Bill Viola / Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth Review – An Uneasy Dialogue

THE GUARDIAN
By Tim Adams

‘Divine muscular energy’: Michelangelo’s The Risen Christ, c1532-3. Right: Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005 by Bill Viola. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019; Bill Viola Studio

Eer since Bill Viola first pitched up in Florence as a 23-year-old film technician in 1974, there has been a certain inevitability that 45 years on he would end up here, sharing a mostly hushed and dimly lit Royal Academy with Michelangelo. Viola was in Italy back then working in a studio patronised by some of the pioneers of video art – including Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman – but he was also encountering for the first time the work of Renaissance painters face-to-face in the city’s churches, an experience that he later described as something like “total immersion” for him. Along the way the two experiences – fresco and video, altarpiece and flatscreen – seemed to have fused in his imagination. Viola saw the possibility of recreating those 500-year-old visions of eternal truths for a contemporary audience – not in marble or paint or charcoal, but on screen. [More]

Bill Viola: The Road to St Paul’s — Can Video Art Rise to Sacred Surroundings?

FINANCIAL TIMES
By Suzi Feay

Bill Viola’s ‘Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire,Water)’ in St Paul’s

You can’t help thinking that if Christopher Wren had wanted two permanent video installations in chapels next to the high altar in St Paul’s, he would have arranged to be born 300 years later. Why video? John Moses, the former dean of St Paul’s who commissioned the work, brushes off centuries of religious art with the words “If you have a painting, you stop for 15 seconds then pass on.” Speak for yourself, your worship! This contemporary form requires a greater degree of involvement from the viewer than the traditional ones, he explains. But [Bill] Viola is not just respectful of the Renaissance tradition, he is steeped in it, and this film demonstrates that his work really can bear the comparison. [More]

Michelangelo Makes Mincemeat of Soggy Bill Viola – Art Review

THE GUARDIAN
By @SearleAdrian

Theatrical … Bill Viola’s Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall), 2005. Photograph: Kira Perov/courtesy Bill Viola Studio

Bill Viola/Michelangelo is subtitled Life Death Rebirth. The three words are the first thing you see in the Royal Academy’s pairing of the two artists. You enter fully alive. About half way through the dark, labyrinthine galleries, we meet an naked elderly couple, each projected on a slab of black granite, examining their own bodies with small torches. Apparently, he is searching for immortality, she for eternity. By now I wish it were over. At the end, we come across a woman silhouetted against a wall of flame. This is the last frontier. The pairing of Viola’s video installations with Michelangelo drawings is not, the RA insists, an attempt to elevate the American video artist to the status of a modern Michelangelo. Rather, it is an attempt to point out affinities in subject matter and spiritual aspirations: “The nature of being, the transience of life, and the search for a greater meaning beyond mortality.” [More]

Is Bill Viola the True Heir of Michelangelo? A Royal Academy Show Suggests He Is

ARTNET NEWS
By Naomi Rea

The Royal Academy of Arts in London, one of the city’s most esteemed institutions, is pairing a group of exquisite late drawings by Michelangelo with—and you’re reading this correctly—videos by the polarizing video artist Bill Viola. It’s the first time the academy has staged a significant exhibition of video art, and it puts Viola, known for his “sacred” video installations, in a direct line of succession from the universally acclaimed Renaissance Old Master. Fourteen of Michelangelo’s drawings, including The Risen Christ (around 1532), are juxtaposed with 12 of Viola’s video installations spanning 1977 to 2013. “Bill Viola/Michelangelo: Life Death Rebirth” is on view January 26 through March 31, 2019, at the Royal Academy in London. [More]

2 Artists, 500 Years Apart, Asking the Same Spiritual Questions

THE NEW YORK TIMES 
By Farah Nayeri

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. [More]

Bill Viola launches experimental art game to explore a spiritual journey

WALLPAPER
By Jessica Klingelfuss

2018 Alpha Omega Prize Finalist: 
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XQ5S8WL

Video still from The Night Journey. Courtesy of Bill Viola Studio and USC Game Innovation Lab

