Bill Viola is a video artist who
focuses on experiences that everyone can connect to as humans, such as birth
and death, often in a religious context. He was raised in Queens and Westbury,
New York, and graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in Experimental
Studios in 1973. Upon graduating, he was involved in both music and visual art.
Viola joined David Tudor in his music group “Rainforest” from 1973 to 1980. He
also lived for 18 months in Florence, Italy, where he joined one of the first
video art studios in Europe, Art/Tapes/22, as the technical director of production.
His fascination with ubiquitous
human experiences is pervasive throughout all his work. Throughout his early
career, Viola recorded various actions already taking place in the world, from recording
classical performing arts in such places as Bali and Japan to, later,
journeying to the Sahara desert to record mirages. His recording of classical
performing arts represents his desire to reach the core of the various cultures
he traveled to, to get at the very essence of human nature. Viola’s Sahara
desert mirage work, too, shows his draw to explore happenings that everyone,
regardless of culture or background, can understand. We have all experienced
heat before. He takes this basic concept and probes it further, looking at
extreme heat and the environment, and making it abstract.
Early in his career, Viola focused
heavily on a performer as the subject of the piece, evident in his recording of
classical performing arts as well as in films such as Reflecting Pool.
Here, we see Viola using innovative technologies with the
still frame as the man jumps into the pool. The key, though, is that the
performative action of the subject is what draws the viewer into the piece. The
image of a man resonates with the audience; we can all connect to him on a
basic level. Then we see him jump towards the pool, but freeze in mid-air. Our
expectations subverted, our concept of time and specifically memory are called
into question. Perhaps, Viola wants us to focus on this moment in between
actions, the moment after the man decides to jump but before he hits the water.
This in between space seems to be the point of the piece. It could not be
achieved, however, without the focal point of the subject, emerging from the
woods and captivating our attention.
In Viola’s later work, Chott el-Djerid, however, we see that he
moves from a subject focus to a more abstract focus. The landscape of the piece
serves as the primary focus.
We see that Viola chooses to begin in snowy, Midwestern
landscapes. Toward the end of that section, a person emerges, but one very
obscured by the snow and quite far away, coming towards the camera. This
subject falls down, signifying the failure of the subject to control our
attention in Viola’s progression from people-oriented works to abstract,
landscape-driven ones. And then we cut to the desert, including a horizon-line
match to the Midwest section, and equally as barren, this time without any
humans in sight.
Recently, Viola has returned to
more of a subject focus in his work, as we see in his piece Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), which was installed in St.
Paul’s Cathedral in May 2014.
Here, Viola brings religious imagery together with four subjects.
The second one becomes a kind of inverted Christ figure, hanging in a
cross-like pose upside down with water raining down on him. The background a
pitch black, this piece focuses entirely on the subjects and the elements that
berate them, focusing on their struggle.
Viola’s
next work, Mary, will function as a
second part to Martyrs and also be
displayed in St. Paul’s Cathedral. His more recent works have trended towards
being displayed in museums, from his early days of pure videotape. This makes his
art have a relational aspect to where it is stationed; before, people could
watch his videos anywhere, and now, while that is still possible, the place
affects how viewers think about the video and vice versa. The religious
connotation of St. Paul’s Cathedral brings to mind the inverted Christ figure
of the second martyr, which we may not have noticed otherwise or, perhaps, not
as readily. It brings the idea to the forefront of our heads; it primes us for
thinking about his work in a religious context. Viola has returned to his
human-focused style, but still manages to innovate with new video technologies
and relational priming based on the location of the piece, all the while
maintaining his interest in religious imagery and ubiquitous human experiences.
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