Jenny Holzer. Living: You should limit the number of times.... 1980-82

Jenny Holzer Living: You should limit the number of times... 1980-82

  • Not on view

You can’t simply look at Holzer’s art—you have to read it. Since the late 1970s, she has worked exclusively with text, in blunt, vivid statements across an array of mediums. These works first appeared on cheap, disposable posters wheat-pasted throughout lower Manhattan, hung in public spaces without attribution, like urban signage. The Living series is cast from more durable stuff, in a set of thirty bronze plaques that, the artist has explained, “moved to an ‘official’ format.” A plaque typically marks a historical site or commemorates an important act or event; it conveys hard facts and is built to last, to speak with authority. Holzer’s plaques look nondescript, but their contents startle, veering into the intimate sphere of personal relationships, behaviors, and beliefs.

This work adopts an instructive tone. Perhaps ironic, deliberately vague, it is not so easily dismissed—a reminder of the harm we can inflict on one another (and on ourselves). In the series, the views are expressed in a range of voices that are not meant to be the artist’s per se; “It has always been easier for me to write while imagining I am someone else,” Holzer has said. Her use of direct address also produces a shifting subject, so that to read a phrase is automatically to become the “you,” to engage with a work that transforms the act of aesthetic contemplation into one of self-reflection.

Publication excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2019)
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
8 x 10" (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Credit
Gift of Agnes Gund
Object number
8.2007
Copyright
© 2023 Jenny Holzer / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Department
Painting and Sculpture
Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].