It is one the first ever experimental art games ever made and for the past decade, Bill Viola’s The Night Journey has been exhibited in venues around the world as a work in progress. Now, Bill Viola Studio and USC Game Innovation Lab have launched the award-winning game worldwide on Mac and Windows PC (and on PlayStation in the US), marking the first time home players have been able to experience it. Using both game and video technologies, The Night Journey tells the universal story of an individual’s journey towards enlightenment. It is cryptic from the start: there is no single goal to achieve, nor a narrative – linear or otherwise – to follow. [More]

INSPIRE ME! Bill Viola, July's Artist of the Month

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Ernest Disney-Britton

Bill Viola's "Tristan’s Ascension" (2005)

We are long-time fans of video artist Bill Viola, and that admiration has only grown as we've experienced more and more of his work in museums. Viola's works beautifully evoke a human relationship to the four elements of fire, water, wind and earth. Since the 1970s, he has demonstrated the aesthetic and emotional potential of video as art. Raised Christian, he is often cited in articles as either a practicing Buddhist or non-religious. However, there is an explicit spirituality in his work that calms and purifies the experience of the viewer.  He is a video art legend, and his new exhibition, "Bill Viola at La Nave Salinas" can be viewed until September 30th in Ibiza, Spain. Below is a 2015 interview that offers some additional insights into why Bill Viola is our INSPIRE ME! Artist of the Month.

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Still image: Bill Viola, Ascension, 2000, color video projection on wall in dark room; stereo sound; projected image size: 131 7/8 x 98 7/8 in (335 x 251 cm); room dimensions variable; 10:00. Performer: Josh Coxx. Photo: Kira Perov. Courtesy of Bill Viola Studio LLC.

Time is a crucial issue in Bill Viola’s work. As a sculptor of time (as Viola likes to define himself), his work is based on the manipulation of speed. While there is no stillness in Viola’s work, his basic idea of expanded time calms the spectator in order to purify his capacity to look outside and inside himself. It is a religious vision, although the artist does not formally practice any single religious doctrine or movement. The new exhibition, "Bill Viola at La Nave Salinas" features two of the artist's most acclaimed works, "Fire Woman" and "Tristan's Ascension," which can be viewed until September 30th at La Nave Salinas in Ibiza, Spain.

Collector Lio Malca exhibits two video works by Bill Viola in Ibiza

ARTDAILY

Bill Viola, Fire Woman.

IBIZA, Spain---New York art collector Lio Malca is presenting two large-scale installations by Bill Viola at La Nave Salinas. The exhibition space, inaugurated in 2015, specializes in international contemporary art and is adjacent to the Ses Salines Natural Park, on the island of Ibiza. Two of the artist's most acclaimed works, "Fire Woman" and "Tristan's Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall),"  can be enjoyed this summer on the Balearic Island. The exhibition will be on view until September 30th at La Nave Salinas. "Art is, for me, the process of trying to wake up the soul. Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remains asleep." [More]

Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery to acquire Bill Viola's ‘Martyrs’ exhibit

THE POST

At the mercy of the elements: Earth Martyr, Air Martyr, Fire Martyr and Water Martyr, by Bill Viola

ROCHESTER---The Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 500 University Ave., will exhibit its latest acquisition and exhibition in its three-year Media Arts Watch program, “Bill Viola: Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)” on Oct. 11-July 2018. MAG is the only institution, public or private, in the U.S. to own this ambitious installation, which is regarded as one of the artist’s most powerful and significant works to date. Originally commissioned by London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, and unveiled in 2014, “Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)” is composed of four HD, flat-screen monitors, each featuring a single figure who sustains the impact of one of the four classical elements. The four moving images are synchronized and unfold together to create a coherent whole. “Martyrs” is rooted in art historical and religious iconography. [More]

Bill Viola’s decades-spanning video art show in Guangzhou a spiritual pleasure that freezes the viewer to the spot

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
By Enid Tsui

2018 Alpha Omega Prize Finalist: 
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XQ5S8WL

A still from Bill Viola's "A Quintet of the Astonished" (2000) on view in Guangzhou, China

