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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

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
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
It only takes a second for an impression to become a vision.
BILL VIOLA

Impression Second Vision
I came of age at the end of the 1960s, just when video was also coming into the world. Companies such as Sony and Panasonic were starting to market it and we artists immediately knew how it could be used.
BILL VIOLA

Age Artist Coming Panasonic Video Year
Everything we could call the contextualizing information. Representing that information is going to be the main issue in the years ahead – how the world meets the mind, not the eye.
BILL VIOLA

Everything Issue Man Mind Walk
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
I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.
BILL VIOLA

Images Inspiration Writing
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
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
Human beings have always been creative. The guys who were making the pyramids, and archaeological research has showed us this, had little figurines made by the workers, to express their devotion to their god.
BILL VIOLA

Creative Devotion Express Guy Pyramids
Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity… but theres a feeling that life is interconnected, that theres life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
BILL VIOLA

Feelings Identity Interconnected Rocks Tree
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
There is an invisible world out there, and we are living in it.
BILL VIOLA

Invisible Living World
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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