Long Beach, CA — July 18, 2024
The first time I saw Bill Viola’s video art was at the Long Beach Museum of Art, an institution that in the 1980s won my affection for its tenacity in not letting a limited budget and exhibition space become an excuse for mounting anything less than shows worth a long drive. At that point, I lived in Ocean Park, thirty miles north of Long Beach, so setting aside a good chunk of one’s day off on a weekend was the major price of admission. LBMA was the first place at which I saw Bill Viola’s “Reflecting Pool,” which I lingered in front of far longer than I do for most works of art. Even though the technology had only become available in the post-modernist period, Viola’s poetics immediately struck me as being embedded in the pre-Socratic. Heraclitus and Zeno should be the starting points for tuning oneself up to encounter Viola’s work, although it wouldn’t hurt I thought to myself to spend a half-hour listening to Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports.” “Selecting Pool” exuded the calmness of the incomplete’s penultimate culmination: the transitory approaching the limits of the irreducible. It did not surprise me, therefore, when earth, air, fire, and water became central tropes in his “Martyrs” series.
Viola died at his home in Long Beach recently and is survived by his collaborator spouse, Kira Perov, and two songs. Viola indeed left profound gifts behind for many travelers to discover their nexus to “neatness.”.
https://www.billviola.com
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
For further reading:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-06-ca-41-story.html
ART REVIEWS : ‘Waterworks’: A Summer Tonic at Long Beach Museum
by CATHY CURTIS — July 6, 1990 12 AM PT
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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/jul/14/bill-viola-obituary
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-07-13/bill-viola-dead-video-artist
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/15/remembering-bill-viola-the-artist-whose-video-work-expresses-the-heights-and-depths-of-human-emotions
About Bill Mohr