Bill Viola, RIP

Bill Viola, RIP

RIP

norman lebrecht

July 14, 2024

The American video artist who work was central to Peter Sellars’ and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s celebrated 2004 Tristan und Isolde, has died of Alzheimers complications aged 73.

He started out as a student of the John Cage associate, David Tudor.

Comments

  • PS says:

    It’s not my style but there is a recent book about it.

  • Me says:

    Whether it’s your ‘style’ or not Bill Viola was a great artist who’s spiritual insights moved many.
    RIP

  • Videoartist says:

    His work up until The Passing in 1991 was some of the most sublime in the video format, he was in my view a bona fide genius of the medium. In some of the later work, well it never rains but it pours. A sad end to a great artist.

  • operacentric says:

    That video sequence is so incredibly more powerful when coupled with Wagner’s music – it plays during Isolde’s Liebestod in his and Sellars’ production of Wagner’s Tristan. https://youtu.be/wLs3a8bvBGg?feature=shared

  • Pamela Foulkes says:

    I hated Peter Sellar’s Tristan, but Bill Viola was a hugely talented video artist and I am very sorry to hear of his death.

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