GUANGZHOU---You cannot get a more secular venue than a Soviet-style former canning factory that used to churn out the deliciously pungent Guangdong staple of fried dace and black beans. Yet, oddly, the 1950s industrial cluster in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is somehow a fitting place to contemplate American artist Bill Viola’s spiritual images. [The] exhibition is not a comprehensive retrospective. But the range of videos – dating from 1977 to 2014 – does make this a major survey of an artist who has so profoundly elevated video to fine art. The duality between death and birth, reality and illusion, and the use of water as a recurring metaphor were all there. [More]

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Bill Viola's "The Deluge (Going Forth By Day)", 2002, a five-part video and sound installation

This past Friday's rain was biblical! It rained so hard that Greg was stranded in his truck and Ernest's office roof started leaking. Coincidentally, that same day's art news was "The Deluge" (2002) by Bill Viola. In his 35-minute video installation, a flood of 65,000 gallons of water rushes down a stairway flushing the panicked residents into the streets. Inspired by "The Flood and the Receding of the Waters" (1439–40) by Paolo Uccello, both works are currently on view in a retrospective exhibition at Florence, Italy’s Palazzo Strozzi, “Bill Viola, Electronic Renaissance.” Bill Viola's video works are collected by major museums and churches, but Sedition.com also offers a 500 edition water-themed digital work for private homes.

Bill Viola breathes fresh life into the Renaissance

APOLLO
By Isabel Stevens

Man Searching for Immortality/Woman Searching for Eternity (installation view; 2013), Bill Viola. Courtesy Bill Viola Studio and Blain|Southern, London

FLORENCE---Video art and the Renaissance don’t normally go hand in hand, but in Bill Viola’s work they are inseparable. Born in 1951, Viola is part of a generation of artists who grew up with television, although he was one of the first to make videos without dabbling in other art forms beforehand. His highly symbolic, spiritual, and elaborately orchestrated scenes are so popular that he is the medium’s best-known practitioner – a video artist for people who don’t like video art, sniff his detractors, as if that is some kind of bad thing. What is clear from walking around this exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, however, is how Viola’s work rarely resembles video art. ‘Bill Viola: Electronic Renaissance’ is at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, until 23 July. [More]

RELIGIOUS ART | NEWS OF WEEK

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Gregory & Ernest Disney-Britton

Still shot of Bill Viola's "Mary" (2016). Video triptych.

Merry Christmas! We are writing as we drive to Cincinnati, where we will spend the day celebrating the birth of Jesus. Celebrating that birth is also what video artist Bill Viola did this year at Saint Paul's Cathedral in England. Video is the defining medium of our time, and Viola's "Mary" is the most important religious art installation of 2016. He depicted the mother of Jesus as both a nursing Mary and a grieving Mary. Viola's "Mary" is a universal female figure radiating unconditional love, as she experiences both birth and death in the past and in the present. The work is a 2014 companion piece to 'Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water),' the first moving-image artwork to be installed in a cathedral in England on a long-term basis. As we celebrate today, we are honored to have spent the year of 2016 religious art with you. Have a very Mary Christmas!

Bill Viola Unveils Final Video Work for London Cathedral

ARTLYST

Bill Viola's Mother Mary & Child. Bill Viola said: “Mary is a universal female figure present in nearly all spiritual and religious traditions.”

UNITED KINGDOM---The second permanent large-scale video installation created for St Paul’s Cathedral by the internationally acclaimed artist Bill Viola, has been inaugurated in the North Quire Aisle of the cathedral to coincide with the Feast of Mary. "Mary" and "The Martyrs" are the first moving-image artworks to be installed in a cathedral in Britain on a long-term basis. Mary has roots in both Eastern and Western art and spiritual traditions. Bill Viola said: “Mary is a universal female figure present in nearly all spiritual and religious traditions. She maintains an infinite capacity to absorb and relieve the pain and suffering of all who come to her. She is the personification of the feminine principle, related to ideas of creativity, procreation, inner strength, love, and compassion.” [link]

Mary and Martyrs are installed on metal stands to ensure the works are in sympathy with the existing architecture of Sir Christopher Wren’s masterwork.

