Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: Jenny Holzer’s "Still Life" is part of a series of sculptural works. This one is from 2017 and made of marble cut into a massive rectangular form about two feet tall by two-and-a-half feet wide by seven feet long. Its smooth, shiny Breccia Medicea surface shows the stone’s swirls of black, grey, cream, white, pink, and burgundy. The swirling marbled formations of the veins give the impression of the silt of streams, patterns left by tides, and aerial views of river paths. A stone lid sits atop the block and slightly overhangs each side of the rectangular base. Though not visible, the sarcophagus form is hollow and boxlike, but even with an empty center, the immense structure weighs about 800 pounds.  

Narrated by a screen reader, lines of text in capitalized, serif letters engraved on the top of the lid read: 

“IN A POOL 
OF MUD AND BLOOD 
BETWEEN THE 
HALF-CHARRED BODY 
OF A HORSE 
AND THE 
HALF-CHARRED BODY 
OF A MAN 
NEXT TO 
A TORN GUTTER 
AN ARMCHAIR 
WITH A FRINGE 
A TEAPOT 
AND THREE PIECES 
OF BROKEN GLASS 
LIES A 
BURNT-AT-THE EDGES SCRAP 
OF A LOVE LETTER 
‘ I AM SO HAPPY’” 

In 1986, Holzer turned to engraving text in stone, complementing the modern and ephemeral formats in which she was working at the time, such as posters and electronic signs, with the historical resonances and formal elegance of stone. In addition to benches, she has incised texts into the lids of granite and marble sarcophagi and the paving stones of memorials. In public areas, stoneworks engraved with text surprise by contrasting the form of official inscriptions with content that ranges from the revelatory and wild to the frankly emotional.  

Holzer’s first uses of stone in the 1980s coincided with her first formal installations. Simple arrangements of stoneworks in LED-lit rooms—including her 1989 ring of benches in the Guggenheim’s rotunda—created spaces of contemplation reminiscent of assemblies and waiting rooms. Granite and marble offered viewers places to sit while lending Holzer’s words permanence. A single marble sarcophagus is lettered with the poem “Still Life,” by Anna Świrszczyńska, which describes the aftermath of war.

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