THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Farah Nayeri
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| Drawings by Michelangelo depicting the crucifixion flank “Surrender,” a video work by Bill Viola, in a new exhibition the Royal Academy in London. |
LONDON — They are among the last drawings that
Michelangelo ever produced: ethereal depictions of Christ on the cross, his legs a nebulous haze, his face a spectral blur. Grieving at his feet are the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist. Those 16th-century chalk drawings hang on either side of a dual-screen video installation produced in 2001 by the American artist
Bill Viola: two modern-day mourners (one pictured upside down) who weep in silence until their figures dissolve into a pool of water. Born nearly 500 years apart, the two artists have been coupled in an exhibition opening Saturday at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Yet staged in the Royal Academy’s dimmed and vaulted galleries, the show is something like a religious experience. [
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| A still from Mr. Viola’s “Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall),” a video work from 2005. |
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| Michelangelo’s “The Lamentation over the Dead Christ,” from around 1540. |
