The Mazarin entrance to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital

The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (Groupe hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière) is a teaching hospital located in Paris, France. Part of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris, it is one of Europe's largest hospitals.^[1] It is known as the place where Diana, Princess of Wales, died in August 1997, following a car crash.

History[link]

The Salpêtrière was originally a gunpowder factory ("salpêtre" being a constituent of gunpowder), but was converted to a dumping ground for the poor of Paris. It served as a prison for prostitutes, and a holding place for the mentally disabled, criminally insane, epileptics, and the poor; it was also notable for its population of rats.

In 1656, Louis XIV charged the architect Libéral Bruant to build a hospital on the location of the factory, founding the Hospice de la Salpêtrière. The building was expanded in 1684.

By the eve of the Revolution, it had become the world's largest hospital, with a capacity of 10,000 patients plus 300 prisoners, largely prostitutes swept from the streets of Paris. From La Salpêtrière they were paired with convicts and forcibly expatriated to New France.

During the September massacres of 1792, the Salpêtrière was stormed on the night of 3/4 September by a mob from the impoverished working-class district of the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, with the avowed intention of releasing the detained street-girls; 134 of the prostitutes were released; twenty-five madwomen were less fortunate and were dragged, some still in their chains, into the streets and murdered.^[2] Madame Roland, a Girondin supporter of the Revolution in its first liberalising stages, recorded in her Memoirs that the Revolution "has been stained by villains and become hideous".^[3]

1857 lithograph by Armand Gautier, showing personifications of dementia, megalomania, acute mania, melancholia, idiocy, hallucination, erotic mania and paralysis in the gardens of the Hospice de la Salpêtrière.

Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital Chapel

In the first half of the 19th century, the first humanitarian reforms in the treatment of the violently insane were initiated here by Philippe Pinel, friend of the Encyclopédistes; his sculptural monument stands before the main entrance in Place Marie-Curie, Boulevard de L'Hôpital. Later, when Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot took over the department, the Salpêtrière became known as a psychiatric centre. Charcot is often credited as the founder of modern neurology. His teaching activities on the Salpêtrière's wards helped to elucidate the natural history and pathophysiology of many human illnesses including neurosyphilis, epilepsy, and stroke. Students came from all over Europe to listen to Charcot's lectures. Among them was a young Sigmund Freud.

The Pitié-Salpêtrière is now a general teaching hospital with departments focusing on most major medical specialities.

Numerous celebrities have been treated at the Salpêtrière, including Michael Schumacher,^[4] Ronaldo,^[4] Prince Rainier of Monaco,^[5] Alain Delon and Gérard Depardieu.^[6] Former president Jacques Chirac had a pacemaker fitted at the Salpêtrière in 2008.^[7]

Diana, Princess of Wales, died at the Salpêtrière in 1997,^[8] as did Josephine Baker in 1975, and French bicycle racer Laurent Fignon in 2010.

Buildings[link]

Hospital Chapel[link]

Chapelle de la Salpêtrière (Hospital Chapel), at n° 47 Boulevard de l'Hôpital is one of the masterpieces of Libéral Bruant, architect of Les Invalides. It was built around 1675, on the model of a Greek cross and has four central chapels each capable of holding a congregation of some 1,000 people. Its central octagonal cupola is illuminated by picture windows in circular arcs.

Philippe Pinel monument[link]

In the place in front of the main entrance to the Hospital, there is a large bronze monument to Philippe Pinel, who was chief physician of the Hospice from 1795 to his death in 1826. The Salpêtrière was, at the time, like a large village, with seven thousand elderly indigent and ailing women, an entrenched bureaucracy, a teeming market and huge infirmaries. Pinel created an inoculation clinic in his service at the Salpêtrière in 1799 and the first vaccination in Paris was given there in April 1800.

Pinel's monument at La Salpêtrière, Ludowig Durand, sculptor, 1885^[9]

Notable doctors[link]

Through its history, the Pitié-Salpétrière hosted notable doctors, among others:

• Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), founder of modern neurology;
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), Charcot's student in Paris;
• Joseph Babinski (1857–1932), another Charcot's student;
• Philippe Pinel (1745–1826);
• Jean-Étienne Esquirol (1772–1840);
• Étienne-Jean Georget (1795–1828);
• Ernest-Charles Lasègue (1816–1883);
• Gérard Encausse (1865–1916)
• Jules Bernard Luys (1828–1897)
• Alfred Vulpian (1826–1893);
• Paul Richer (1849–1933), anatomist, collaborator of Charcot;
• Georges Gilles de la Tourette (1857–1904), neurologist;
• Pierre Janet (1859–1947), 19th century psychologist;
• Maria Montessori (1870–1952), pioneer in education;
• Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), psychoanalyst;
• Christian Cabrol (1925-), cardiac surgeon, performed Europe's first heart transplantation on April 27, 1968.
• Iradj Gandjbakhch (1941-), cardiac surgeon, performed Europe's first heart transplantation on April 27, 1968 along with Dr. Cabrol; fitted a pacemaker on former president Jacques Chirac in 2008.

