Bill Viola's Motion Portraiture

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Photos from “The Passions”

“The Passions,” artist Bill Viola's show at L.A.'s Getty
Museum, is a study in the state of video art. His portraits of highly
emotional people, shot on film at 200fps to 300fps and transferred to
video, play out in extreme slow-motion. Most pieces run off Pioneer DVD
players concealed behind the walls, although two large-scale
high-definition pieces run off servers from Visual Circuits. While
Viola's show includes some of the most moving images you can see in a
darkened room, many pieces hang like paintings on illuminated gallery
walls. That ambience, notes Viola, “combined with the quality of
digital playback, produced an image quality that I'd never experienced
before in video. They look like photographs that move.”

Viola credits new plasma and LCD screen technology. “The
Pioneer plasma screens were right out of the box, so the only artistic
options were 4:3 or 16:9. But we could rotate them 90 degrees, so we
had four choices!” The major revelation for Viola was the quality
of the LCD screens, which were custom-configured by his studio head
Bettina Jablonski. Hinging together groupings of small screens, Viola
created modern polyptychs that evoke the traditions of devotional art.
“They have a satiny, photographic feel with absolutely no scan
lines. On a 17in. screen the pixels are so close together that you
practically have to put your nose into it to see them! Almost for the
first time since I started with video 30 years ago, the fundamental
nature of the image has changed.”

“The Passions” is on exhibit at the Getty Museum until
April 27 and then travels to the National Gallery in London.