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Now, 'Quintet of the Astonished' is included
in the National Gallery's exhibition 'Encounters', which was sponsored
by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter; 24 artists were invited to 'respond'
to paintings in the permanent collection. Viola has chosen 'Christ
Crucified', by Hieronymus Bosch.
Viola, who admits to a long-standing interest in sacred art, now
stands firmly in that long Judaeo-Christian tradition within Europe,
of a humanistic representation of 'divine reality', as contemplated
by Renaissance artists. Viola uses his lens like a brush: "if you
think about it, the optical system of the camera is really the technological
embodiment of the vanishing-point perspective system used in painting
by the artists of the Renaissance", Viola recently told Colin Gleadall
of the Daily Telegraph.
At 49, Viola has already produced an oeuvre that includes over
100 completed video works. As the acknowledged master of the medium
in America, in 1995 he represented his country in the Venice Biennale.
But he was already experienced fully in London two years earlier,
when the "Nantes Triptych" showed at the Whitechapel Gallery. A
sense of spiritual contemplation is present in Viola's work today:
this sensibility grew all through his travels from the Pacific Islands
to the Himalayas.
What is interesting here, now, is that Bill Viola is a somewhat
rare example of an artist bridging the Thames from the dramas of
Tate Modern to the longer historical perspectives of the National
Gallery today. "Encounters: New Art for Old" is at the National
Gallery, London, June 14 - September 17.
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