See also[link]

• Bicêtre Hospital

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital

• Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (in French)
• History of La Salpêtrière

Coordinates: 48°50′13″N 2°21′54″E / 48.837°N 2.365°E / 48.837; 2.365

Jenny Holzer
The third phase of Holzer's For the City, projected on the Fifth Avenue side of the New York Public Library, October 6–9, 2005
Birth name	Jenny Holzer
Born	1950 (1950) Gallipolis, Ohio
Nationality	American
Field	Conceptual art
Training	Rhode Island School of Design

Installation in lobby at 7 WTC

Jenny Holzer (born 1950) is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.

Education[link]

Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio. Originally aspiring to become an abstract painter,^[1] her studies included general art courses at Duke University, Durham, NC (1968–70), and then painting, printmaking and drawing at the University of Chicago, before completing her BFA at Ohio University, Athens (1972). In 1974, Holzer took summer courses at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, entering its MFA programme in 1975.^[2] In 1976 she moved to Manhattan, participating in the Whitney Museum's independent study program and beginning her first work with language, installation and public art. She was also an active member of the artists group Colab. In her private collection, she has works by Alice Neel, Kiki Smith, Nancy Spero, and Louise Bourgeois.^[1]

Work[link]

Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980, looking for new ways to make narrative or commentary an implicit part of visual objects. Her contemporaries include Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Sarah Charlesworth, and Louise Lawler.^[3]

Holzer is mostly known for her large-scale public displays that include billboard advertisements, projections on buildings and other architectural structures, as well as illuminated electronic displays. The main focus of her work is the use of words and ideas in public space. Originally utilizing street posters, LED signs became her most visible medium, though her diverse practice incorporates a wide array of media including bronze plaques, painted signs, stone benches and footstools, stickers, T-shirts, condoms, paintings, photographs, sound, video, light projection, the Internet, and a Le Mans race car.

Holzer's first public works, Truisms (1977–9), appeared in the form of anonymous broadsheets that she printed anonymously in black italic script on white paper and wheat-pasted to buildings, walls and fences in and around Manhattan.^[2] These one-liners are a distillation of an erudite reading list from the Whitney Independent Study Program, where Holzer was a student.^[4] She printed other Truisms on posters, t-shirts and stickers, then carved them in the stone of public benches. In 1981, Holzer initiated the Living series, which she printed on aluminum and bronze plaques, the presentation format used by medical and government buildings. In 1982, the artist installed for the first time a large electronic sign on the Spectacolor board at Times Square, New York.^[5] Sponsored by the Public Art Fund program, the use of L.E.D. (light emitting diode) allowed Holzer to reach a larger audience. The texts in her subsequent Survival series, compiled in 1983-85, speak to the great pain, delight, and ridiculousness of living in contemporary society.^[6] Holzer began working with stone in 1986. In her 1986 exhibition at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York, she introduced a total environment, where viewers were confronted with the relentless visual buzz of a horizontal LED sign and stone benches leading up to an electronic altar. This practice culminated in the installation at the Guggenheim Museum in 1989 of a 163 meter-long sign, forming a continuous circle spiraling up the parapet wall.^[5]

For the Venice Biennale in 1990, Holzer designed posters, hats, and t-shirts to be sold in the streets of Venice, while her LED signboards and marble benches occupied the solemn and austere exhibition space (the original installation is retained in its entirety in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the organizing institution for the American Pavilion at the 1990 Venice Biennale). Text-based light projections have been central to Holzer’s practice since 1996.^[7]

Holzer wrote texts herself for a long time between 1977 and 2001. However since 1993, she has been mainly working with texts written by others. Some of these are literary texts by great authors such as the Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, Henri Cole (USA), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria), Fadhil Al-Azawi (Iraq), Yehuda Amichai (Israel) and Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine). She also uses texts from different contexts, such as passages from de-classified US Army documents from the war in Iraq. For example, a large LED work presents excerpts from the minutes of interrogations of American soldiers who had committed human rights violations and war crimes in Abu Ghraib, making what was once secret public. Holzer's works often speak of violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war and death. Her main concern is to enlighten, bringing to light something thought in silence and meant to remain hidden.

