INSPIRE ME! Artist of Month, Bill Viola - A&O Prize Finalist for 2014

"Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, 
the enormous resonant stone halls of the medieval cathedrals 
have an undeniable effect on the inner state of the viewer." 

~ BILL VIOLA

"Going Forth by Day" (2002) by Bill Viola

By TAHLIB

For over forty years, Bill Viola’s art has been transforming our understanding of video as an artform. Last month, he was honored with the largest retrospective of his career at the Grand Palais at the Grand Palais in Paris. He is a filmmaker, but a most unusual one who creates what The Wall Street Journal describes as "offbeat vidoes about life, death and the things we leave behind." He is also considered an abstract artist, whose work is a "transcendent spiritual experience" said Art in America. "With his interests in Eastern and Western art and spiritual traditions-Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism and Christian mysticism-Viola's work focuses on the life cycle and sensory perception." It's an honor to share his story, and some of his work as this month's INSPIRE ME! Artist.

Bill Viola. Courtesy of Accessible Art 2009

1.  Bill Viola is clearly driven by a desire to express a spiritual message but in interviews he prefers to focus on a related source: "I am emotionally driven," Mr. Viola said. "I just work with feelings and emotions." [WSJ]

2.  Viola describes his work simply: "I know I am a kind of storyteller but not a traditional one," he said. [WSJ]

3. His work has clear Christian themes and motifs, and has been shown in churches but he resists the label of "religious" even when invited by the Vatican to show your work: “I politely declined,” he said. [link]

4.  The layers of spirituality in his work, versus one religion seems to find its strongest audience among young people. Why is that? “Young people are in an interesting place right now. They use the word ‘spiritual’ in quite a different way. They’re talking about something inside themselves that they understand because of the digital age, because of their iPods and iPads and things. They know the virtual world and they accept that it’s intangible, it’s a different reality.” [link]

5.  September 11 greatly impact all Americans, and similarly it impacted the work of Bill Viola: "It became a mission and a source of strength for us all," writes Mr. Viola. Some of its scenes — people fleeing a torrential flood, a woman waiting in vain for news of a loved one, exhausted rescue workers in a grim dawn — certainly seem prophetic in light of the actual disaster. One result, Mr. Viola writes, has been his gaining "a deeper understanding of the nature and function of visions and prophecies and their relation to art making." [link]

"Perhaps the impetus toward abstraction has been taken farthest by the artist Bill Viola," wrote James Elkins of Chicago Institute of Arts. "One of his projects involved recording the ambient sound inside the Duomo in Florence. Viola has said he was not interested in Catholicism, but in the hollowness of the sacred space. “It impressed me,” he observed, “that regardless of one’s religious beliefs, the enormous resonant stone halls of the medieval cathedrals have an undeniable effect on the inner state of the viewer.” Viola is a religious person, a practicing Buddhist with interests in Sufism, Christian mysticism, and Zen. But what, exactly, is religious about recordings of the ambient noise of cathedrals? It is a question no one quite knows how to answer. [link]

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