Untitled (C-4) | Harvard Art Museums

Gallery Text

When she was selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale of 1990, Jenny Holzer was the first American woman to be so honored. Her installation in the American Pavilion comprised five rooms housing marble floor tiles, benches, and LED signs, all bearing the pithy phrases about sex, death, and war that had already become easily identifiable as Holzer’s work. The words that scroll across the sign on display here, in English and Italian, are drawn from two earlier series by Holzer, Truisms (1977–79) and Inflammatory Essays (1979–82), which she deployed on cheaply printed placards and stickers that she posted on walls and bus stops around New York, as well as on t-shirts and other ephemera. Based on the success of those works, Holzer moved on to billboards and LED panels such as this one. A pioneer among postmodernist artists, she uses tools borrowed from advertising—the ubiquitous American form of communication—to deliver messages that challenge our most basic assumptions about contemporary culture.

Identification and Creation

Object Number: 2014.200
People: Jenny Holzer, American (Gallipolis, Ohio born 1950)
Title: Untitled (C-4)
Classification: Sculpture
Work Type: sculpture
Date: 1990
Culture: American
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/351640

Physical Descriptions

Medium: Horizontal electronic LED sign (three color diodes)
Dimensions: 24.1 x 447 x 11.4 cm (9 1/2 x 176 x 4 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History: Jenny Holzer, created 1990, sold; through [Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York] to; Ignace Van Den Abeele, Belgium. Florizoone, Belgium. [Cheim & Read, New York], sold; to Arnold and Mildred Glimcher, New York, gift; to the Harvard Art Museums, 2014.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of the Glimcher Family Collection in Memory of Dr. Melvin J. Glimcher
Copyright: © Jenny Holzer / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Year: 2014
Object Number: 2014.200
Division: Modern and Contemporary Art
Contact: am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu
Permissions: The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

Cate McQuaid, Contemporary art in the foreground at Harvard Art Museums, The Boston Globe (Boston, MA, November 1, 2014)

Exhibition History

Larger Than Life: Women Artists Making It Big, Susquehanna Art Museum, 06/02/2003 - 08/31/2003
Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art, Pace Wildenstein (25th St.), New York, 02/18/2005 - 03/26/2005
32Q: 1010 Prescott Street Entrance, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/16/2014 - 06/16/2021

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at am_moderncontemporary@harvard.edu

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2014.200: Untitled (C-4)