Artist Violas world infused with divine
By VIRGINIA
MAKSYMOWICZ
I walk into a dark room and am confronted by a large, free-hanging
screen onto which is projected an image of a man walking slowly toward me. When
he reaches the point where his body almost fills the screen, he stops, looking
intently ahead. I glance down at his feet and am startled to see a few small
flames beginning to dance around his toes. They begin to grow, and over the
next few minutes I watch the man become engulfed in fire. I then notice an
eerie blue glow emanating from the other side of the screen. I follow the light
and see the same man being doused by torrents of water. The simultaneous sounds
of conflagration and deluge escalate and encompass the space. I know its
time to leave when the flames die down to a flicker, and the remaining water
gathers in a few, small puddles. The man is gone.
I have just experienced a video/sound installation called
The Crossing, by artist Bill Viola. A retrospective surveying 25
years of his career is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art
in New York City, with off-site installations at the Sony Plaza Public Arcade
and the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Encompassing 20 installations
and almost as many videotapes, this is the most blatantly religious exhibit to
appear in a contemporary art setting in years.
Upon leaving the show, I remarked to my husband that I felt that
although the medium used -- video and a host of electronic and mechanical
devices -- was unarguably 20th century, the artworks themselves felt
medieval.
So it came as no surprise when I later read an interview with
Viola by art historian Virginia Rutledge in the March issue of Art in
America. When we compare the gold sky in medieval paintings to the
blue sky in our vacation snapshots, she quotes the artist as saying,
we tend to look at the medieval image and say were seeing
symbolism. But it may well be photorealism since for the medieval person the
world was infused with the divine, which could only be represented by
gold.
For Bill Viola, the contemporary world as well is infused with the
divine, and he does his best to jar our senses into experiencing it as fact.
Although Viola draws from a range of spiritual traditions and asserts that he
is not trying to illustrate any particular dogma, it is nonetheless
the most authentically Catholic body of work I have ever experienced.
While there are specific references to saints and some
Catholic-sounding titles, it is through Violas insistence that our bodies
are the gateway to the sacred that the essence of Catholic spirituality is
conveyed.
Throughout the exhibition, one experiences the recurring use of
actual -- not just representational -- sensory elements: sound, light,
darkness, water, earth, movement and even smell -- all of which have become
integral to both our Catholic liturgy and psyche. Violas spirituality is
grounded in the physical. God is indeed everywhere: in birth, in death, in
sleep, in the wildness and beauty of nature, in the dross of our postindustrial
society, in a childs birthday party, in terror, in the mundane.
Progressing through the Viola exhibition is akin to entering into
a series of chapels. In the dimly lit surroundings, there is a hushed
atmosphere. Even in the midst of a crowd, there is a curious feeling of
solitude -- not unlike what one can experience in a monastic setting.
Room for St. John of the Cross contains two rooms, one
within the other. On the far wall of the larger of the two is projected a black
and white image -- in dizzying, furious motion -- of snow-covered mountains. A
loud, storm-like noise envelops the space. A light emanates from the sole
window of the smaller room, inside of which the roaring becomes muted, replaced
by a calm voice reciting a Latin text. The floor is covered with rich brown
soil. A small wooden table is positioned off to the right. On it sits a small
TV monitor with an image of the same mountain -- but this time in perfect
stillness and in full color. To its left is a pitcher and a glass of water. The
meditation here centers around prayer as it taps a source of living water that
will never run dry, as it grounds us and stabilizes our vision in the midst of
often chaotic surroundings.
In The Greening, a large color video projection
illuminates one end of a darkened room. In almost excruciating slow motion, two
women are seen talking together amid what the museum brochure describes as
an industrial urban landscape but which could also be an alleyway
somewhere in Venice (in fact the form of the video is based upon Jacobo da
Pontormos 16th century painting of The Visitation).
Their conversation is interrupted by a third woman, who seems to
be pregnant and who approaches the older of the women, whispering excitedly to
her. The intensity of emotion shared by these two women serves to eclipse their
surroundings, including the other woman in the picture. She stands awkwardly
until she, too, is drawn into the interchange. In this meditation we reflect
upon the story of Mary and Elizabeth and, perhaps, assume the role of the
anonymous bystander. How do we share in each others joy? How do we extend
our own happiness to include others?
A glimpse of the hereafter (or, more accurately, the
herenow) is provided in Tiny Deaths. This time the room
is encircled with large video projections on three walls. Individual voices
waft in and out of audible range, and human images are just barely discernible
in a murky atmosphere. Randomly, one by one, just as these figures take on
enough form to become recognizable, they burst into flashes of bright light,
illuminating the entire room for a brief moment, temporarily blotting out the
others.
The dead are not gone but merely veiled from our sight, Viola
seems to be saying, and although spirit and light, they retain an inseparable
and recognizable connection to their corporeal existence. We meditate upon the
communion of saints, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Although Violas artwork has been shown in a number of
churches, such as the already-mentioned John the Divine, as far as I know none
of these have been Catholic -- at least not in the United States. Perhaps
its too much to wish that our church return to its former role as patron
of the arts. In the meantime, Ill settle for this extraordinary exhibit
that has temporarily transformed the Whitney Museum into a sacred space.
The exhibit will be on display there through May 10. It then
travels to Amsterdam and Frankfurt but will return to the United States with
showings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (June 4-Sept. 7, 1999) and
the Art Institute of Chicago (Oct. 16, 1999-Jan. 16, 2000).
Virginia Maksymowicz is a sculptor and an adjunct professor of
art at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.
National Catholic Reporter, April 24,
1998
|