Feature Reviews Saving Postmodernism's Soul: Bill Viola'sThe Passions david packwood Bill Viola: The Passions During a recent interview, the BBC critic `ground zero' for modern art, went on to John Tusa put it to Viola that there was a explore the iconography of the Cross and john walsh (ed) strong streak of Christian mysticism in his the Crucifixion, and there are many more John Paul Getty Institute with National Gallery, art, but that he never really directly who followed in Malevich's footsteps. It London 2003 £57.50 $75.00 (h) £34.50 $45.00 (p) addressed such scenes as the Resurrection seems therefore that Bann is absolutely 307 pp. 210 col/30 mono illus 1 isbn 0-89236-720-2 (h) 0-89236-720-2 (p) and the Crucifixion. Viola replied that correct in his belief that the `theological' UK dist. Windsor Books International, Oxford Christians do not own the Resurrection or dimension of modern and contemporary the Crucifixion, and that the image of art needs to be reclaimed, and made the n her article on art in the Dictionary of Christ the saviour belongs to the whole subject of a more searching inquiry than Biblical Interpretation, Pamela Tudor- world. Such universalism reflects the post- Berger's, which sought to expunge it. ICraig enquired if the modern genera- modern condition which we now sup- Although modernist movements such tion, with its thirst for realism, could not posedly inhabit, characterised by the as abstract expressionism produced artists yet recover the Christian story by returning collapse of `grand narratives' such as the such as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko to religious subjects such as the Garden of Christian story, and the erosion in import- whose big colour field paintings were Eden and the Resurrection. Perhaps the ance of the Bible itself, which Tudor-Craig conceived almost as divine manifestations modern video artist Bill Viola could be the was lamenting in her discussion of the of art, the religious aspects of these answer to Tudor-Craig's prayers for a neglect of biblical themes in modern art. It creations has been largely underplayed. contemporary art that has not entirely is too simplistic to see the `postmodern For Newman, however, abstract art was forsaken a Christian view of the world. Yet condition' as exclusively secular, however, nonetheless religious since he linked the the issue is not as simple as this, because since postmodern art, particularly Viola's painter's function to theology, because the despite the fact that Viola draws inex- videos and installations, renders the renaissance in modern painting repre- haustibly upon Renaissance paintings of Christian message subliminal, barely sented by styles such as Post-Painterly Christ's torment and passion, his way of discernible to the beholder, but nonethe- Abstraction were ways of returning to the conveying the agony and the ecstasy is less there for those with faith to see. Bill prime function of the artist, which unmistakably his own. This is one of the Viola's exhibition The Passions, transferred Newman put on a par with divine creation. most fascinating aspects of Viola's art: it is from the Getty Institute to the National As Bann has also said, although modern rooted in a recognisable Christian tradi- Gallery, London, can be related to this and contemporary art may not depend tion, but uses the hi-tech apparatus of issue of how it is possible to re-interpret upon a clearly identifiable Christian icono- modern video to articulate its message, an and re-energise spiritual themes within graphy, it should be possible to see art form not really noted for encouraging postmodern culture for the purpose of Christian themes emerging `through the religious conversion. moving the estranged, jaded and process of painting itself', not least Yet, paradoxically, seeing religious ultimately spiritually-weary viewer. because some artists ± such as the Italian images on high definition plasma screens Part of the problem of identifying Francesco Clemente ± come to identify does not neutralise a spiritual response in sacred art in the postmodern condition is themselves with Christ's suffering. the viewer. While walking through Viola's that most critics believe that a real tradition You might think that Pop Art with its The Passions in the exhibition space of the of religious art is absent, a view perpet- objects of everyday life offered no oppor- National Gallery, I was put in mind of uated by Marxist writers such as John tunity for transcending the reality of the images in indisputably sacred spaces such Berger, who has completely refused to see commonplace, or for the artist to fulfil a as monkish cells in Renaissance monas- any evidence of true religious feeling in the divine function. Yet, the spiritual was not teries, with that strange mixture of the art of the twentieth-century, and beyond. absent from even Pop Art, since its great- aesthetic and the