tom moody

Jenny Holzer's Truisms vs Twitter

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An early Jenny Holzer art work, from Street Art, by Alan Schwartzman, 1985:

holzer

We're discussing Jenny Holzer over on Paddy Johnson's page. Johnson and others have noted the connections between Holzer's "truisms," currently the subject of a museum show, and the 140-character text squibs people are writing on twitter.com--specifically, Johnson is taking on the meme "Jenny Holzer is the patron saint of Twitter." My take on that (copied and pasted from Johnson's comments):

When you say Holzer's actual “Truisms…are being published under Holzer's name on Twitter,” as far as we know that is not Holzer doing that, right? [Johnson confirms it isn't.]

It would be funny if it was. Holzer's career started in the late '70s with her slogans on typeset pages tacked to NYC phone poles. They looked like the work of an anonymous nut, and the anonymous nut is surely the patron saint of the Internet.

I personally think the giant LED versions are an unnecessary detour between the intimacy and strangeness of her early work and the intimacy and strangeness of reading random Holzer-like sentences online. She started out as what we would now call a "relational" artist and is being imitated by the current cyber-versions of relational artists, but what she's famous for are her overdetermined art world objects. Commodification isn't bad in and of itself but I've never understood the logic of it in her case.

not-so-pulp prose

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Robert E. Howard, from "The Tower of the Elephant," 1933:

[Conan's] gods were simple and understandable; Crom was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and death. It was useless to call on Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian's mind, was all any god should be expected to do.

Attack of the Clones: Nam Jun Paik Film Deterioration

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In back to back posts Rhizome.org notes two similar riffs on Paik's "zen movie" from the early '60s. Paik's film consisted of clear celluloid projecting a white image for its entire run time. The two contemporary riffers both do takes on the dust and scratches that inevitably accumulate on the film: one actual (a re-filming of an old Paik with much dust on it) and the other virtual (iMovie fake dust and scratches). File under art eating itself.

In the late '80s or early '90s there was a painting series being shown around that might be described as "Rymans with cracks." It wasn't officially couched that way but viewers were free to do so (among other possible interpretations). The crack-making process and tangible result intrigued more than any unpacking-the-famous-elders narrative.

We need to move on from these canonical artists from 35 years ago. There are interesting things happening right now that don't depend on a textbook avant gardist for sex appeal.