Photo by Nanda Lanfranco
ABOUT JENNY HOLZER
For more than forty years, Jenny Holzer (b.1950) has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Her medium, whether formulated as a T-shirt, a plaque, or an LED sign, is text, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work. Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters and continuing through her recent light projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humor, kindness, and courage. Holzer received the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990, the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award in 1996, the U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts in 2017, and the University of Chicago’s Rosenberger Medal in 2019. She studied at the University of Chicago from 1970-71 and holds honorary degrees from Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. She lives and works in New York.
Holzer’s time at UChicago
After starting her undergraduate education at Duke University (1968–70), Holzer transferred to the University of Chicago, where she studied for one year (1970–71). At UChicago, she mostly took classes in art and art history, as well as one Core class in the physical sciences. It was during her time in Chicago that Holzer became “serious about art.” She was then drawn back to her home state of Ohio, transferring to Ohio University “because they had a good art department and they didn’t require any more liberal arts.” Here, Holzer completed a BFA in 1973 with a focus on painting and printmaking.
Quotations from Michael Auping, “Interview,” in Jenny Holzer (New York: Universe Publishing, 1992), 69–110.
After I realized that I was going to be a mediocre intellectual, I thought I’d better do something else.
––Jenny Holzer in conversation with Michael Auping (1992)
Courses Jenny Holzer took at UChicago
Autumn 1970
ART HISTORY 246: Baroque Portraits. Seventeenth and eighteenth century art in Italy, France and the Low Countries studied through portraits in painting and sculpture by leading artists of the great personalities of the time. PQ Art 101 or 110 (or 111, etc.). F. Dowley. Winter.
FINE ART 220: Figure Drawing. This course concentrates on figure drawing. Assignments include a set of anatomical drawings, perspective drawings, ad sketchbook, and term project in drawing. Class meets twice weekly for three-hour sessions of drawing from the model, interrupted at three-week intervals by a session devoted to exhibition and criticism of classwork. A weekly total of twelve hours is required. H. Haydon. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
PHYSICAL SCIENCES 101: Elements of the Physical Sciences. A new variant of the common-year sequence. An experimental course, laboratory oriented, which was developed with National Science Foundation support and tried out in a number of colleges. The originating committee, composed of chemists, physicists and crystallographers, developed a new approach to non-science students by building the course around a central theme—in this instance solid matter; and topics are introduced only when a “need to know” has been established in relation to the properties of matter. There will be problems, but the general treatment will be less mathematical than in the other variants. The students will spend two three-hour periods per week in the laboratory, so that the laboratory work can be integrated with the discussion. Open by invitation only to freshmen entering in Autumn. S. Mechsel and Staff. Autumn (101), Winter (102), and Spring (103).
Winter 1971
ART HISTORY 256: Trends in Modern Art 1905–1930. Description not included in course catalog.
FINE ART 221: Figure Drawing. This course concentrates on figure drawing. Assignments include a set of anatomical drawings, perspective drawings, and sketchbook, and term project in drawing. Class meets twice weekly for three-hour sessions of drawing from the model, interrupted at three-week intervals by a session devoted to exhibition and criticism of classwork. A weekly total of twelve hours is required. H. Haydon. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
FINE ART 262: Graphics. Introduction to printmaking. Basic processes of relief, intaglio, planographic, and stencil prints. Class meets twice weekly for six hours; a total of twelve hours is required. R. Duckworth. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
Spring 1971
FINE ART 225: Cityscape. A sketching course for students with experience in drawing, and class travels to interesting sites in the city to enlarge the studio experience, working from industrial to architectural aspects of Chicago. Consent of the instructor required. The class meets once weekly for four hours; a total of twelve hours in required. V. Burnett. Spring 1971.
FINE ART 230: Painting. Students work with emphasis on composition and color. Students are given individual criticism. A sketchbook is required as well as painting done outside of class. The class visits the Art Institute and current exhibitions. It meets twice weekly for six hours; a total of twelve hours is required. V. Klement. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
FINE ART 263: Graphics. Introduction to printmaking. Basic processes of relief, intaglio, planographic, and stencil prints. Class meets twice weekly for six hours; a total of twelve hours is required. R. Duckworth. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
Jenny Holzer’s UChicago Professors
Virgil Burnett (1928-2012)
(Holzer’s professor for Fine Art 225: Cityscape)
An engraver, illustrator, and author of short stories, Virgil Burnett was born to millers in Wichita, Kansas, which led to extensive travels across the United States in his youth. He studied at Columbia University in New York City, and after being drafted into the Korean War shortly thereafter, pursued an M.A. in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. After a Fulbright Scholarship took him to France for a few years—where he met Maurice Darantière, publisher of the original edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and a mentor who encouraged him to pursue book arts— Burnett returned to the U.S. to begin teaching visual art at UChicago. He won the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1969, and after retiring, taught at the University of Waterloo in Stratford, Ontario. Burnett began experimenting with terra cotta sculpture later in his career, yet is remember as a highly imaginative, prolific illustrator who sought to depict underlying themes in literature.
Francis H. Dowley (1915-2003)
(Holzer’s professor for Art History 246: Baroque Portraits):
An historian of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French Art, Francis “Frank” Dowley was known in the Department of Art History for his encyclopedic knowledge of Baroque art and his eagerness to impart this knowledge on any student of art history, both in class and when his office door was ajar. Born in New York City, Dowley attended Princeton University and proceeded to receive an M.A. in Philosophy in 1944 and a PhD in Art History in 1955 at Chicago. He remained at the University for the entirety of his career thereafter, becoming a tenured professor of Art History in 1958. Dowley’s fervent devotion to the Department of Art History was but one aspect of his abounding love for the University as a whole; the Quadrangle Club was his place of residence for several years.
