Bill Viola is a contemporary
video artVideo art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
ist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic,
soundSound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
, and image technology in
New MediaNew media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness.
Background
Viola grew up in
QueensQueens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and
Westbury, New YorkWestbury incorporated in 1932 as a village in Nassau County, New York in the United States. The population was 15,146 at the 2010 census.The Village of Westbury is in the Town of North Hempstead....
. He attended P.S. 20 Clinton Hill School, in
FlushingFlushing, founded in 1645, is a neighborhood in the north central part of the City of New York borough of Queens, east of Manhattan.Flushing was one of the first Dutch settlements on Long Island. Today, it is one of the largest and most diverse neighborhoods in New York City...
, where he was captain of the TV Squad. On vacation in the mountains with his family, he nearly drowned in a lake, an experience he describes as “… the most beautiful world I’ve ever seen in my life” and “without fear,” and “peaceful”
In 1973, Viola graduated from
Syracuse UniversitySyracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
with a Bachelor in Fine Arts. He studied in the Experimental Studios of the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including the Synapse experimental program, which
evolved into
CitrusTVCitrusTV is the completely student-run television studio of Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. It was founded in 1970 and has around 350 student members....
.
His first job on graduation was as a video technician at the
Everson Museum of ArtThe Everson Museum of Art in Downtown Syracuse, New York is a major Central New York museum focusing on American art.-History:The museum was founded in 1897 by art historian George Fisk Comfort ; at that time, it was called the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts...
in Syracuse. From 1973 to 1980, he studied and performed with composer
David TudorDavid Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...
in the new music group "Rainforest" (later called "Composers Inside Electronics"). From 1974-1976, Viola worked as technical director at Art/Tapes/22, a pioneering video studio in Florence, Italy where he encountered video artists
Nam June PaikNam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
,
Bruce NaumanBruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, and
Vito AcconciVito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
. From 1976-1983, he was artist-in-residence at WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory in New York. In 1976 and 1977, he traveled to the Solomon Islands, Java, and Indonesia to record traditional performing arts.
Viola was invited to show work at
La Trobe UniversityLa Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...
(Melbourne, Australia) in 1977, by cultural arts director Kira Perov. Viola and Perov later married, beginning an important lifelong collaboration in working and traveling together. In 1980, they lived in Japan for a year and a half on a Japan/U.S. cultural exchange fellowship where they studied Buddhism with
ZenZen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
Master Daien Tanaka. During this time, Viola was also an artist-in-residence at Sony Corporation's Atsugi Laboratories.
In 1983, he became an instructor in Advanced Video,
California Institute of the ArtsThe California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
, in Valencia, California. In 1995, Viola represented the United States at the 46th
Venice BiennaleThe Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, for which he produced a series of works called
Buried Secrets, including one of his best known works
The Greeting, a contemporary interpretation of
PontormoJacopo Carucci , usually known as Jacopo da Pontormo, Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine school. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine...
's
The Visitation. In 1997, a major retrospective of 25 years of Bill Viola's work was organized and internationally toured by the
Whitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
.
In 1998, Viola was Getty Scholar-in-residence at the
Getty Research InstituteThe Getty Research Institute , located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J...
, Los Angeles
http://getty.edu/research/scholarly_activities/annual_themes/1997-1999.html. Later, he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
in 2000. In 2002, he completed
Going Forth By Day, a digital “fresco” cycle in High-Definition video, commissioned by the
Deutsche GuggenheimThe Deutsche Guggenheim is an art museum, located in the ground floor of the Deutsche Bank building, a sandstone building constructed in 1920 on the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin, Germany....
Berlin and the
Guggenheim MuseumThe Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, New York. In
2003,
The Passions was exhibited in Los Angeles, London, Madrid, and Canberra. This was a major collection of Viola's emotionally charged slow motion works inspired by traditions within
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
devotional painting.
In 2004, Viola began work on a new production of
Richard Wagner'sWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
opera
Tristan und IsoldeTristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
, a collaboration with director
Peter SellarsPeter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and executive producer Kira Perov. The opera was premiered at the Opéra National de Paris in 2005 and Viola's video work was subsequently shown as
LOVE/DEATH The Tristan Project at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's School, London, in 2006. During 2007, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Sevilla www.caac.es, organized an exhibition at the Palace of Charles V in la Alhambra- Granada- in which Viola's work dialogues with the Fine Arts Collection of the museum.
In 2009, Bill Viola was awarded the 2009 Catalonia International Prize, known as the XXI Premi Internacional Catalunya 2009 by the Catalonian government of
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. The award honors an individual "whose creative work has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural, scientific or human values anywhere in the world.". In Spain it has been published his first biography entitled "Viola on Vídeo", written by Federico Utrera (King Juan Carlos University).
