Bill Viola Time

David A. Ross


Bill Viola is an artist who uses our experience of time in the way that artists of the nineteenth century explored our experience of light and color. In the work of this remarkable artist, time is not the physical notion understood in relativistic terms, but the central component of spiritual life.
    It is tempting, when discussing Viola’s work as a video artist, to focus on his mastery of a technology we normally associate with the mass market. It is easy to marvel at how he has used these same tools to create works of art with the power to create transcendent experiences for viewers, regardless of their prior experience with contemporary art. For over thirty years, Viola has been a leader in the invention of video art—a new art form, forged from the technology normally used to sell us things and ideas. Deservedly, Viola’s pioneering work has been recognized in major exhibitions in some of the world’s most important art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA, the Guggenheim, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery in London.
    But to grasp fully the importance of Viola’s contribution, you must step outside of the usual hagiography and art blather that generally constitutes the celebration of great artists, and look at one idea central to this artist’s practice. A serious student of Zen Buddhism, Viola understands that his life will be meaningfully spent exploring the condition of existence that cannot be pictured or simply captured and recreated in any medium. Through his work as an artist and his study, he has begun to understand the complex task of creating work that allows one to experience the notion of the stopping mind.
    Time, in the work of this artist, is not simply an element used to create unsettling sensations of the surreal, or to smugly mock the poverty of our ability to understand this complex phenomenon. Truly an artist of our era, Viola creates work that slows us down, engages us in the act of that continual slowing, and presents us with a visual and audible framework for experiences that finally must take place deep in our own consciousness, and in our own memories of the encounter with his work. We don’t need to be told certain things. It is enough just to have them carefully and lovingly shown to us in a manner that respects our own innate capacity for transcendence.
   From within a unique aesthetic space, Viola invites us to experience the essentially human acts of compassion and connectedness that are central to his own quest for unity of mind and spirit. He recognized quite early in his career that he was a teacher, not simply a decorator or an entertainer, and to all of our benefit, he continues to make wondrous and complex works of art that delight and move us, while quietly and subtly planting ideas that may very well help us transform our lives.

David A. Ross is president of the Artist Pension Trust, a financial service company working exclusively for visual artists. He was director of the Whitney Museum of American Art from 1991 to 1998 and of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1998 to 2001.

Bill Viola Time, by David A. Ross, Shambhala Sun, November 2004.

To order this copy of the Shambhala Sun, click here.

To order a trial subscription to Shambhala Sun, click here.