Ruth Duckworth (1919-2009)
(Holzer’s professor for Fine Art 262, 263: Graphics)
At the age of 17, Ruth Duckworth fled her home of Hamburg, Germany for England to escape the rise of Nazism and impending religious persecution. She studied and created art in London through the Second World War, and officially began her life-long, hand worked ceramics practice at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1956. Duckworth immigrated to the U.S. upon an invitation to teach for one year at the Midway Studios, which turned into a professorship in the Department of Visual Arts in 1964. Shortly thereafter, she created her first major commission, a mural titled Earth, Water, Sky (1968) for the Henry Hinds Laboratory. Duckworth is fondly remembered for her innumerable contributions to the visual arts at UChicago, and for her ability to inspire artistic practice in an historically theoretical environment. Several of her sculptures remain on view at the Smart Museum of Art.
Harold Haydon (1909-1994)
(Holzer’s professor for Fine Art 220-21, Figure Drawing)
As an artist, art critic, and art professor, Harold Haydon’s love for visual art left an indelible mark on the arts at the University and on the city of Chicago itself. Haydon was born in Ontario, Canada and immigrated to Chicago with his family in 1917; he attended the University of Chicago Lab School and went on to receive a B.A. and M.A. in Philosophy from UChicago. Haydon was an art critic for the Chicago Sun Times from 1963 to 1985, and simultaneously, was Professor of Art in the College from 1944-1975; in 1944, he was awarded the prestigious Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He later served as Dean of Students in the College from 1957 to 1958, and as Director of the Midway Studios until 1975. The sheer range of media Haydon worked with as an artist—from painting, to mural, to sculpture—is representative of the many roles through which he served the University and profoundly shaped its commitment to the arts.
Vera Klement (b.1929)
(Holzer’s professor for Fine Art 230: Painting)
Born in Danzig, Poland, Vera Klement is a visual artist who still resides and creates art in Chicago. Her work spans charcoal sketches, photography, and oil painting, as distinctive symbols of nature and the outdoors permeate her repertoire. Klement studied at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, at the peak of the abstract expressionist movement in the U.S, and moved to Chicago in 1964 to continue her practice. She was a Professor of Visual Arts from 1965 to 1995 at the University of Chicago, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982, and still remains a Professor Emerita. Her art has been displayed in several iconic locations across the city, from the Renaissance Society on campus, to the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. A life-long painter, Klement describes the practice as a “way to connect to what is great about the human spirit.”
Susan Meschel (DOB Unknown)
(Holzer’s professor for Physical Sciences 101: Elements of Physical Sciences)
A member of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Research Faculty, Susan Meschel is a Chemist who received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1961. According to the Department of Chemistry, Meschel was one of six Hungarian political refugees admitted to study at the University in 1957; in her first quarter at Chicago, she was a student under Nobel Prize winners Henry Taube and Harold Urey. Meschel was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ole Kleppa and went on to teach physical sciences in the College. While taking a break from research on shape memory alloys and thermodynamics, Meschel taught Chemistry at the University of Chicago Lab School. Meschel recalls her days at Chicago fondly; “At the University I no longer felt like a refugee, but a person with a home,” she told the Chemistry department.
Written by Zahra Nasser, UChicago class of 2021
Sources
“An Absolute Devotion to the Unfashionable:” Historian of French Art Francis H. Dowley, 1915-2003.” The University of Chicago News Office, December 17, 2003. http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/03/031217.dowley.shtml.
“Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series.” Encyclopedia.com. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/burnett-virgil-1928-bevan-amberhill.
“Guide to the Harold Haydon Papers 1930-1979.” University of Chicago Library, n.d. https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.HAYDONH.
“Harold Haydon (American, 1909 – 1994).” Richard Norton Gallery, https://richardnortongallery.com/artists/harold-haydon.
“Harold Haydon, Art.” UChicago Chronicle, http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/940203/haydon.shtml.
“Introduction, Virgil Burnett” Omeka RSS. https://ds-omeka.haverford.edu/virgilburnett/introduction.
Lehmann, Emelia. “Secrets of Storage: Ruth Duckworth.” Smart Museum of Art, October 16, 2018. https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/blog/secrets-of-storage-ruth-duckworth/.
“Susan V. Meschel.” Illinois Institute of Technology, https://www.iit.edu/directory/people/susan-meschel.
Meschel, Susan. “A Letter from Susan Meschel .” The Chemists Club. Department of Chemistry, https://chemistry.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/ChemClub_Winter2019-4.pdf.
“Vera Klement.” Vera Klement – Biography, http://veraklement.com/bio.html.
“Vera Klement.” U.S. Department of State. Accessed August 11, 2020. https://art.state.gov/personnel/vera_klement/.
“Virgil Burnett.” Fine Arts, August 1, 2019. https://uwaterloo.ca/fine-arts/about/people/emeriti/virgil-burnett.
“UChicago Arts: Ruth Duckworth | UChicago Arts | The University of Chicago,” https://arts.uchicago.edu/public-art-campus/browse-artist/ruth-duckworth.
The University of Chicago Magazine: February 2004, February 2004. https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0402/alumni/deaths.shtml.