Art work
Bill Viola's exhibition profile, which includes the
National Gallery, LondonThe National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...
, Guggenheim Berlin,
Guggenheim New YorkThe Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
,
Whitney Museum of American ArtThe Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
,
GettyThe Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, and the
Metropolitan Museum of ArtThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
,
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
marks him as a major contemporary artist.
His art deals largely with the central themes of human consciousness and experience - birth, death, love, emotion and a kind of humanist spirituality. Throughout his career he has drawn meaning and inspiration from his deep interest in mystical traditions, especially Zen Buddhism,
Christian mysticismChristian mysticism refers to the development of mystical practices and theory within Christianity. It has often been connected to mystical theology, especially in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions...
and
Islamic SufismSufism or ' is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a '...
, often evident in the transcendental quality of some of his works. Equally, the subject matter and manner of western medieval and
renaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
devotional art have informed his aesthetic.
An ongoing theme that he constantly explores is dualism, the idea that you can't understand what you're looking at unless you know its opposite. For example, a lot of his work has themes such as life and death, light and dark, stressed and calm, loud and quiet, etc.
His work can be divided into three types, conceptual, visual, and a unique combination of the two. According to art critic James Gardner of the National Review, Viola's conceptual work is forgettable just like most video art.
On the other hand, Gardner feels that Viola's visual work such as "The Veiling", and his combination of both the conceptual and visual such as "The Crossing" are impressive and memorable.
Viola's work often exhibits a painterly quality, his use of ultra-slow motion video encouraging the viewer to sink into to the image and connect deeply to the meanings contained within it. This quality makes his work perhaps unusually accessible within a contemporary art context. As a consequence, his work often receives mixed reviews from critics, some of whom have noted a tendency toward grandiosity and obviousness in some of his work. Yet it is this very ambitiousness, his striving toward meaning, and attempts to deal with the big themes of human life, that also make his work so clearly appreciated by other critics, his audiences and collectors.
His early work established his fascination with issues that continue to inform his work today. In particular, Viola's obsession with capturing the essence of
emotionEmotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
through recording of its extreme display began at least as early as his 1976 work,
The Space Between the Teeth, a video of himself screaming, and continues to this day with such works as the 45-second
Silent Mountain (2001), which shows two actors in states of anguish.
If Viola's depictions of emotional states with no
objective correlativeAn objective correlative is a literary term referring to a symbolic article used to provide explicit, rather than implicit, access to such traditionally inexplicable concepts as emotion or colour.- Origin of terminology :Popularized by T. S...
-- emotional states for which the viewer has no external object or event to understand them by—are one feature of many of his works, another, which has come to the forefront, is his reference to medieval and
classicalClassicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
depictions of emotion. Most immediately, his subdued
Catherine's Room 2001, has many scene by scene parallels with Andrea di Bartolo's 1393
St. Catherine of Siena PrayingSaint Catherine of Siena, T.O.S.D, was a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She was proclaimed a Doctor...
.
Viola's work has received critical accolades.
Marjorie PerloffMarjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...
, best known for her poetry criticism and her promotion of
avant-gardeAvant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
writers and styles, singles him out for praise. Perloff, who has written at length about the necessity of poetic works responding to and taking advantage of contemporary computer technologies, has written of Viola as an example of how new technology—in his case, the video camera—can create entirely new aesthetic criteria and possibilities that did not exist in previous
incarnations of the
genreGenre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
-- in this case, theater.
Video Art Projects
While many video artists have been quick to adopt new technologies to their medium, Viola relies little on computer editing. Perhaps the most technically challenging part of his work—and that which has benefited most from the advances since his earliest pieces—is his use of extreme
slow motionSlow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger....
.
The Quintet Series
The Quintet Series 2000 is one such piece (actually a set of four separate videos), that shows the unfolding expressions of five actors in such slow motion that every minute detail of their changing expressions can be detected. The series is a challenging one for the viewer, because the concentration required to follow the facial expressions over time must last for minutes or more. In general, the distortion of time, along with the lack of sound or voice over, form the most immediately ""new"" aspects of Viola's work for the first-time viewer.
In 2000, Bill Viola collaborated with the popular band
Nine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
, and its lead singer
Trent ReznorMichael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
to create a video suite for the band's tour. The triptych mainly is focused on water imagery and was supposed to be integral with the songs that were played.
An Ocean Without a Shore
In 2007, Viola was invited back to the 52nd Venice Biennale to present an installation called "Ocean without a Shore," which was seen by over 60,000 viewers throughout its duration. In this piece, exposed in the little but perfectly fitted Church of San Gallo, Viola is exploring life and death. The experiment consists of people standing in the foreground with nothing but black behind them. Each of them seem to produce gallons of water from themselves as if they were waterfalls. The water comes gushing out of their bodies as if they are being reborn. The very last individual is an elderly man who actually glows a supernatural green while dozens of gallons of water erupts from his body. There are 2 individuals in the middle of the piece who only seem to trickle water, while all the others produce a waterfall of water (Sal 2008). Viola says that this piece is about how the dead are undead. That once they get through the water they are conscious again.