Selected works[link]

• Truisms (1977–9)^[8] is probably her most well-known work. Holzer has compiled a series of statements and aphorisms ("truisms") and has publicised them in a variety of ways: listed on street posters, in telephone booths, and even, in 1982, on one of Times Square's gigantic LED billboards.
• Inflammatory Essays (1978–79), in which she brought texts influenced by Trotsky, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and Emma Goldman onto the streets
• Living Series (early 1980s), using more monumental media such as bronze plaques and billboards
• Survival Series (1983–1985), with more militant aphorisms, including "Men Don't Protect You Anymore," a phrase reproduced on condoms and street billboards alike
• Under a Rock
• Lament
• Child Text, a piece on motherhood for the 1990 Venice Biennale
• Please Change Beliefs (1995),^[9] created for the internet art gallery adaweb.^[10]
• Protect Me From What I Want, The 15th iteration of the famous BMW Art Car Project. Painted on the BMW V12 LMR, the aforementioned refrain is written in metal foil, outlined with phosphorescent paint. In addition, the phrase "You are so complex, you don't respond to danger" is written on one of the cars sidepods; the other states "The unattainable is invariably attractive". The car was withdrawn from the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, but saw active competition for the 2000 Petit Le Mans, finishing fifth overall.
• Terminal 5 In 2004, the dormant Saarinen-designed TWA Flight Center (now Jetblue T5) at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) briefly hosted an art exhibition called Terminal Five,^[11] curated by Rachel K. Ward^[12] featuring the work of 18 artists.^[13] Holzer's work displayed electronically on the terminals original departure-arrival board — Holzer had wanted the work projected onto the building's exterior, but airport officials denied the request, noting they could interfere with runway operations.^[12]
• For the City (2005), nighttime projections of declassified government documents on the exterior of New York University's Bobst Library, and poetry on the exteriors of Rockefeller Center and the New York Public Library in Manhattan ^[14]
• For Singapore (2006), projection on City Hall, Singapore on the occasion of the Singapore Biennale 2006
• For the Capitol (2007), nighttime projections of quotes by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Theodore Roosevelt about the role of art and culture in American Society. Projected from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts onto the Potomac River and Roosevelt Island in Washington DC.^[15]
• I Was In Baghdad Ochre Fade*, (2007), Oil on linen transcriptions of torture documents from the Iraq War; part of the Renaissance Society's 2007 group show, "Meanwhile, In Baghdad..."^[16]
• For SAAM (2007), Holzer's first cylindrical column of light and text created from white electronic LEDs, featuring texts from four of the artist's series — Truisms, Living (selections), Survival (selections) and Arno -; commissioned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum^[17]
• Redaction Paintings (2008), reproduced recently released declassified memos with much of the text blacked out by censors.

Permanent displays[link]

• IT TAKES A WHILE BEFORE YOU CAN STEP OVER INERT BODIES AND GO AHEAD WITH WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO. From The Living Series (1989), twenty-eight white granite benches with inscriptions, part of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
• Green Table (1992), a large granite picnic table with inscriptions, part of the Stuart Collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
• Installation for Schiphol (1995), permanent installation at Schiphol Airport Authority, Amsterdam, Holland
• Erlauf Peace Monument (1995), texts memorializing lives lost and peace gained in World War II in Erlauf, Austria
• Allentown Benches (Selections from the Truisms and Survival series) (1995), United States Courthouse, Allentown
• Installation for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) Permanent Installation, located off the main room of the Guggenheim Bilbao, with tall LED columns of text in English (red, on the front side) and Basque (blue, on the back side)
• Oskar Maria Graf Memorial (1997), Literaturhaus, Munich
• Ceiling Snake (1997), 138 electronic LED signs with red diodes over 47.6 meters, permanently installed at the Hamburger Kunsthalle
• Bench (From the Survival Series of 8 benches) (1997), bench made of green marble at the Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College; Portuguese inscription: NUM SONHO VOCE ENCONTROU UM JEITO DE SOBREVIVER E SE ENCHEU DE ALEGRIA. (IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY.)
• There is a permanent LED sign along the top of the Telenor building in Oslo, Norway, installed in 1999
• Untitled (1999), installation for Isla de Esculturas, Pontevedra, Spain
• Blacklist (1999), permanent installation located in front of the University of Southern California's Fisher Museum of Art
• Historical Speeches (1999), 4-sided electronic LED sign with amber diodes, permanently installed at the Reichstag, Berlin; the piece displays a selection of speeches given in the Reichstag and Bundestag, and plays for 12 days without repeating itself
• The Black Garden of Nordhorn, the artist was commissioned to redesign a memorial to the fallen of Germany’s three previous wars, including World War II. Next to the existing monolithic monument, she designed a circular garden consisting of concentric rings of plantings and pathways.^[18]
• Wanås Wall (2002), inscriptions on stones on the grounds of Wanås Castle, Knislinge, Sweden
• Serpentine (2002), electronic LED sign with blue diodes, permanently installed at the Toray Building, Osaka
• Untitled (2002), installation at University of Agder, Gimlemoen, Norway
• 125 Years (2003), a site work at the University of Pennsylvania, celebrating 125 years of women at University of Pennsylvania
• For Pittsburgh (2005), Holzer’s largest LED project in the United States boasting 688 feet of blue LED tubes attached to two edges of the roof of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh
• For Elizabeth (2006), permanent outdoor work for the Vassar College campus consisting of twenty backless and armless granite benches, inscribed with the poetry of alumna and Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth Bishop^[19]
• For 7 World Trade (2006), permanent LED installation in the 65-foot-wide, 14-foot-high wall in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center
• For Novartis (2006/07), permanent LED installation at Novartis HQ, Basel, Switzerland
• VEGAS (2009), LED installation commissioned for the parking lot of Aria Resort & Casino, Las Vegas
• Bench (2011), marble bench at Barnard College; English inscription: "Stupid people shouldn’t breed." / "It’s crucial to have an active fantasy life."^[20]
• 715 Molecules (2011), commissioned installation at Williams College consisting of a 16 ½ -foot long and 4-foot wide stone table and four benches, the surfaces of which have been sandblasted with 715 unique molecules^[21]

