It's not easy to encapsulate the work of a video artist in an exhibit catalogue, but Viola's art lends itself to stills and those stills to long scrutiny. His 20 recent videos called The Passions
feature close-ups of faces on a black background—distraught, happy or fearful frame-by-frame. Setting the work in a post–September-11th context, curator and former Getty Museum director Walsh finds that "by displaying other human beings and thus ourselves in extremis, Viola bypasses the rational intellect and causes disturbances against which we are normally well defended. Disturbed, we are no longer mere spectators." Some of the work consists of a single performer moving through an "arc of intensity," as in Dolorosa, but Going Forth by Day
involved elaborate sets, stunt performers and hundreds of extras. As an exhibition catalogue (for a show currently at the Getty in Los Angeles) with a chronology, bibliography and essays by Walsh and theater director Peter Sellars, a multifaceted account of Viola's career and creative methods compete for attention with the work. Also included is a conversation between Viola and Hans Belting, a professor at the School For New Media, and an enticing reproduction of the artist's handwritten production notebook/journal—"How to take the intellect, clever, deceiving, insightful, and, through sheer force of will, forge it into the emotional?" he asks himself in his nondescript print. Juxtaposed with the notebook entries are works by other artists from other ages mostly masters from the European Renaissance, as well as Indian and Arab masterworks. When one turns back to the emotive heads in Viola's still frames, human feeling crosses centuries. (Mar.)
