Bill Viola

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

Gerald Fox’s film documents Bill Viola and his wife and close collaborator Kira Perov’s odyssey to create two permanent video installations for London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Martyrs and Mary, the first art commissions of their kind to be installed in Britain’s most famous religious space.

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme is martyrdom for deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal elements.

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme, is martyrdom for deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal elements

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme is martyrdom for deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal element

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) consists of four plasma screens, each showing a single figure who is progressively overwhelmed by the onslaught of a natural force. The experiences of the four individuals are orchestrated together to form a coherent whole. The overriding theme is martyrdom for deep-seated beliefs, with the physical suffering of the body made dramatically evident through the cardinal elements

Created by Bill Viola and Kira Perov and opened in May 2014, Martyrs shows four individuals, across four colour vertical plasma screens, being martyred by the four classical elements. The work has no sound. It lasts for seven minutes. Martyrs was joined in 2016 by a second piece entitled Mary. The installations have been gifted to Tate, and are on long-term loan to St Paul’s Cathedral. Bill Viola's commission for St Paul’s Cathedral follows the great historical tradition of commissions for spiritual centres that has resulted in a priceless heritage of art around the world. The result of this commission sees St Paul’s Cathedral, which has always spearheaded the engagement of great artists, house a resonant work of art for our times. Martyrs (and later Mary), will play an important role in connecting contemporary issues with the timeless themes embodied in the cathedral.

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.

This work represents the inevitable separation of father and son as they take separate paths in their life's journey. Two men arrive in the desert under a turbulent sky. They appear at the far extremes of the frame and walk toward us on a trajectory that takes them closer to each other, until they are walking side by side. Eventually they cross paths and begin to separate. The gap between them widens until they leave the outer edges of the frame.

“Transfiguration refers to a rare process whereby both the substance and essence of an entity is reconfigured. In physical terms, a transfiguration is a change in form, a remodeling of appearance. The word derives from the ancient Greek ‘metemorphothe’ or 'metamorphosis,’ suggesting a complete reformation. However, the word takes on its fullest meaning in the spiritual context when it refers to the moment when a person or an object is transformed not by external means but from within. The resulting change is absolute and thorough, affecting the heart and soul of the subject. Although the outward appearance can sometimes be altered in this process as well, it is not necessary. A deeper, more profound, complete transformation occurs inside, out of sight and, for a person it reformulates the very fiber of their being, finally radiating outward to affect everything around it.”

Part of Bill Viola’s Transfiguration series, The Innocents explores the presence of the dead in the world of the living. The video documents a boy and a girl who slowly approach out of the darkness and into the light. Shown on separate screens, they break through what is, at first, an invisible threshold of water, suggestive of a passage from the spiritual world into a physical plane of existence. Once incarnate, however, all beings realize that their presence is finite, and so the figures eventually turn away from material existence to return from whence they came.

In Basin of Tears, two videos are projected side by side on two adjacent screens mounted to the wall. This video diptych creates an incredible imagery, colours and the sensual quality of water are presented vividly, just like in an old master painting. Viewers find themselves in a transcendental atmosphere; through the slow pace, the large but still intimate size and the exclusion of any sound, Viola creates a truly fascinating artwork with a powerful visual effect. It seeks to engage the viewer in a visceral and emotional experience that goes to the roots of the human condition and its spiritual sources.

This diptych opens with the image of two parallel streams of falling water. A female torso moves into the background of the left screen while a male torso mirrors her on the right. Both figures move slowly to the foreground and into the light, cupping and bathing their hands in the water for several minutes until they fade away into silhouettes. Viola has described this work as a kind of purification ceremony akin to those one would experience in a Japanese Zen temple.

The ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall.

The ascent of the soul in the space after death as it is awakened and drawn up in a backwards flowing waterfall.

A four-hour plus video production inspired by Richard Wagner's oeuvre "Tristan und Isolde" and projected during the opera premiere in Paris, in partnership with Peter Sellars as artistic collaborator, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

A small crowd of people are gathered in wait when they are suddenly struck by a massive onslaught of water.

A small crowd of people are gathered in wait when they are suddenly struck by a massive onslaught of water.

