolls through the strips in different patterns and directions and alternates between English and Spanish. At certain times of day, the lines of blue words seem to extend by reflection through the glass wall into the Museum’s outdoor pond, creating the extraordinary effect of a river of language.