A woman in dark blue hugs her arms around her body, crouched and
writhing. At her side a man tears at his hair in angst. Then with a
surge born of invisible motivation, the figures heave themselves
forward in a silent scream.
This is how art comes to life, and the artist responsible is
Bill Viola, the 51-year-old world renowned videographer.
Viola’s intricate works of video portraiture and installation
art, “The Passions,” are on exhibit at the J. Paul
Getty Museum through April 27.
For visitors accustomed to the Getty’s permanent
collection of medieval religious art and its wide selection of
classical portraiture, the energy and emotion of Viola’s
pieces may be both shocking and strangely familiar. This
double-pronged reaction results from the artist taking his themes
from many of those older paintings and transforming them into his
own unique vision of the inner emotional life bursting through his
figures’ physical shapes.
“The exciting thing here is that for a lot of people who
aren’t accustomed to looking at older art, for them this is
more familiar. This form of video art is going to send them back to
look again, the way Bill went back and looked again,” said
the exhibit’s curator, and director emeritus of the Getty,
John Walsh.
Viola came to understand the importance of the ancient masters
to modern artists during a year of study at the Getty, but he feels
that viewers don’t need a similar background to enjoy his
work.
“You could walk in here with no knowledge of historical
painting whatsoever, and have a valid and enriching
experience,” Viola said.
Viola, a deeply spiritual man influenced by religious mysticism
““ including William Blake’s poetry and the 13th century
mystic poet Jallaludin Rumi ““ believes that an academic
knowledge of the works is secondary for the viewer.
“The initial impression is one of the deepest impressions,
not the most superficial, because most of it is unconscious,”
he said. “The existence of these works as living beings that
come into us and touch our deep unconscious areas ““ well
below rational thought and analysis ““ is the source of their
life.”
Viola’s belief in the unconscious’ power and
emotions’ role in art runs counter to conceptual art’s
distant and cerebral reputation.
“I was really trained to ignore emotions,” he said.
“I had to train myself to do what all my peers and colleagues
when I was young were telling me not to do.”
This confident individuality has helped him reopen and redefine
classic works.
“I used to be taught the stuff you couldn’t do was
supposed to be the newest stuff,” Viola said. “And all
of a sudden I guess I woke up and I realized stuff that’s
very old could be avant-garde too.”
“Guys that made altar pieces were dealing with multiple
images telling a single story, which was what I was doing by
stacking monitors and trying to show multiple images,” he
added. “I realized that the whole crux of the Renaissance was
technological change affecting art and culture.”
Finding himself in a similar time of technological revolution,
Viola has taken advantage of the new hardware available to him
““ including DVDs and flat screen computer monitors.
The pieces at the Getty run on continuously repeating DVDs,
creating their own individual life cycles.
“I consider the looping of these pieces to be part of the
piece. What that does is enact them as rituals,” Viola said.
“These are not documents, these are ritual enactments that
are occurring regularly. If people are crying in these pieces
they’re crying all day long.”
With the help of slow-motion, Viola’s pieces have an
attention to detail and a living ambiguity impossible in the
ancient works.
“Slow motion is like a microscope for time,” Viola
said while discussing the technique used in each of the 12 pieces.
“It doesn’t show you something that doesn’t
exist. It shows you more of what’s there.”
Yet, he remains unsatisfied. For Viola there is another world
beyond even these minute examinations of becoming. It is that world
he is seeking behind the lens.
“There are some things you try to represent that come from
the invisible world, which is the source of almost all my
work,” Viola said. “I’ve realized you might just
have to construct that world, or fabricate it here on earth in
order to portray it.”
For more information visit www.getty.edu. “The
Passions” runs through April 27.