Bill Viola: Slow motion emotion

“Viola speaks with measure and control – his sentences are long and thoughtful and my questions seem to provoke extended responses. Much like his art, his

words are quite mesmerising.” [1]

Amelia Schmidt, former Arts Editor, Associate Music Editor and Website Editor at Beat Magazine

I want to offer proof as to how technological advancement in the 21st century is just as important and spectacular as an 18th century oil painting. I will be focusing on moving image artist; Bill Viola with reference to contemporary artist Gerhard Richter. In addition, I will be explaining how Viola’s work has influenced my own and challenged my understanding of what constitutes art. From the invention of the camera in the 17th century, both photographs and, later on, moving images have become the new experimental project for the world, displayed by practitioners such as; Eadweard Muybridge who “pushed the limits of the camera's possibilities, creating world-famous images of animals and humans in motion”. [2] Primarily invented to aide artists to capture a moment in time, the camera has become an art form in its own right with moving images as a natural successor.

“The Rembrandt of video art.” [7]

Bill Viola graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) from Syracuse University in 1973 where he studied both visual arts and electronic music. Not long after, he travelled to exotic locations such as Bali, Java and Japan to record traditional performing arts. Viola was then offered a place as artist in residence at “WNET Channel 13 Television Laboratory in New York from 1976-1980 where he created a series of works, many of which were premiered on television.” [3] This only began his path to fame in the art world as he was presented with a growing list of honour degrees and awards, the latest being the Japanese “Praemium Imperiale art award in the category of Painting” [4]. Viola was also included in a new art website called [s] edition, among artists part of the Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin; “The S[edition] platform can be accessed from computers, iPads and television screens, and allows users to follow artists, browse and acquire works, download them to digital devices and screens, send editions as gifts, and start their own collections.” [5] Viola’s signature style is the use of slow motion effect in his collection of over hundred artworks. John Tusa describes Viola’s work “you look the image moves fractionally, very, very slowly, hypnotically.” [6]

During the year in Japan Viola studied Zen meditation, calligraphy and traditional Japanese culture which evolved into the way he vigorously involve his work with spiritual themes. Viola decided to extend his stay in Japan by six months as he invited himself to an extraordinary artist in residency at the Sony Corporation's Atsugi Laboratory where he made Hatsu Yume (First Dream).

"[The residency] was like going to a marble quarry in Italy if you're a sculptor and seeing how they make the stuff

you've been using." [8]

Hastu Yume was a breakthrough piece of art that spurred magnificence of the Japanese culture and a risk Viola took as it lasted just under an hour, Viola describes the reason why he presents the video at ‘tai chi’ pace; “When you slow things down, what happens is you actually open the mind.” [11] The title “First Dream” gives off a romantic and poetic feel to the audience as it describes infinity of emotions, senses and feelings which are all unique to every person who watches it. From the snippets of what I’ve seen of Hastu Yume [9] [10], it brings forth natural elements of Earth, with particular emphasis on Japan, in epic slow motion forcing the viewer to really look at what is being shown and to understand the beauty of nature.

Bill Viola’s Observance is a brilliant example to represent how artists can review modern society and the news it brings. Observance was completed in

2002 responding to the terror attacks on the Twin Towers. It deals with how humans react to grief quietly and sometimes go unnoticed. The film shows a line of adults, proceeding in an orderly queue. After the first person in the line displays the exploding grief that was built up, they abandon their place and move to the back whilst the next person displays grief in their own way. Though Observance is supposed to represent how humans respond to emotions of sadness and anger, I

interpreted the video in that the people in the queue are possible victims from the 9/11 attack, subsequently waiting in a queue to enter a spiritual realm, devastated of what they have become and how they can never return to their loved ones.

Ocean without a Shore (2007), an installation displayed in a church in Venice, depicts the dead coming back to the world of living for a short amount of time, bursting into a vivid high definition video quality before returning to the black and white, blurry video. [12] Viola’s interest in death was prompted during an accident where Viola fell off a raft in a lake when he was six years old. He fell to the bottom of the lake and he describes the experience as “I thought I had fallen into Heaven, or some kind of paradise, I didn't want to leave” [11] By the time I saw a section of Ocean without a Shore for the first time, I was familiar with Viola’s slow motion style of installations, but I was not quite ready for the actors to collide into the invisible water wall, representing the dead crashing back into the world of the living. It was extraordinary to watch, even if I wasn’t standing in the small church in Venice with the dark ominous atmosphere surrounding me, you can see the shock in the actors’ faces as they break into the colour, onto the other side. There were numerous actors in this piece of work, all with varying factors such as age, class, gender, appearance. I believe the art is made to depict no one can escape death and how the dead will always miss the living world. Viola has also made use of brilliant lighting; the chiaroscuro lighting beams onto the spot where the actor comes from the water wall, blinding the actor as well as giving connotations of life and hope.