Hailed as the "Rembrandt of the Video Age," renowned American artist Bill Viola became the first contemporary artist ever to be featured in a one-man show at London's prestigious National Gallery. This documentary directed by Mark Kidel features rarely seen footage from Viola's own archive and in-depth interviews with the video maverick. Viola talks passionately about his life and the influences that have driven his artwork from the beginning.

The hands of three generations are seen in this work – a young boy, father, mother and grandmother. Slowly and deliberately, the four pairs of hands are shown forming a series of predetermined movements. These are taken from sources as diverse as Buddhist mudras (defined ritual or symbolic gestures) and 17th-century English chirologia tables, which illustrate hand gestures that accompany emotional states. Viola explains that the work is “a timeline that encompasses both the parallel actions of the individuals in the present moment and the larger movements of the stages of human life.” It is part of a series called 'The Passions', which is inspired by early European devotional paintings and explores human emotions.

This video work is one of a group of pieces known as 'The Passions' which explores human emotions, inspired by early European devotional paintings. The five screens show different times of the day – morning, afternoon, sunset, evening and night. Each scene shows the female protagonist at a different task, from yoga exercises in the morning through to lighting candles in the evening and finally going to bed. In each scene, the tree outside the window is shown at different stages of its annual cycle, putting the woman's routine in the larger context of the cycles of nature. The work is based on a predella by the fourteenth century artist Andrea di Bartolo.

The Quintet of the Astonished shows the unfolding expressions of five actors in such extreme slow motion that every minute detail of their changing facial expressions and movements can be detected. In this piece artist Bill Viola explores the cathartic power within grief, personal suffering, and bereavement.

Anima, which means “soul” in Latin and is the root of the word animation, is from a series of works inspired by Renaissance paintings of figures against neutral backgrounds. The panels show three people who have been directed to express a series of emotions in a specific order—joy, sorrow, anger, and fear. Bill Viola shot the original footage of the complete emotional cycle in one minute; by slowing the speed of the video playback to 81 minutes and 30 seconds, he has made it nearly impossible to discern any movement, blurring the distinction between portraits made with still photography and those made with film. Through these portraits of three anonymous individuals, Viola both conveys the idea that time is eternal and addresses the notion of the changing self.

In this work's left panel, The Crossing (1996), a walking male figure is consumed by fire on a 27-foot vertical plasma screen projection while in the accompanying right panel, The Crossing, Video 2 (1996), the same man struggles under a deluge of water.

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern

Déserts was created to accompany a live performance of the work of avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). The Ensemble Modern, a contemporary music group based in Frankfurt, commissioned Viola to create a visual score for Varèse's Déserts after discovering notes by the composer referring to an unrealized image component of his composition. The resulting film/videotape was produced with the European television stations ZDF/Arte. In October 1994 Viola's Déserts premiered in a live performance in Vienna with conductor Peter Eötvös and the Ensemble Modern

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning video installation artist Bill Viola juxtaposes personal pictures of his mother's death with images of his own son's birth to explore foundational and potent themes of beginnings and endings, the cycle of life and the movement of generations. An evocative exploration of personal and communal spirituality, this deeply felt film is a poetic masterpiece to contemplate time and again.

Slowly Turning Narrative includes two projections on a large central rotating screen. One presents images of virtually everything that constitutes life, embracing the broadest sweep from birth to death. The other shows a close-up of Viola’s head incanting “the one who lives,” “the one who acts,” “the one who reads,” and more. As this screen rotates, a mirror on the back comes into view, reflecting the image of the viewer in this video evocation of human existence.

The Sleepers is a startlingly dark vision of sleeping people suspended under water, unable to make contact with the world outside. Viola describes the work: “Seven 55-gallon metal barrels stand in a darkened room. They are white inside and out and are open at the top. The only light in the room is a soft bluish glow emerging from each barrel and diffused throughout the room. The barrels are filled to the brim with water. At the bottom of each one under the water is a black-and-white video monitor facing straight up, the source of the blue light. Video and power cables for the monitor are visible as they emerge from the floor and enter the water over the top rim of each barrel. On each screen is a close-up of a person’s face while asleep. There is an image of a different person in each barrel, actual recordings of people sleeping presented continuously with little or no editing.

The video installation's alternation between slow and fast-moving images, as well as soft and loud sounds, represents faltering thought processes. A murmuring voice illustrates the installation's effect on the viewer's mind.

Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The image sequences — fruit falling from a tree, a candle being extinguished, a family having a flash photograph taken — appear as a series of openings or momentary glimpses into nature's essential gestures which, like thoughts, are destined to fade and themselves disintegrate into obscurity and oblivion. Peak moments illuminate the dim confines of memory and forgetting with a kind of universal light, as a baby emerges into the world before our eyes, and the camera-eye moves along a dark concrete tunnel towards the rigid steel bars of a locked gate, where it finally passes through and out into the bright world, liberated by the consuming, saturated white light of its own overexposure."

Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The image sequences — fruit falling from a tree, a candle being extinguished, a family having a flash photograph taken — appear as a series of openings or momentary glimpses into nature's essential gestures which, like thoughts, are destined to fade and themselves disintegrate into obscurity and oblivion. Peak moments illuminate the dim confines of memory and forgetting with a kind of universal light, as a baby emerges into the world before our eyes, and the camera-eye moves along a dark concrete tunnel towards the rigid steel bars of a locked gate, where it finally passes through and out into the bright world, liberated by the consuming, saturated white light of its own overexposure."

Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The image sequences — fruit falling from a tree, a candle being extinguished, a family having a flash photograph taken — appear as a series of openings or momentary glimpses into nature's essential gestures which, like thoughts, are destined to fade and themselves disintegrate into obscurity and oblivion. Peak moments illuminate the dim confines of memory and forgetting with a kind of universal light, as a baby emerges into the world before our eyes, and the camera-eye moves along a dark concrete tunnel towards the rigid steel bars of a locked gate, where it finally passes through and out into the bright world, liberated by the consuming, saturated white light of its own overexposure."

Writes Viola: "A succession of individual images focusing on mortality, decay and disintegration, are delineated by long, slow fades to black. The image sequences — fruit falling from a tree, a candle being extinguished, a family having a flash photograph taken — appear as a series of openings or momentary glimpses into nature's essential gestures which, like thoughts, are destined to fade and themselves disintegrate into obscurity and oblivion. Peak moments illuminate the dim confines of memory and forgetting with a kind of universal light, as a baby emerges into the world before our eyes, and the camera-eye moves along a dark concrete tunnel towards the rigid steel bars of a locked gate, where it finally passes through and out into the bright world, liberated by the consuming, saturated white light of its own overexposure."

Writes Viola: "Sodium Vapor was recorded over a period of several weeks in the hours between one and five in the morning on the streets of an industrial area in lower Manhattan. The title derives from an interest in the particular qualities of sodium vapor street lighting — its characteristic color temperature, the shadows it casts, and the eerie quality it seems to impart to the objects it illuminates. The essence of the work is the spell which the hour has over the physical spaces of the streets in the early morning. There is always the unseen presence of the large number of people surrounding you, most of them sleeping; the camera is awake in their dreamtime. The recording of these locations in the middle of the night rather than in daylight represents a transformation — like figure/ground reversal — of these physical spaces from the familiar thoughts and activities of the day to the nighttime shadows of emptiness and obscurity."

"I Do Not Know What It Is that I Am Like" juxtaposes images of animals, both wild and domestic, and natural environments with human activity as it takes place in an apartment, and during a fire walking ceremony in Fiji. Documentary-style footage is combined with staged events. Despite the piece's lack of a traditional narrative, it bears some relationship to nature works. The segment features material from "Il Corpo Scuro (The dark body)" - animals and natural environments are seen up close and at a distance.

Silent Life records the first hours and days of life through a series of portraits of newborn babies in a hospital nursery. The alienating hospital environment, and the vulnerability of the babies' gestures and expressions, suggests a primal linking of birth and death.

"Reverse Television" was created in the mid-1980's by video artist Bill Viola. The 30-second portraits were about portraiture and the idea of a person staring at the viewer (as the viewer stares at the TV screen). Conceived of as a "micro-series," the work features 42 30-second portraits of television viewers in their living rooms. The portraits appear very formally composed, with attention paid to composition, lighting, and color. The viewers sit quietly, only occasionally making a slight shift in position. No external sound score has been added, so that the only sounds heard are sync sounds that have been heightened. These sounds include viewers' clothing when they move, swallowing, and background noises, such as traffic outside the viewer's home or a dog barking in the distance.

