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The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

Bill Viola

When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water.
BILL VIOLA

Container Outside Water Merge
Because we live in an industrialized, fast-paced world that prefers that the soul remain asleep.
BILL VIOLA

Fast Paced Soul World
When I make my work, I am making what I hope to be something functional – a space for individual contemplation and reflection. I want my art to be useful.
BILL VIOLA

Art Hope Reflection Something Space
I like to keep the meanings in my work flowing and open.
BILL VIOLA

Flowing Keep Meaning Open
The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.
BILL VIOLA

Brain Earth Honestly Thinking
Revolution is something that actually starts in individual hearts.
BILL VIOLA

Heart Individual Revolution
A lot of what making art is, is just being open, and empty. And putting yourself in the right place for things to, literally, come together.
BILL VIOLA

Art Being Just Together
Emotions are the key to many aspects of life. They are precisely the elements that make human beings human. I think the fact that emotions have been reduced and put off to the side in intellectual work, particularly in the 20th Century, is tragic.
BILL VIOLA

Intellectual Keys Thinking
My works really begin in a very simple way. Sometimes it’s an image, and sometimes it’s words I might write, like a fragment of a poem.
BILL VIOLA

Fragment might Simple Writing
For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That’s a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge.
BILL VIOLA

Floating Moving Ocean Water
In the mid- to late ’60s to the mid-’70s, when I was a student, there was a major change in the thinking about what art can be and how art is made.
BILL VIOLA

Art Change Students Thinking
You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.
BILL VIOLA

Art Experts Feelings
I don’t believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We’re always borrowing.
BILL VIOLA

Art Believe Borrowing Original Thinking
Experience is so much richer than light falling on your retina. You embody a microcosm of reality when you walk down the street – your memories, your varying degrees of awareness of what’s going on around you.
BILL VIOLA

Embody Everything Experience Memories Microsm Retina
It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
BILL VIOLA

Impression Second Vision
We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.
BILL VIOLA

Call Death Metaphor Moment Ourselves

The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

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The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

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Popular Authors

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