Observance
Observance 2002, is a work which may be taken partly as a response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks.
Observance places the camera at eye level facing the head of a line of people of a wide variety of ages. As
Observance unfolds, the line slowly advances, with each person pausing at the front of the line in a state of intense—though quiet—grief, before ceding their place to the next person in line.
The Tristan Project
In 2004, Viola embarked on
The Tristan Project. At the invitation of opera director
Peter SellarsPeter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique contemporary stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays...
, he created video sequences to be shown as a backdrop to the action on stage during the performance of Wagner's opera
Tristan und IsoldeTristan und Isolde is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Straßburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting...
. Using his trademark extreme slow motion, Viola's pieces used actors to portray the metaphorical story behind Wagner's story, seeing for example the first act as an extended ritual of purification in which the characters disrobe and wash themselves before finally plunging headlong into water together (in Wagner's story, the two characters maintain the facade of being indifferent to each other (necessary because Isolde is betrothed to Tristan's uncle) before, mistakenly believing they are going to die anyway, and reveal their true feelings). Viola trademarks such as fire and water are much in evidence here. The piece was first performed in Los Angeles at Disney Hall on 3 separate evenings in 2004, one act at a time, then given complete performances at the Bastille Opera in Paris in April and November 2005. The video pieces were later shown in London without Wagner's music in June to September 2006, at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's College, London. The Tristan project returned, both in music and video, to the Disney Hall in Los Angeles in April 2007, with further performances at New York City's Lincoln Center in May 2007 and at the Gergiev Festival in
RotterdamRotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
, The Netherlands, in September 2007.
The Night Journey
In 2005, he began working with the USC EA Game Innovation Lab on the
art gameAn art game or arthouse game is a video game that is designed in such a way as to emphasize art or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or...
,
The Night Journey, a project based on the universal story of an individual's mystic journey toward enlightenment. The game was presented to the public in April 2010.
Bodies of Light
In October 2009, Viola’s solo exhibition entitled "Bodies of Light” appeared at the
James Cohan GalleryThe James Cohan Gallery is one of the prominent contemporary art galleries based in New York. Since 2008, it has also had premises in Shanghai.- History :...
in New York. Featured in the exhibition was Pneuma (1994), a projection of alternating images evoking the concept of fleeting memories. Also on view were several pieces from the Viola’s ongoing "Transfiguration" series, which he evolved from his 2007 installation Ocean Without a Shore.
Bill Viola Studio
Bill Viola Studio is run by his wife, Kira Perov, who is the executive director. She has worked with Viola since 1978 managing and assisting Viola with his videotapes and installations. She documents their work in progress on location. All of the production done at the studio is edited by Perov.
News
Bill Viola was awarded the XXIst
CataloniaCatalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
International Prize on May 11, 2009. The [Premi Internacional Catalunya was created by the autonomous government of
CataloniaCatalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, the
Generalitat de CatalunyaThe Generalitat of Catalonia is the institution under which the autonomous community of Catalonia is politically organised. It consists of the Parliament, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Government of Catalonia....
, to be awarded to those who make notable contributions to the advancement of human, cultural, and scientific values.
Viola's Three Structures
Viola felt as if there are 3 different structures to describe patterns of data structures. There is the branching structure, matrix structure, and schizo structure.
"The most common structure is called branching. In this structure, the viewer proceeds from the top to bottom in time." The branching structure of presenting data is the typical narrative and linear structure. The viewer proceeds from a set point A to point B by taking an exact path, the same path any other reader would take. An example of this is
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
because users go into this website with a certain mindset of what they want to search for, and they get a certain result as they branch off and end at another website.
The second structure is the Matrix structure. This structure describes media when it follows nonlinear progression through information. The viewer could enter at any point, move in any direction, at any speed, pop in and out at any place. Like the branching structure, this also has its set perimeters. However, the exact path that is followed is up to the user. The user has the option of participating in decision-making that affect the viewing experience of the media. An example of this is Public Secrets
http://publicsecret.net, a website that reveals secrets of the justice and the incarceration system within the US for women. There is a set boundary of what users can and can't do while presenting them with different themes and subjects users are able to view. Different users will find themselves taking different paths, using flash cues to guide themselves through the website. This vast selection of paths presents many users with a unique viewing experience (in relation to that of the previous persons). As well, they have the choice to read the excerpts from these women or hear it out loud. This connects to Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths" where the participant has a variety of choices on how they see a story unfold before them. Each time, they can create a different path.