pious. Indeed, Viola's Instead, Berger has renounced the reli- est exponent Andy Warhol was quietly The Passions demonstrates how the white gious in the `age of mechanical reproduc- producing silk-screens of details of paint- cube, the antiseptic modern display space, tion', and argued instead that the art object ings by devout Renaissance artists such as can impersonate a place of silent worship. is `enveloped in an atmosphere of entirely Piero della Francesca and Uccello. More To appreciate this kind of effect outside bogus religiosity'.2 As Stephen Bann has surprisingly, in the 1980s ± long after the Viola's exhibition, one need only stand in quite rightly pointed out in a recent discus- initial explosion of Pop Art ± Warhol front of paintings such as Piero della sion on the relevance of the theological to created astonishing images of large bright Francesca's Baptism of Christ housed within the modernist era, artists such as Malevich, red, blue and yellow crosses which culmi- the white-walled Sainsbury Wing of the whose Black Square could be regarded as the nated in a series of silkscreen paintings of National Gallery. what look like flickering candles against It is doubtful that Viola thinks of his the void, entitled `shadows'.3 These initial videos as specifically Christian, despite 1 Interview with John Tusa, BBC, on their website: bbc.co.uk the fact that his titles, such as Man of 2 John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Harmondsworth, 3 Jane Daggett Dillenberger, The Religious Art of Sorrows (2001), obviously recall that faith. 1972. Andy Warhol, New York, 1998. 8 TheArt Book volume 11 issue 4 september 2004 ß bpl/aah Feature Reviews religious paintings of `crosses and spiritual realm, but this idea of vision jumping off a raft, Viola forgot to hold on shadows' by Warhol have to be placed became rationalised in the work of such to a water ring, and sunk straight down, within the hidden tradition of religion in Caravaggiesque painters as Ribera, who but luckily for him the tragedy of a modern and postmodern art, which dispensed with the supernatural machi- drowning accident was averted by his includes Viola's own visions of the divine. nery of the vision and displaced it off uncle's hand reaching down like the hand `Vision' might seem an odd word to stage. Viola's work in video can be seen of God into the submarine world, to characterise the productions of somebody within this evolution of making things snatch Viola back to reality. Thus the who is, after all, a contemporary video visible beyond normal sight, of using motif of the man immersed in water came director and not a Counter-Reformation video to suggest the arrival and passing to figure centrally in Viola's art, virtually a painter seeking to inspire seekers after of divine beings, of creating epiphanies of calling card for the artist. Christian truth. If anything, however, the postmodern. Sometimes these epiph- It is interesting that Viola's work deals Viola's art shows us that the gap between anies are violent and fearful as in the case with the idea of representing the invisible, a traditional idea of vision and a modern of the ethereal light that breaks into the and his ideas are easily applicable to one is not unbridgeable, a theme that is calm, underwater world of Viola's Five postmodernism's arch-theorist Jean- touched on in the accompanying cata- Angels for the Millennium (2001). And FrancËois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition. logue to The Passions. Here, Hans Belting, sometimes Viola's epiphanies are the According to Lyotard, postmodernism in conversation with Viola, considers how result of a long wait, what Peter Sellars `imparts a stronger sense of the un- the nature of religious vision in the calls in the catalogue `waiting for God', a representable', i.e. that representation baroque era evolved into the kind of vigil that culminates in the sudden, never conveys things completely, but only negotiation between the mundane and dramatic appearance of the divine. For partially. Theologians interested in post- the supernatural that is present in Viola's this obsession with the moment of modernism believe in the idea of seeing art. Vision in earlier religious paintings of realisation, of knowledge of a supreme God in `glimpses', never knowing him saints and martyrs took the form of clouds power capable of shocking the soul into a of swirling angels who seemed to be state of awareness, one has to look to a opening a door or window upon some childhood experience of the artist. Whilst Bill Viola,The Passions. volume 11 issue 4 september 2004 ß bpl/aah TheArt Book 9 Feature Reviews completely, but only in part, an idea that sequently being immersed by a torrent of form of artistic expression very much in has connections with Viola's epiphanies of water; he then lifts up his arms as if to demand in this age of global terrorism and the postmodern.