The Crossing (1996) makes you want to believe in magic itself. Analysing Viola’s video work is the certainty that contemporary technologies have the ability to send direct experience of spiritual phenomena. There are two screens

that are placed back to back with each other. The two rather ridiculously large LCD screens lie against each other but share the very direct contrast of elements. One of the screens displays a main flooded by a powerful stream of water falling on top of his head which then spreads everywhere, encasing the space with cool liquid. As the water begins to calm, you realise the man who stood there only a few minutes ago had

disappeared as if he turned into water and flooded the floor as well. Not only so, of course both of these works are edited to the trademark slow motion Viola uses.

The Fall into Paradise (2006) is part of a series for the German Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde”. The narrative is set in three acts and comprises of romance and tragedy. Viola named the installation Fall into Paradise, giving it strong antithesis, negative word of “fall” juxtaposing it with paradise. The film begins with a dark enclosed room with a spot of light. The spot of light soon spreads into two figures heading towards you when suddenly they crash onto the surface of the ocean. I believe the idea is that paradise is something you have to obtain after going through hardship (like Tristan and Isolde), spectacularly struggle in the water and then reach “paradise” which in this case would be the ocean’s surface.

In addition, The Fall into Paradise reminds me of John Milton’s Paradise Lost which challenges the role of a hero and the telling of Adam and Eve. The Fall into Paradise feels magical and celestial as many say being underwater is like being in a different world, the two figures floating in melancholy.

"My face in thine eyes, thine in mine appears,And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or thou and I.

Love so alike, that none can slacken, none can die." [13]

The Quintet Series comprises of four installations; The Quintet of the Silent, The Quintet of the Remembrance, The Quintet of the Astonished and The Quintet of the Unseen (2000-2001). During Viola’s stay at the Getty Research Institute in California, he researched the passions in medieval and renaissance art. Two years later Viola began working on the Quintet series that focuses on the extreme of human emotion.

“Human emotions have infinite resolution. The more you magnify them, they just open up. Infinitely.” [14]

The Quintet of Remembrance displays actions and expressions of sadness, anger, fear, sorrow and despair in a most gripping way. The video's two women and three men, pictured from the waist up, blink maybe half a dozen times throughout its span. The man starts out looking worn out, and eventually turns to the woman next to him with an expression of resignation. Another face goes from showing some restraint but then looses it completely. The old woman, who is most dynamic in the grouping, is definitely filled with sorrow and distraught by her body language with her hands. All of them are in tremendous dismay presenting grief and tragedy simultaneously. As the title suggests, the artwork context might be about a family remembering of a loss of someone in their family. In addition, the slow motion projection displays the power and depth of each emotion.

In my personal view on Viola’s series, I feel there is a high possibility that he would have researched The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio before looking at creating the Quintet series. This is because it matches with the idea how Bill Viola makes use of the chiaroscuro lighting features that Caravaggio also uses in many of his paintings.

When I went to Tate Modern in London, we had the opportunity to visit Gerhard Richter’s exhibition: Panorama. What truly astonished me was that there was an artist who takes inspiration from photographs and paints from them! His theme of illusion triggered a spark of interest and I viewed his three part large scale canvases of stormy grey clouds, disguising a fierce lion growling at you. (Cloud Wolke 1, 2, 3) Though his large abstract drawings were truly breath taking and leaves you standing there astonished. Richter’s blur photo-paintings were definitely one of my favourite pieces in his collections. “I blur to make everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant.” [15] Even though the paintings are blurred and unclear, it is extraordinary how realistic he is able to paint them to look realistically, motion blurred by a camera and not by imitation painting.

The German master has an extreme interest in the Second World War after having survived Allied Forces bombing, he creates post-war paintings. Creating photo paintings of planes loading bombs or planes flying in blurred movements (Bombers Bomber 1963) is Richter’s method of recollecting the war even he did not witness most of the direct bombing. Though this is a moment in history where many Germans want to avoid and forget, Richter’s desire to document every part of the experience displays his unique quality. The painter’s use of grey in his landscape paintings depicts his emotion about the war and it’s consequences from it.

‘Grey monochrome paintings [were] the only way for me to paint concentration camps. It is impossible to paint the misery of life, except maybe in

grey, to cover it.’ [16]

One of the features I favoured from Richter’s work than Viola was how he incorporated the notion of illusion into his work. Being influenced by the German Romantic painting period, Richter created Seascape (Sea-Sea) 1970 which was originally based on a collection between two photographs of the sea and the clouds in the sky. The painting produces a brief illusion of a sound seascape, until it becomes apparent that the ‘clouds’ in the painting are ocean waves - it creates a sense of discontinuity and confusion.

