He died at the age of 73 from complications related to Alzheimer’s. Bill ViolaNew York artist known throughout the world for having experimented with video artcreating unique works, considered in all respects to be masterpieces of contemporary art.
The Italian-American artist was among the first true experimenters of new technologies, systematically exploring the expressive limits of the video camera and the microphone. Starting from the study of electronic music, the potential of performance art and experimental films, Viola has created works that, through a new artistic language, constantly address life, death and the journey in between, in order to investigate a deeper knowledge of man and his relationship with the environment, the influences of Eastern and Western philosophy, the iconic importance of the natural world and many other themes.
Art as a travel experience
The experience of travel has been fundamental for Viola in the development of his work. Taking inspiration from the realities he encountered in his travels around the world with his wife Kira Perov, between the 1970s and 1980s, he managed to outline his artistic path with the creation of works that envelop the observer with compositions and sounds, representing the infinite possibilities of the human psyche and soul.
Among these, fundamental stages are the 18 months spent in Florence, where he encountered Renaissance art for the first time. In 1997, during a research project at the Getty, he continued to explore ancient Christian iconography, with particular attention to medieval, Renaissance and Mannerist imagery in an ongoing dialogue with altarpieces, polyptychs and votive paintings by ancient artists. Viola then proposed a new composition of the image through the construction of elaborate theatrical scenes inspired by the Western art-historical tradition, cinematographic in the true sense of the word, with settings, actors, sets, lighting design, photography – and even a director.
Fire and water – symbolic elements for the passage from life to death, as well as from this life to the next; the digital world; an immaterial visual world; an existence dependent on pulses of electricity – all recall the fragility and transience of human nature.