Viola experimental short

Viola experimental short

Viola experimental short

A series of shots depicting "America" are laid over a classic Gregorian Chant recreated through the distortion of a woman's screams.

A series of shots depicting "America" are laid over a classic Gregorian Chant recreated through the distortion of a woman's screams.

Ancient of Days is a remarkable series of "canons and fugues for video" that comprises Viola's most sophisticated structural and metaphorical explorations of time. Mathematical notations of precise time-code editing were applied to construct illustrations of temporal symmetry, duality and transposition — time-based equivalents of musical compositional principles such as counterpoint and serialism. Astonishing temporal interventions — a 180-degree pan gazing downward on a New York City street that progresses from day to night, an image of Mount Rainier in which the foreground and background unfold in different time planes — unfold as symbolic transformations of natural and urban landscapes.

A series of shots showing the majesty of Japan.

The title of Vegetable Memory derives from the writings of Jalaludin Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet. Evolving as what Viola terms a "kind of temporal magnifying glass," the work explores the perceptual phenomenon of repetitive, cyclic viewing. A loop of images recorded at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo is extended in progressively slower cycles, changing the form, feeling and ultimately the meaning of the original images as they move further into the subjective and pictorial.

Viola's seminal piece, The Reflecting Pool, was made three decades ago on analogue video tape and yet could easily pass for a contemporary digital piece; in it, Viola emerges as central protagonist from a thick forest into a clearing filled by an artificial pool. As the noise of an aeroplane slowly passes and fades overhead, Viola approaches the edge of the pool, whereby he removes his shoes, squats down yelling and then prepares to make a powerful jump.

Viola describes Moonblood as "an expression of the feminine principle, a work in three parts relating to a personal concept of woman and mother. Day and night converge within the silhouette of a woman at a window — a rushing waterfall in winter, and the serene interplay of changing dawn light unfolds within a glass of water at dawn in the desert."

A documentary short in Chott el-Djerid.

Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier 1979, by incorporating a large body of water, with video and sound recordings of nature, was pioneering in its use of mixed media. It is a meditation on the fragility of nature and our perception of its changes over time. A screen is suspended above a large shallow pool of water. A projector with three separate beams (one each for red, green and blue light) sends an image of Mount Rainier to the surface of the water that then bounces up to reach the rear projection screen. At periodic intervals, the water’s surface is manually disturbed causing the three beams of color to separate, until finally becoming an unrecognizable pattern of form and color. Slowly the water settles, to once more form a coherent image after the surface vibrations subside.

A documentary short in Chott el-Djerid.

The rituals and philosophies of indigenous non-Western cultures recur throughout Viola's work. In 1976, he travelled to the Solomon Islands with portable color video equipment, which was then a new technology. The first of two "visionary documentaries" produced during his two-month stay, Memories of Ancestral Power centers on the cult leader Moro and his efforts to retain ancient traditions in the face of increasing Western influence. In this collaboration of Viola, Moro, and his followers, much of the structure and content of the recordings were determined by the subjects themselves. Moro explains his vision during the course of a visit to the House of Memories and other sacred sites in the village.

One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.

The title of The Morning After the Night of Power refers to a passage of the Koran in which angels descend from the heavens to impart the divine inspiration to followers. The central image of the tape is a blue vase standing motionless on a table. This object is framed by a dramatic interplay of light, shadow and movement, which is registered by a fixed camera over an extended period of time. Writes Viola, "As the condensed stillness of pure duration becomes activity, events hover at the edge of awareness until a final culminating action of transcendent liberation."

Viola describes The Wheel of Becoming as concerning "the notion of the parallel nature of reality, that is, simultaneous events separated in space." A mandala-like form, divided into four quadrants, unifies four events by four individuals in four separate spaces. These alternately converge and separate through timed camera movements, coincident actions and common elements of the landscape.

Memory Surfaces and Mental Prayers is a collection of works that address the desire to transcend the perceptual and cognitive structures of experience.

Using a camera moving along a predetermined path to create the effect of a simulated zoom, Sweet Light refers to the seduction of illumination, focusing on the phototropic vision of a moth. Writes Viola, "A moth emerges from a discarded letter as the spirit of a dead thought and — after an attempted flight to freedom — an individual appears, is inexorably drawn into the source of light, and consumed."