Bill Viola, Mary, 2016. Video triptych. Executive producer Kira Perov. Courtesy: Blain/Southern.Photo: Peter Mallet. 

Bill Viola Reconnects With Florence Old Masters in 2017

THE ART NEWSPAPER
By Helen Stoilas

Bill Viola's "The Greeting"

ITALY---Bill Viola will return to Florence in 2017, when he takes over the whole of the Palazzo Strozzi for a major retrospective. The US artist, who worked in the Italian city as a young man, has a “wish list” of Renaissance paintings, including frescoes by Uccello and Masolino, that he hopes to show along with his video installations in the exhibition, which is due to open on 10 March (until 16 July 2017). “Today it is considered highly fashionable to juxtapose Old Masters with contemporary art, but the connections are often too blurred and the results disappointing. This is not the case with Bill’s work…” says Arturo Galansino, the director of the Palazzo Strozzi. “For this reason—even if the show is, first of all, a retrospective of Bill Viola—we are working to have a few but significant Old Masters in the exhibition.” [link]

Bill Viola’s ‘Mary’, St Paul’s Cathedral, London: ‘Iconic and Unknowable’

FINANCIAL TIMES
By Rachel Halliburton

Bill Viola's new video installation seems like a natural culmination of his life’s work

UNITED KINGDOM---What we see, then, in this new work is Viola grappling with the weight of artistic and religious history, striving to evoke a woman who is simultaneously iconic (in the most literal sense of the word) and unknowable. From the potent opening image, the triptych of plasma screens divides, first into three, and then into still smaller sections. Inspired by the predella tradition — in which small narrative works of art would appear below a central altarpiece — each section alludes to a moment in an existence defined by the birth and death of Mary’s son. It is Mary as “container of the uncontainable” — as some scriptures described her — who most strongly inspires this installation. [link]

Bill Viola's 'Mary', Today at St. Paul's Cathedral

THE WHISPERER

Mary by Bill Viola

UNITED KINGDOM---Prepare to be entranced again by Bill Viola: St Paul's large-scale installation 'Mary' sees the video artist return to London's greatest Cathedral. The best-known video-artist in the world, his films grapple dauntlessly with the Big Questions: birth, death, God, consciousness, memory, martyrdom. Part of the power of his work is that it reflects the formal concerns of religious painting, such as the triptych and the altarpiece. In 2014, Viola brought Martyrs to St. Paul's Cathedral (no less), where it remains in the south quire to this day. This autumn, a second permanent large-scale installation will come to the cathedral, it has been announced. Mary will show the Virgin Mother carrying Christ, and will be installed in the north quire. St Pauls Cathedral, 08 Sep 2016 – 30 Sep 2017, Permanent installation, Mon-Fri [link]

Bill Viola's "A Phrase from "Illumination" Available at S[EDITION]

S [ EDITION]

"A Phrase from Illumination" (2011) by video artist Bill Viola

The image sequence for "A Phrase from Illumination is a meditation on water and light, two elements that Bill Viola has used extensively in his work. On September 8, Bill Viola inaugurates Mary, the second of two moving-image artworks installed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Mary is presented in the North Quire Aisle alongside Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) in the South Quire Aisle. The works are the first of their kind to be permanently installed in a UK cathedral. [Purchase]

Bill Viola to Unveil New Video Installation at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral

ARTNET NEWS
By Carol Civre

A still from Mary, 2016, by Bill Viola; Executive Producer, Kira Perov. Published in The Guardian

UNITED KINGDOM---Internationally acclaimed artist Bill Viola will unveil his second permanent large-scale video installation at London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. The video titled "Mary" will be inaugurated in the North Quire Aisle on September 8, 2016 to coincide with the Feast of Mary. The installation accompanies Viola’s previous artwork commissioned by the cathedral titled "Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)," which was unveiled in the South Quire Aisle in 2014. Together, Viola’s pieces are the first moving-image installation to be housed in the cathedral on a long-term basis. Both Mary and Martyrs are a collaboration between Viola and his wife, Kira Perov. [link]