Paintings[link]

At the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007, Holzer presented a series of silk-sreen paintings; each of the 15 same-size, medium-large canvases, stained purple or brown, bears an all-black, silk-screened reproduction of a PowerPoint diagram used in 2002 to brief President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others on the United States Central Command’s plan for invading Iraq. Holzer found these documents at the Web site of the independent, nongovernmental National Security Archive (nsarchive.org), which obtained them through the Freedom of Information Act, and has used them as source material for her work since 2004.^[22] Other paintings depict confessions or letters from prisoners of all kinds and their families (parents pleading that the Army discharge rather than court-martial their sons); autopsy and interrogation reports; or exchanges concerning torture, as well as prisoners’ handprints and maps of Baghdad.^[3]

Dance[link]

Holzer’s first dance project was in 1985, “Holzer Duet ... Truisms” with Bill T. Jones. In 2010, she collaborated with choreographer Miguel Gutierrez for the Co-Lab series at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.^[24]

Books[link]

Holzer has also published several books, including A Little Knowledge (1979); Black Book (1980); Hotel (with Peter Nadin, 1980); Living (with Nadin, 1980); Eating Friends (with Nadin, 1981); Eating Through Living (with Nadin, 1981); and Truisms and Essays (1983).^[25]

Exhibitions[link]

Solo exhibitions of Holzer's work have been held in institutions such as the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2009, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2008. Other solo shows include Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1988); Dia Art Foundation, New York (1989); Guggenheim Museum, New York (1989); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1991); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2000); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001, 2011); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2006); and BALTIC, Gateshead (2010). She has also participated in Documenta 8, Kassel (1987), as wells in group exhibitions in major institutions such as the Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch in The Nederlands, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.^[26]

Jenny Holzer is represented in New York by Cheim & Read, and in Paris by Galerie Yvon Lambert.^[27]

Recognition[link]

Jenny Holzer was the first woman to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale in 1990, and for her pavilion she was awarded the Leone D'Oro that year. She has been the recipient of several important awards, including the Blair Award, presented by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1982, the Skowhegan Medal for Installation (1994), the Berlin Prize Fellowship (2000), and a diploma of Chevalier from the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government (2002).^[25] In 2010, Holzer was given the MOCA Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts; Holzer had designed the bronze plaque in the early 1994, which features one of the artist’s truisms: “It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender.”^[28]

See also[link]

Detail of 7 WTC installation

• Barbara Kruger
• Martin Firrell
• Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular

References[link]

^[1]

1. ^ RES Art World/World Art September 2009

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (August 2010)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jenny Holzer

• Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 4 (2007).
• “Jenny Holzer Protect Protect” Donna De Salvo (curator at the Whitney Museum ) discusses the PROTECT PROTECT exhibition on video. Chanel Thirteen (PBS, NYC) Sunday Arts program. 6 and a half mins.
• Jenny Holzer at Cheim & Read gallery, New York.
• Ground Zero’s Saving Grace Metropolis Magazine - Installation at 7 World Trade Center
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum installation
• Please Change Beliefs Visitors to the website are allowed to evaluate and modify a selection of Holzer's Truisms.
• Blue light special of a different kind tells a good story post-gazette.com - July 20, 2005
• Article with photos about Holzer's light projections in London
• Jenny Holzer in the Video Data Bank
• Walleston, Amiee (April 20, 2009). "Now Showing | Jenny Holzer". The New York Times TMagazine. http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/now-showing-jenny-holzer/. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
• "Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT". Whitney Museum of American Art. March 12–May 31, 2009. http://whitney.org/www/holzer/index.jsp. Retrieved 2009-04-20. ^{[dead link]}
• zingmagazine Project "Declassified" curated by Melanie Flood in issue #20
• Jenny Holzer at Sprüth Magers Berlin London