Case Study (via Artnet.com): How Does Jenny Holzer Get the Rights for All the Texts She Uses in Her Artwork?
A woman watches Jenny Holzer's projection mapping creation entitled "For Bilbao" on the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum's facade on March 21, 2019. (Photo by ANDER GILLENEA / AFP via Getty Images)
I’m enthralled with Jenny Holzer’s new app, which allows you to recreate one of those pieces where she projects words onto buildings. (In this case, the text comes from great authors and thinkers, like W.E.B. Du Bois and Plato.) This iteration originated at the campus of the University of Chicago, but is now available around the world. My question is: How does she get the rights to all those words?
Jenny Holzer is a national treasure. In 1990, she became the first woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale, and her work has always reflected our country’s conscience.
From 1977 to 2001, Holzer penned most of her own material, but she has said that she “quit writing because I wanted to cover more themes, more emotions, to create more depth than I could muster alone. I am not really a writer. So I began to choose texts by others.”
She is sometimes called an appropriation artist, but that term can be misleading. For one thing, her collaborators usually receive credit. (She and Polish poet Wisława Szymborska have met for pineapple, as you do.)
In fact, her clearance efforts might go above and beyond what’s strictly necessary. When you encounter Holzer’s work in the wild—say, on the back of a truck—you’re not necessarily aware that it’s an artwork, so it would be hard to argue she’s taking credit for something she hasn’t put her name on. Moreover, short phrases from longer works like books and poems tend not to be protected at all, unless they are especially distinct. (This was quickly made clear to the people who tried to make mugs that read “E.T. Phone Home”without the approval of Universal Pictures.)
Copyright also only exists for the length of a creator’s life, plus 70 years. Since this latest project involves U Chicago’s core curriculum, most of its authors are likely long gone.
