Der US-amerikanische Video- und Installationskünstler Bill Viola ist gestorben

Der am 25. Januar 1951 in New York City geborene US-amerikanische Video- und Installationskünstler Bill Viola (Bild) ist am 12. Juli 2024 in Long Beach (Kalifornien) gestorben. Er hatte sich - auch interdisziplinär - mit Kulturschaffenden wie David Tudor, Name June Paik, Bruce Naumann, Vito Acconci, Peter Sellars und Esa-Pekka Salonen ausgetauscht. Auf Reisen studierte der Videokunst-Pionier das traditionelle Schauspiel und die traditionelle Musik auf den Salomonen, Java, Bali und in Japan und Indien. 1995 wurde Viola eingeladen, eine Installation für den Pavillon der USA auf der 46. Biennale von Venedig zu konzipieren. Im Jahr 1997 begann die Retrospektive «Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey Exhibition», organisiert vom Whitney Museum of American Art, mit Ausstellungen im Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1997), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1998), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998), Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1999), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1999) und im Art Institute Chicago (1999–2000). (*)

Bild: Bill Viola, 2011 – Foto: Jean-Baptiste LABRUNE, https://www.flickr.com/people/jeanbaptisteparis/ – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BillViola.jpg

The unfolding of consciousness, the revelation of beauty, present even after death, the moment of awe, the space without words, the emptiness that builds mountains, the joy of loving, the sorrow of loss, the gift of leaving something behind for the next traveler.

(Bill Viola)

It is with great sadness that we share the news of the death of Bill Viola, one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. He passed away peacefully at home on July 12th, at the age of 73. The cause was Alzheimer’s Disease. Viola is survived by his wife and longtime creative collaborator, Kira Perov, Director of Bill Viola Studio, sons Blake and Andrei Viola and daughter-in-law Aileen Milliman.

Viola was a pioneer in the fields of new media, video, and installation art. For over 50 years his visionary environments, defined by immersive video and soundscapes, focused on the fundamental human experiences of birth, death, and the unfolding of consciousness. By slowing down the images, Viola shifted viewers’ sense of perception and awareness to reveal the inner world.

Coming of age alongside the development of video, Viola experimented with the new technologies to explore the furthest reaches of the expressive possibilities of this new medium. He said, «I gradually realized that the act of perception was in fact a viable form of knowledge in and of itself, and not merely a kind of phenomenon. This meant that when I held the video camera and microphone, I was holding a philosophical system, not just some image and sound gathering tool.»

Viola’s discoveries assured that video was to become a vital form of contemporary art. His work has been influential to subsequent generations of artists and viewers. To have been in the presence of one of Viola’s installations was to be forever changed.

(…)

https://www.billviola.com/

Bill Viola, Celebrated Video Artist Who Played With Time, Dies at 73

Inspired by Renaissance painters, he explored life’s passages — birth, death, romantic love, redemption and rebirth — in often moving, often thrilling exhibitions.

When artists were just beginning to work with video in the early 1970s, Mr. Viola quickly earned a reputation as a technical wizard adept at the new recording and editing methods. Many of his early works reflected a fascination with special effects, including input-output feedback loops to fill a screen with visual distortions and closed-circuit surveillance installations. He gained experience in the technology through jobs as an audiovisual assistant in museums and galleries.

Jori Finkel

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/arts/bill-viola-dead.html

Bill Viola, artist and navigator, left a world drenched in beauty

Michel de Montaigne, the wisest and most humane of philosophers, once wrote that, «To philosophize is to learn to die.» Bill Viola, who died Friday at the age of 73, learned to die at a very young age, which made his art some of the most philosophically rich and beautiful of the last century.

Philip Kennicott

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2024/07/13/bill-viola-death/

Pioneer video artist explored human consciousness

Artist Bill Viola, whose pioneering work with video since the 1970s opened the door to what would become a major artform internationally, died Friday at his home in Long Beach after a long struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, according to his wife and artistic partner, Kira Perov.

Christopher Knight

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-07-13/bill-viola-dead-video-artist

Bill Viola, Video Artist Who Established the Medium as an Integral Part of Contemporary Art, Dies at 73

Viola’s works are centered around the idea of human consciousness and such fundamental experiences as birth, death, and spirituality. He delved into mystical traditions from Zen Buddhism to Islamic Sufism, as well as Western devotional art from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in his videos, which often juxtaposed themes of life and death, light and dark, noise and silence. These explorations were achieved by submerging viewers in both image and sound with cutting-edge technologies for their time.

