Nancy Holt, Points of View (1974)
Clocktower Gallery, New York
Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound
Duration: 44 minutes
Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)
Photograph: Gwenn Thomas

a white box with two screens in embedded inside sits in the center of a white brick room with a spiral staircase at the back and two high windows.

a white box with a screens embedded inside sits in the center of a white brick room with a high circular window in the background.

Nancy Holt, Points of View [detail] (1974)
Clocktower Gallery, New York
Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound
Duration: 44 minutes
Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)
Photograph: Gwenn Thomas

A stone clocktower with a small circular window below the center of the clock face. Black and white.

Portrait of Nancy Holt taken on the steps up to the Clocktower Gallery, New York (1974)

Photograph: Gwenn Thomas

a person sits on stone steps with a large railing and a circular window inside a rectangular opening is behind them.

Portrait of Nancy Holt taken on the steps up to the Clocktower Gallery, New York (1974)

Photograph: Gwenn Thomas

Nancy Holt, Points of View (detail) (1974)
Installation view: Nancy Holt: Points of View, Parafin, London, 2020
Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound
Duration: 44 minutes
Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)
Photograph: Peter Mallet

white room with a large white box in the center containing television monitors playing black and white video. One figure standing watching

white room with a large white box in the center containing television monitors playing black and white video

Nancy Holt, Points of View [still] (1974)
Clocktower Gallery, New York
Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound
Duration: 44 minutes
Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)

a black screen with a small circle in the center right that depicts unidentifiable gray and white shapes.

a black screen with a small circle in the center top that depicts unidentifiable gray and white shapes.

Nancy Holt, Points of View [still] (1974)
Clocktower Gallery, New York
Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound
Duration: 44 minutes
Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)

a black screen with a small circle in the bottom right that depicts unidentifiable gray and white shapes.

a black screen with a small circle in the center left that depicts unidentifiable gray and white shapes.

1973—1976

Points of View

Nancy Holt

1974

Clocktower Gallery, New York

Four-monitor video installation, black-and-white, sound

Video unit: 6 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. x 4 ft. 6 in. (1.98 x 1.37 x 1.37 m)

Duration: 44 minutes

In the 1970s Holt’s interest in framing vision and making words material led her to explore the productive miscommunications that take place when information is imperfectly transferred from one medium to another. The four-screen video sculpture Points of View (1974) reveals, as she notes in her journal, “the wonder of place through verbal description.” Points of View was made for the Clocktower Gallery in New York. Four monitors show views of Lower Manhattan as seen through a moving circular tube looking out the windows of the iconic New York exhibition space. Each is accompanied by a dialogue that, literally and conceptually, demonstrates different points of view. Lucy Lippard talks with Richard Serra, Liza Béar with Klaus Kertess, Carl Andre with Ruth Kligman, and Bruce Boice with Tina Girouard about what can be seen through the north, south, east, and west facing windows.

In the first presentation in 1974, visitors could compare the strangers’ observations to their own personal perceptions; they may watch the video footage on the monitor, or step just outside the Clocktower Gallery to explore the same view in actuality. Seen today, Points of View performs travel through both time and space, actively engaging with the visual-cognitive processes.

Writing

Published writing by Nancy Holt

Some Notes on Video Works

Nancy Holt

In Points of View, an installation at the Clocktower Gallery, New York City, May 1974, four monitors were placed facing out N, E, S, W at eye level in the center of the room. They were enclosed in a white rectangular structure 61⁄2 x 41⁄2 x 41⁄2 ft. with monitor screens exposed at a height of 41⁄2 to 51⁄2 ft. This structure repeated the structure of the square room with its high walls and four windows N, E, S, W overhead. The windows themselves were made circular, causing an interaction between the circles of sunlight shining into the space and the circles of video light being emitted by the monitors.

Partial glimpses through circular holes set up a desire for the whole camera view, yet memory fails to retain the visual fragments necessary to recompose the whole view. The whole continuously eludes us. At the end of each tape the prop is removed. The total camera view is always a new confrontation.

—Nancy Holt

From “Some Notes on Video Works” originally published in a slightly different form in Video Art, ed. Ira Schneider and Beryl Korot, 68–69 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976). Republished in Sightlines, edited by Alena J. Williams, 252-253 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

Points of View

Writing

Some Notes on Video Works

See Also