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Born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950, Jenny Holzer was the first woman to represent the United States in the most important international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, in 1990. Her work has appeared in museums, stores, on billboards, and even on television.

Sending a Message
When Holzer came to New York in the late 1970s, she moved away from painting and began to focus on words alone in her first Truisms posters. A truism is a statement widely believed to be true. About her interest in creating Truisms, Holzer said, "If I wanted to talk about the stuff it seemed reasonable to just say it or write it. For a while I was just writing all these truisms, without knowing what I was going to do with them. The ideas of posters came from all the music posters I’d seen up, and all the political posters.…" ¹ In another interview she said, "There’d be a whole bunch because these things were only effective when people would see them again and again. It would show them I was serious, committed. It also increased the probability that they would be seen. I would get amazing messages back, written on the posters. People would check off truisms they liked or hated and would sometimes explain why." ²

In the 1980s Holzer changed the format of Truisms from posters to the kinds of products you see here: baseball hats, golf balls, pencils, t-shirts, and postcards.

• Have you ever seen or heard anything like Holzer’s Truisms before?
  
  
• What do the different phrases such as "abuse of power comes as no surprise," or "raise boys and girls the same way" mean to you? Try reading them out loud, do they sound like serious statements or commands, or do they sound sarcastic or funny?
  
  
• Do you think these works would be different if they also included images? Why or why not?
  
  
• What kinds of words, phrases, or statements have you seen printed on products such as t-shirts, hats, and mugs? How are they similar or different to Holzer's Truisms you see printed on the same products here?

In the Making
In 1977 Jenny Holzer used a typewriter for her work. A few years later she took advantage of the cheap and accessible copier machine, making her own flyers, which she repeatedly posted all over Manhattan. This process soon lead her to using other inexpensive commercial forms of printing, such as photolithography, which allowed for even greater numbers of her works to be produced.

In the 1980s Holzer continued to explore methods of commercial production and distribution by printing truisms on baseball hats, t-shirts, and golf balls. Holzer also began to use electronic media light-emitting diode (L.E.D.) signs where words move quickly or slowly across, or up and down. Her L.E.D. signs have appeared in such places as baseball stadiums, Times Square, airports, Las Vegas hotels, and museums.

• Do you think the process Holzer used in making Truisms matters? Why or why not?
  
  
• Holzer printed truisms over several years in a number of different ways. In your opinion, do you think the meaning of her work changes when it appears on a baseball hat rather than on a sheet of paper? Why or why not?
  
  
• If you wanted a lot of people to receive a message today, do you have any ideas about what technologies and methods you might use to deliver your message?

1. Jenny Holzer, interview by Diana Nemiroff, in Vanguard 12, no. 9, 1983: 26.
   
   
2. Bruce Ferguson, "Wordsmith: An Interview with Jenny Holzer," Signs (Des Moines: Des Moines Art Center, 1988): 76.