Francesca Aton

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/bill-viola-video-artist-dead-1234711905/

Bill Viola, ‘the Rembrandt of the video age’, dies aged 73

The pioneer in new media and installation art worked with everyone from Nine Inch Nails to the Royal Academy in London, where his art was presented with Michelangelo’s

Rachael Healy

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/jul/13/bill-viola-the-rembrandt-of-the-video-age-dies-aged-73

Muere Bill Viola, ‹el Caravaggio del videoarte›

Creador de imágenes fascinantes, tan conmovedoras como hermosas, Bill Viola, la gran estrella del videoarte, el único que ha sabido conectar con grandes audiencias, falleció el viernes 12 de julio a los 73 años. (…)

Las monumentales instalaciones de vídeo de Bill Viola se encuentran en los museos más importantes del mundo, desde el MoMA a la Tate, y su interés por la espiritualidad le han abierto también las puertas de los templos religiosos,  como la Catedral de Durham, para la que creó en 1996 El mensajero   (donde una figura masculina desnuda emerge lentamente del agua y se sumerge nuevamente en ella) o la de San Pablo, en Londres, con la serie Mártires (2014). Su capacidad para agitar emociones le ha valido una legión de seguidores más allá de los estrechos círculos del arte. 

Teresa Sesé

https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20240713/9802369/muere-bill-viola-gran-superestrella-videoarte.html

Morto Bill Viola, gigante della videoarte

Pioniere e maestro della videoarte. Geniale contaminatore di arte e tecnologia, classico e moderno, l’artista era malato da tempo.

Stefano Bucci

https://www.corriere.it/cultura/24_luglio_13/morto-bill-viola-gigante-dell-arte-contemporanea-0dbe77ea-411d-11ef-98a6-8e2a7696350f.shtml

Bill Viola, pionnier de l’art vidéo, est mort

Le vidéaste est mort chez lui vendredi. Il avait connu sa première rétrospective en France avec une exposition au Grand Palais à Paris en 2014, retraçant quarante ans de carrière.

https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2024/07/13/bill-viola-pionnier-de-l-art-video-est-mort_6249692_3246.html

Ohne Angst in die Tiefe

Man muss Bill Viola nicht als «High-Tech-Caravaggio» überhöhen, aber er hat Werke geschaffen, die neue Medien mit Transzendenz versöhnen.

Seine Themen waren so alt wie die Kultur – gleichzeitig hat sich Viola schon früh avancierter Technologien bedient. Von 1974 bis 1976 war er als technischer Leiter beim Center Art/tapes/22 in Florenz tätig, wo er Künstler wie Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman und Vito Acconci kennenlernte, die dort ihre Videoarbeiten produzierten. Viola selbst wurde – ab 1983 als Dozent für Advanced Video am CalArts bei Los Angeles – zur wichtigen Figur, die mithalf, Video als zeitgenössische Kunstform durchzusetzen.

Jens Hinrichsen

https://www.monopol-magazin.de/bill-viola-gestorben-ohne-angst-die-tiefe

Videokünstler der «bewegten Malerei»

Eine vor Schmerzen schreiende Gebärende, der weit aufgerissene Mund im erstarrten Gesicht einer Sterbenden oder ein an den Füßen gefesselter kopfüber hängender Mann, auf den wie bei einer Folter Wasser herabregnet: Wer die Videoarbeiten des US-Künstlers Bill Viola einmal gesehen hat, vergisst sie so schnell nicht wieder – zu persönlich und verstörend sind seine Inszenierungen, zu nahe geht es, wie Viola über Geburt, Tod und das Leben dazwischen nachgedacht hat.

Der New Yorker Künstler hat einen großen Anteil daran, dass Videoinstallationen heute überhaupt als anerkannte Kunstform gelten und in den bedeutendsten Museen der Welt zu finden sind.

dpa

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/kunst-videokuenstler-der-bewegten-malerei-bill-viola-ist-tot-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-240713-930-172972

Videos:

Bill Viola – Ancient Of Days (1979)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szc8dWQf3zc

Bill Viola – Ocean Without a Shore – Venice Biennale 2007

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-V7in9LObI

Bill Viola Interview: Cameras are Keepers of the Souls, 2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3VfWLlkuRI

Mehr:

https://www.billviola.com/

https://search.worldcat.org/de/search?q=su:Viola, Bill 1951-

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/108VM9

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/kuenstler/viola/biografie/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Viola

(*) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Viola

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