Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: "Fingerpaint 17" is a work by Jenny Holzer from around 2012. Roughly 3 1/2 feet tall by 2 1/2 feet wide, the vertical, rectangular work is made of gouache on paper.  

The cream-colored paper remains visible beneath handprints distributed over its surface. Some are the long imprints of fingers while others are dotted fingertips. Palms appear in only a few residual markings. Some marks are slightly streaked as the fingers brushed along the surface of the paper while pressing their marks.

Long fingerprints in blackish-gray, transparent like watery ink, stand out against the rest of the work’s lighter colors. Subtly, they form a rough “X” shape in the composition, arranged in two diagonal lines that begin at both upper corners and cross just below the work’s middle, before ending at opposite bottom corners. The long fingerprints point downward along the diagonal lines, with the tips of the first fingers butting against the bases of the next and so on. Dotted fingertip prints are arranged densely along the edges of the paper, creating a frame of fingerprints in gray, blue-gray, lemon yellow, and bright tangerine orange. 

On close inspection, subtle thin lines of light blue outline five rectangular blocks that cross the width of the composition like horizontal stripes. Filling most of the space of the paper, the five stacked shapes contain repeated directional fingerprints. Within the upper block, for example, fingers are oriented vertically with prominent blue paint dragged down. The middle rectangular shape contains gray and light blue fingerprints oriented horizontally. In the thin space between the blocks sit a few barely discernable lines of gray serif text. At center left, underlined text reads, “Sleep Deprivation.” Following the next rectangular block, faint text reads, “The standard approval for sleep deprivation, per se (without regard to shackling position) is 48 hours.”

At bottom center, text in all caps reads “TOP SECRET.” In the lower right, the number 15 in gray seems to indicate a page number.

"Fingerpaint" is an enlarged and altered replica of a page from a January 2005 fax from the Central Intelligence Agency to the US Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel regarding updated “Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation, and Detention from the Office of Medical Services”. The December 2004 guidelines were drafted in part to ensure that “enhanced” interrogation techniques carried out on CIA detainees would not be expected to cause “serious or permanent harm.” The techniques outlined in the heavily redacted document were “designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’ the detainee, maximize his feeling of vulnerability and helplessness, and reduce or eliminate his will to resist our efforts to obtain critical intelligence,” and include cramped confinement, waterboarding, upright shackling, dietary manipulation, and sleep deprivation. The document justified torture on the premise that the ultimate intent of these techniques was psychological impact rather than physical effect. These documents were released to the public in August 2009 via the Freedom of Information Act after being requested by the American Civil Liberties Union.

at guggenheim.org/audio

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