I was walking on the banks of the Seine, on my way to meet Jenny Holzer. When I arrived, she was staring at her own artwork, which was being projected onto the facade of the Musée d’Orsay.
“First we came and stalked it,” Holzer said of the museum, which holds some of the world’s greatest Monets, Manets, van Goghs, and Gauguins. “It’s good to walk and look and walk and look. Slow thinking. But after I cased the joint on the seventh time, I go, ‘Oh, I should use the words of the artists and the associates of the period of the museum.’”
She stared at the projections, which spread phrases like “I AM SEEKING THE IMPOSSIBLE” across the old railway station built for the 1900 World’s Fair. Her show inside the museum, “J’ai Vu,” is up through February, and features Holzer paintings installed in a room dedicated to historical works, with one of her signature LED scrolling beams installed overhead. But it’s those projected words that all of Paris will see—until the end of the day today.
As we sat on the banks of the Seine Tuesday, Art Basel Paris had just opened its exclusive Avant Première showing to select collectors at the Grand Palais. By Thursday, the fair would officially cancel its final two days due to planned protests targeting Art Basel, its collectors, and its ownership.
Holzer and I didn’t know any of that at the time, as we looked at the phrases projected on the buildings. They’re lifted from correspondence written by the artists, poets, writers, and curators at the museum.
