Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes (Paperback)

Fine Condition Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes, 1972–1996 Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997. Softcover. Color illustrations throughout. Published to accompany Bill Viola, the first major survey of the artist’s work and, at the time, the largest exhibition devoted to a single video artist. Organized by the Whitney Museum and curated by David A. Ross and Peter Sellars, the exhibition traveled internationally through 2000. Bill Viola (1951–2024) helped define video as an immersive medium. His installations combine image and sound to slow down perception and focus attention, often drawing on spiritual traditions including Zen Buddhism, Sufism, and Christian mysticism. His use of extreme slow motion—now widely familiar—was central to this approach, encouraging sustained looking rather than quick consumption. Co-curator Sellars, known for rethinking opera as a form that merges music, image, performance, and politics, brings a broader, cross-disciplinary perspective that aligns closely with Viola’s concerns and expands the exhibition beyond a strictly art-world context.Viola’s influence on video and installation practice has been lasting. Many of the visual strategies now common across moving-image culture—slowed gesture, extended duration, and an emphasis on immersive experience—are grounded in work he developed during these years. This catalogue, covering the period 1972 to 1996, documents that development in detail. It includes a selection of works compiled with studio director Kira Perov, texts by the artist, a conversation with Lewis Hyde, an essay by David A. Ross—among the first museum curators to champion video art—and a full exhibition history, chronology, and bibliography. Viola died in July 2024, and interest in his work and related publications continues to grow.…