In terming these tapes "songs," Viola references the relation of his work to musical structures and to the poetics of Romanticism. 4 tapes (Junkyard Levitation, Songs of Innocence, The Space Between the Teeth, Truth Through Mass Individuation)

Junkyard Levitation is a visual pun on the concept of "mind over matter," as a man attempts to levitate while lying prone in a junkyard. Writes Viola, "Scrap metal technology and video technology are united to temporarily break the known laws of science and prove that psychokinesis is valid within a given frame of reference.

Songs of Innocence, which directly references the visionary Romanticism of William Blake, is haunted with symbolic transformations, as shifting light is charted through the passage of a day. Images of children singing on a school lawn dissolve and reappear, hovering at the edge of perception, illusion and reality, evoking what Viola terms "a visual relationship between memory, the setting of the sun, and death."

The Space Between the Teeth is based on the structure of acoustic phenomena and the psychological dynamics of a man screaming at the end of a long dark corridor. With each successive scream, the camera point of view hurtles at high velocity along the length of the hallway in decreasing increments. The corridor and the cinematic structuring of the camera's advance act as metaphors for passage and transition between two worlds, bridged by the individual's cathartic screams. Ultimately, the image of the man at the end of the corridor is transformed into a Polaroid still that is literally washed away.

The title of Truth Through Mass Individuation references Carl Jung. An isolated figure is seen performing successively more aggressive actions — dropping a cymbal among a flock of pigeons, firing a rifle in a deserted city street. In the fourth and final stage, his luminous image, spotlit against the dark night, merges in the distance with a roaring crowd in an outdoor stadium.

Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness.

Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness.

Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness.

Migration is an analysis of an image, a metaphorical exercise in perception and representation, illusion and reality, microcosm and macrocosm, nature and consciousness.

Red Tape -- Collected Works Bill Viola 1975, 30 min, color, sound Playing Soul Music to My Freckles 1975, 2:46 min, color, sound A Non-Dairy Creamer 1975, 5:19 min, color, sound The Semi-Circular Canals 1975, 8:51 min, color, sound A Million Other Things (2) 1975, 4:35 min, color, sound Return 1975, 7:15 min, color, sound

Return is a methodical construction of the approach of an individual towards an unseen goal, which assumes metaphorical significance. Viola moves toward the camera/viewer, pausing every few steps to ring a bell, at which point he is momentarily thrust back to his starting place, and then advanced again. Finally reaching his destination, he is taken through all of the previous stages in a single instant and returned to the source of his journey.

In A Million Other Things (2), changes in light and sound on the edge of a pond during an eight-hour period from day to night are composed in rhythmic variations resembling music. When the sun sets, an individual in the landscape remains the sole visible object, illuminated by a single electric lamp.

The title of The Semi-Circular Canals refers to the portion of the human ear that regulates balance. Viola constructed a platform on which he and the recording equipment counterbalanced one another, while freely suspended from a large tree. The artist appears to be sitting calmly at the center of the universe as the earth rotates. He writes, "The tape was inspired by NASA films and develops references to cosmological cycles, with the individual at the rotational center of their universe."

Viola describes A Non-Dairy Creamer as "the eradication of the individual by self-consumption." The artist's face, visible only as a reflected image on the surface of a cup of black coffee, slowly disappears as he consumes the coffee.

Playing Soul Music to My Freckles is a minimalist performance in which a bare loudspeaker, playing an Aretha Franklin song, is seen on the artist's exposed back.

Information is an exercise in technological reflexivity, an early investigation of the material presence of the electronic medium. From a technical mistake, in which a videotape recorder tried to record itself, Viola constructed a study of electronic anarchy — a disintegrating and self-interrupting signal that perpetually reiterates itself. He writes: "Information is the manifestation of an aberrant electronic nonsignal passing through the video switcher in a normal color TV studio, and being retrieved at various points along its path. The resulting electronic perturbations affected everything else in the studio. After this error was discovered and traced back, it became possible to sit at the switcher as if it were a musical instrument and learn to 'play' this nonsignal."

2005. Video/sound installation. Performer: Robin Bonaccorsi.

The three panels of Bill Viola’s triptych show video footage of birth (on the left), death (on the right) and a metaphorical journey between the two represented by a body floating in water (in the centre).

A man is stands under a steadily growing stream of water, while simultaneously being engulfed in flames on another screen.