The last structure is called the schizo, or the spaghetti model. This form of data structure pertains to pure or mostly
randomnessRandomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....
. "Everything is irrelevant and significant at the same time. Viewers may become lost in this structure and never find their way out."
Solo exhibitions
- 1973 "New Video Work," Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
- 1974 "Bill Viola: Video and Sound Installations," The Kitchen Center, New York
- 1979 "Projects: Bill Viola," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1983 "Bill Viola," ARC, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
- 1985 "Summer 1985," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
- 1985 "Bill Viola," Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
- 1987 "Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes," The Museum of Modern Art, New York
- 1988 "Bill Viola: Survey of a Decade," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas
- 1989 "Bill Viola," Fukui Prefectural Museum of Art, Fukui City, Japan, part of The 3rd Fukui International Video Biennale.
- 1990 "Bill Viola: The Sleep of Reason," Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Jouy-en-Josas, France
- 1991 "Bill Viola: The Passing," South London Gallery, London, England
- 1992 "Bill Viola: Nantes Triptych," Chappelle de l'Oratoire, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France
- 1992 "Bill Viola," Donald Young Gallery, Seattle, Washington (five installations)
- 1992 "Bill Viola: Two Installations," Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, England
- 1992 "Bill Viola. Unseen Images," Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. Travels to: Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (1993); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (1993); Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (1993); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England (1993), Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (1994)
- 1994 "Bill Viola: Stations," American Center inaugural opening, Paris, France
- 1994 "Bill Viola: Território do Invisível/Site of the Unseen," Centro Cultural/Banco do Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 1995 "Buried Secrets," United States Pavilion, 46th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. Travels to Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (1995); Arizona State University Art Museum (1996)
- 1996 "Bill Viola: New Work," Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia (installation)
- 1996 "Bill Viola: The Messenger," Durham Cathedral, Visual Arts UK 1996, Durham, England. Travels to South London Gallery, London, England (1996); Video Positiva-Moviola, Liverpool, England; The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Oriel Mostyn, Gwynedd, Wales; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland (1997); La Chapelle Saint Louis de la Salpetriere, Paris
- 1997 “Bill Viola: Fire, Water, Breath,” Guggenheim Museum (SoHo), New York
- 1997 “Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey” organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art (catalogue). Travels to Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998) (catalogue); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (1999); Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois (1999–2000)
- 2000 “The World of Appearances,” Helaba Main Tower, Frankfurt, Germany (permanent installation)
- 2000 “Bill Viola: New Work,” James Cohan Gallery, New York
- 2000 “Bill Viola: Stations,” Museum für Neue Kunst|ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany
- 2001 “Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium,” Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London
- 2002 "Bill Viola: Going Forth By Day," Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin
- 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Getty Museum, Los Angeles
- 2003 "Bill Viola," Kukje Gallery, Seoul
- 2003 "Bill Viola: Five Angels for the Millennium," Ruhrtriennale, Gasometer, Oberhausen, Germany
- 2003 "Bill Viola: The Passions," National Gallery, London
- 2004 "Bill Viola: Temporality and Transcendence," Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain
- 2005 "Bill Viola: The Passions," Fundación "la Caixa," Madrid, Spain
- 2005 "Bill Viola Visions," ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
- 2005 "Bill Viola," James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
- 2005 "Tristan und Isolde," fully staged opera premiere at the Opéra National de Paris, France
- 2006 "Bill Viola – Video", 2006 Recipient of the NORD/LB Art Prize, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen, Germany
- 2006 "LOVE/DEATH The Tristan Project," Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
(two venues), London, UK
- 2007 "Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)", Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Hyōgo Prefectural Art Museum, Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
, Japan, including the 56-minute title piece and many works from the artist's private collection.
- 2007 "Bill Viola: Four hands (2001), kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.
- 2008 "Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream)",[CACMalaga],Spain until 30 April
- 2008-9 "Bill Viola: Ocean without a shore", National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
- 2009 "Bill Viola: Intimate work", Museum De Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands
- 2010-11 "Bill Viola: The Raft", Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI) and Kaldor Public Art Projects, Australia
Awards
- 1984 Polaroid Video Art Award for outstanding achievement, USA
- 1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Institute, USA
- 1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, USA
- 1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), USA
- 1993 Medienkunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, Germany
- 2003 Cultural Leadership Award, American Federal of Arts, USA
- 2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Germany
- 2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA He was awarded $75,000 and was able to go to MIT and help enhance the creative groups there.
- 2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain
- 2010 Honorary doctorate from the University of Liège
The University of Liège , in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium, is a major public university in the French Community of Belgium. Its official language is French.-History:...
, Belgium
External links