Jenny Holzer Quotes

One thing that changed when I moved upstate was that I became interested in different materials. I started making the stone benches because I was seeing rocks.

- Jenny Holzer

It can be kind of gruesome at times, making things alone.

- Jenny Holzer

Well, I think in trying to make life seem real enough that one is moved to do something about the more atrocious things. By going really far afield into a completely fake world, maybe there's a chance to make things resonant somehow - or in this case, truly terrifying. To make it as bad as the real stuff that's happening.

- Jenny Holzer

Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid.

- Jenny Holzer

I began to see that the short texts I was writing were poster material.

- Jenny Holzer

I'd been doing projects outdoors for the public. I made pigeons eat geometry by putting bread out in rhomboids and triangles. I don't know if this activity made sense, but the work was available.

- Jenny Holzer

I get up about four times a night and go back to sleep, or not. Then I swill tea around 8 a.m. I answer e-mail, while I stall thinking about whatever scares me.

- Jenny Holzer

One of the glories and terrors of working in public is that you do see if your output means anything to anyone.

- Jenny Holzer

The desperate things seem to require attention, the lovely things seem to elicit celebration. If I had to choose, I would go to the awful in the hope that doing something could yield a happier result.

- Jenny Holzer

So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film.

- Jenny Holzer

When my daughter was young, she thought all electronic signs were mine.

- Jenny Holzer

It's necessary to start most work alone. But I'm tickled to death when I can pull somebody in or join someone, whether it's borrowing poetry or traveling with an associate.

- Jenny Holzer

I'd paint long strips of canvas and abandon them on the beach, or put bread out in geometric patterns for the pigeons downtown. I wanted people to find something nice and intriguing to puzzle over. Then I'd go back to see if the things were still there, or if anyone would notice.

- Jenny Holzer

I think of a piece, and then people who are competent fabricate it. But lately I've started finger painting, which probably should be a joke but isn't!

- Jenny Holzer

I suspect you've noticed that making art can be lonely.

- Jenny Holzer

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

- Jenny Holzer

I wanted to support things that are helpful to people and maybe bash what I think is dangerous. So I switched from being everybody to being myself.

- Jenny Holzer

Protect me from what I want.

- Jenny Holzer

That's the test of street art - to see if anybody stopped. People would cross out ones they didn't like and would star others. I liked that people would engage with them.

- Jenny Holzer

I'm always trying to bring unusual content to a different audience - a non-art-world audience.

- Jenny Holzer

I moved to New York in the 1970s and started writing when I was at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

- Jenny Holzer

I wanted to be an abstract painter, but I was rotten at it.

- Jenny Holzer

It's fun wandering around other people's minds.

- Jenny Holzer

I am not free because I can be exploded anytime.

- Jenny Holzer

The epiphany for me was that I wasn't a writer, and I had to do something with these texts. I put them in the streets as posters.

- Jenny Holzer

Lack of charisma can be fatal.

- Jenny Holzer

I really like doing the laundry, because I succeed at it. But I loathe putting it away. It is already clean.

- Jenny Holzer

Sloppy thinking gets worse over time.

- Jenny Holzer

I used language because I wanted to offer content that people - not necessarily art people - could understand.

- Jenny Holzer

The most profound things are inexpressible.

- Jenny Holzer