Jenny Holzer's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Lack of charisma can be fatal.

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

Expiring for love is beautiful but stupid.

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.

Protect me from what I want.

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.

Company makes my day.

I am not free because I can be exploded anytime.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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