Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: Exuberantly colored squares, arranged in a grid pattern, cover the walls of a towering gallery in Jenny Holzer’s "Inflammatory Wall," an installation originally from 1979 to 1982 and reinstalled at the Guggenheim Museum in 2024. Crimson, magenta, bubblegum, fuchsia, salmon, tangerine, gold, lemon, chartreuse, apple green, teal, grape, and white blocks of color paper the walls in a grid pattern, each 1 1/2 feet square. The overall effect is a randomly pixelated grid design, of around 75 columns of squares curving along the gallery walls, each column seventeen squares tall from floor to ceiling. 

Each square is a poster plastered to the wall and printed with a block of small black text in capitalized letters in a serif typeface. Each color square has a unique text, which is repeated in all the squares of that color.  

As an example, the crimson posters read,

“DESTROY SUPERABUNDANCE. STARVE THE 
FLESH, SHAVE THE HAIR, EXPOSE THE 
BONE, CLARIFY THE MIND, DEFINE THE 
WILL, RESTRAIN THE SENSES, LEAVE 
THE FAMILY, FLEE THE CHURCH, KILL 
THE VERMIN, VOMIT THE HEART, FORGET 
THE DEAD. LIMIT TIME, FORGO 
AMUSEMENT, DENY NATURE, REJECT 
ACQUAINTANCES, DISCARD OBJECTS,  
FORGET TRUTHS, DISSECT MYTH, STOP 
MOTION, BLOCK IMPULSE, CHOKE SOBS, 
SWALLOW CHATTER. SCORN JOY, SCORN 
TOUCH, SCORN TRAGEDY, SCORN 
LIBERTY, SCORN CONSTANCY, SCORN HOPE, 
SCORN EXALTATION, SCORN REPRODUCTION, 
SCORN VARIETY, SCORN EMBELLISHMENT, 
SCORN RELEASE, SCORN REST, SCORN 
SWEETNESS, SCORN LIGHT. IT’S A 
QUESTION OF FORM AS MUCH AS FUNCTION. 
IT IS A MATTER OF REVULSION.”  

In 1979 Holzer followed Truisms with a second series of street posters printed with Inflammatory Essays from 1979 to 1982, a collection of radical proposals and dire predictions from an array of contradictory perspectives. Like "Truisms," these posters were presented anonymously so that readers would focus on the content rather than the author. More than forty years later, these texts continue to highlight the necessity of social change, the potential for manipulation of the public, and the conditions that attend revolution and fascism.

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