Viola, Bill

The Art of Bill Viola

An appraisal of the full range of accomplishments of this popular contemporary American artist.

The video and installation artist Bill Viola is one of the most popular artists in the world today. Significantly, in a world where an artist's importance is often conferred by small groups of experts and cognoscenti, Viola's rich imagery touches a nerve with large international audiences. His work is profoundly spiritual and never afraid to make big statements about human life and its relation to the universe, to the soul and human spirit, to nature, and to death. Viola is one of those rare artists whose work makes us aware of our nature as human beings. He takes art back to what were once its fundamental concerns and gives it a relevance to the emotional and spiritual lives of ordinary people.

While Viola has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, there has never been an extensive critical appraisal of the full range of his work. In The Art of Bill Viola eminent critics examine the scope of the artist's creations since the 1970s. Their studies include the relationship of Viola's art to the religious traditions of both Asia and Europe, the use of space as metaphor within his installations, the use of sound in his work, and the impact of its exhibition upon other video artists. These essays demonstrate Viola's uniqueness and importance as an artist of enduring international reputation and for the first time allow us to properly assess his place within history. 50 color illustrations.

With contributions by: Rhys Davies • Cynthia Freeland • Antonio Guesa • David Jasper • Jonathan Lahey-Dronsfield • David Morgan • Otto Neumaier • Elizabeth ten Grotenhiuis • Jean Wainwright

Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994

Chosen to represent the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale, Bill Viola, a New York artist living on the West Coast, is recognized internationally for his work in video and sound installations. This book brings together a selection of essays, notebook entries, drawings, and descriptions of projects that map Viola's personal course through the readings, observations, experiments, and associations that form the groundwork for his art. Each work illustrated is accompanied by a description by the artist, as well as comments on the work's origins from the artist's notebooks.

For the last 25 years, Viola has used innovative multimedia technologies to explore the phenomena of sense perception as a language of the body and avenue to self-knowledge, integrating many disciplines and philosophies to reveal contemporary art's relevance to the modern world. His views have deep roots in mysticism, poetry, philosophy, Eastern art, shamanism, Chinese Taoism, Sufism, and Zen Buddhism. Viola's chief concerns today are to draw attention to the upset ecological balance of nature by focusing on the connection between our inner and outer lives, on the conception of the self as part of the whole.

Published in association with the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London

Bill Viola

Bill Viola (b. 1951) is widely acknowledged as the leading video artist on the international scene. His video installations--total environments that envelop the viewer in image and sound--employ sophisticated state-of-the-art technologies and are distinguished by their precision and direct simplicity. Viola's single-channel videotapes have been distributed and broadcast around the world, while his writings have been published and anthologized for international readers.

Since the early 1970s, Viola has used video to explore the phenomena of sense perception as an avenue to self-knowledge. Clearly at odds with the cynicism of his age, his works focus on universal human experiences--birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness--and have roots in Eastern and Western art as well as Sufism, Christian mysticism, and Zen Buddhism. Viola's achievement is that of an artist who began in a new field, unbounded by tradition and dogma, and who arrived, twenty-five years later, deeply enmeshed in a series of intersecting spiritual traditions, both ancient and contemporary.

This catalogue has been published in conjunction with "Bill Viola," the first major survey of the artist's work and the largest exhibition ever devoted to an individual video artist, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and curated by David A. Ross and Peter Sellars.

The book features a dynamic and visually rich selection of works from 1972 to 1996, in a presentation compiled by Kira Perov and Bill Viola, with written descriptions by the artist, and a conversation between Viola and poet/scholar Lewis Hyde on the spiritual roots and cultural traditions underlying Viola's art. There is also an overview of the artist's achievement by David A. Ross, Whitney Museum director, who has been involved with Viola's work since its beginning and, as the first museum curator of video art, has played a major role in the history and development of the field.

An extensive catalogue of works, exhibition history, bibliography, and chronology is also included. 272 illustrations, 198 in full-color.

Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day

Widely recognized as the leading video artist of our time, Bill Viola employs sophisticated state-of-the-art technologies to create installations that envelop the viewer in image and sound. In his newest and most evocative work--exhibited first at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and in this accompanying catalogue--an ordered sequence of allegorical fresco-like images immerse the viewer in a total aesthetic, sensory and philosophical experience. Includes an interview with the artist.

Bill Viola: Catalogue Hatsu-Yume First Dream

Viola has been one of the leading artists to introduce video into the mainstream of contemporary art. This timely catalogue, produced for his first retrospective in Asia, comprehensively documents a singular and impressive oeuvre. The selected works featured span a twenty year period from 1976 and include both well and lesser known films. An interview with the artist and several essays are also included.

A Bill Viola Daybook

Bill Viola: Slowly Turning Narrative

Bill Viola: Buried secrets = Vergrabene Geheimnisse (Katalog)

Metaphysical structuralism: The videotapes of Bill Viola

Video d'autore: 1986-1995 (Prospetti)