When compared to Viola, Richter is an artist who is immersed in working in any media of art possible, in any span of time. He creates contemporary masterpieces by the painting with knives, painting photos and most famously creating post modern abstract artworks. Although both artists, influential in their own way, Richter bases a lot of his own work on his individual experiences during the time of war, post-war and his personal challenges to other famed artists such as Du Champ with his own version of Nude descending a Staircase; Ema Nude on a Staircase. Born almost two decades later, Viola was raised in a different period of time and different country where there were no wars so massively memorable like the Second World War whilst Germany – Richter’s birth place- was labelled as a defeated and hateful country after they lost the war against the Allied Forces. Viola was introduced to video cameras and new media technology which Richter never touched upon though they both used capturing devices in order to create art.

For my final composition, I have decided to do a digital animated piece which is heavily influenced by Viola. I have planned for an installation which comprises of

four screens featuring my model slowly walking towards to the camera with changing emotions of a blank face to an expressions getting stronger and more exaggerated as it walks towards the camera. What originally inspired me to create such a piece was Viola’s Ocean without a Shore and the narrative concept behind the art; the dead coming back to visit the world of living. My piece is trying to put across the slowly changing emotions we as people have and how emotions make us truly who we are and how different experiences can influence our emotions to which our emotions can affect us to do certain things. The video itself will be a shadow of Viola’s style, in extreme slow motion to truly let the viewer reflect on the change of the actors’ faces. The four emotions I plan to emphasise on are; anger, sadness, excitement and happiness. I believe the presentation of the video installation is vital to the artwork and it should be considered just as important as the filming. I want to arrange the four films on four screens in the shape of square with the screens facing outwards to represent a think-box, in short – a person’s mind. This is to explore how a person has different psychological emotions and often not shown in reality.

Appearance-wise, I feel Viola’s Quintet Series match better as they both experiment and explore the human emotions to their extreme. However, I am still debating an alternative idea of presenting on one wall in different orders and distorting the timing. This project has been and still is a risky choice for me as I have had a minimal experience with filming or animation when in comparison to my knowledge and understanding with working in graphic still prints. Nevertheless, the project so far has allowed me to venture to a different level of digital media forcing me to experiment and improvise more than I ever would have if I had chose to create another “safe” piece of print work.

From the research I have made of my artists, I feel I have a better understanding of contemporary art, often the concept behind the artwork is explained thoroughly by the artist.

Though people dispute the idea of taking a snapshot on a digital camera being classified as art, I feel the most important and vital part of digital art is the preparation for the filming/photograph. Arrangements for the artist to speak to the models, set up the props required and the ideal location is vital especially as you cannot simply paint an improvised location.

During the investigation and research stage of my study on Viola, I found it quite difficult to find sufficient and reliable sources that were not originated from the internet. I feel this is because Viola being a contemporary artist of the new technology era, a lot of his work and information would be based on the internet as hardback sources would quickly become unreliable after a year or so. Contrary to what one may think, it was difficult to gain access to Viola’s work with only his most well known works on some video-sharing websites.

As the world of technology surpasses the present media and digital knowledge, a healthy competition will rise against fresh artists to create even more creative artworks, this only reinforces the idea an oil painting cannot be compared to a digital video as the “better” one.

Bibliography[1] Amelia Schmidt, Beats Magazine http://www.beat.com.au/content/bill-viola-0 (29th September 2011)[2] http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/eadweardmuybridge/default.shtm [3] http://www.billviola.com/biograph.htm[4] http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=51219 (Sunday, November 20, 2011)[5] http://www.designweek.co.uk/s%5Bedition%5D-website-launches-with-barnbrook-designs/3032010.article (Friday, 18 Nov 2011)

[6] John Tusa, BBC 3 Radio http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/viola_transcript.shtml [7] http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/world-famous-video-artworks-bill-viola-is-the-rembrand-of-video-installatio (Dec 29, 2008)[8] http://donshewey.com/arts_articles/bill_viola.html [9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvRmU6YjcRo May 2007[10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvRmU6YjcRo May 2007[11] http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/spiritofthings/bill-violas-spiritual-art-rpt/2962224 [12] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1kKwn_M-oM&feature=related[13] http://www.tristanandisolde.net/articles/article/tristan-isolde/version-1/the-script[14] http://www.imamuseum.org/art/collections/artwork/quintet-silent-viola-bill[15] http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/sep/22/gerhard-richter-tate-retrospective-panorama[16] http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gerhardrichter/room4.shtm