Bill Viola

At 73 years old, Bill Viola physical status not available right now. We will update Bill Viola's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Bill Viola (born 1951) is a contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media.

His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness.

Early life and education

Viola grew up in Queens, New York, and Westbury, New York. He attended P.S. 20, in Flushing, where he was captain of the TV Squad. On vacation in the mountains with his family, he nearly drowned in a lake, an experience he describes as "… the most beautiful world I've ever seen in my life" and "without fear," and "peaceful."

In 1973 Viola graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in experimental studies. He studied in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, including the Synapse experimental program, which evolved into CitrusTV.

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Career

After graduating, Viola began working as a video technician at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. He studied and performed with composer David Tudor in the new music group "Reainforest" (later referred to as "Composers Within Electronics). Viola worked as technical director at Art/tapes/22, a pioneering video studio headed by Maria Gloria Conti Bicocchi in Florence, Italy, where he encountered video artists Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, and Vito Acconci from 1974 to 1976. He was an artist-in-residence at the WNET Thirteen Television Laboratory in New York from 1976 to 1983. He travelled to the Solomon Islands, Java, and Indonesia in 1976 and 1977 to capture traditional performing arts.

In 1977, Viola was invited to lecture at La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia), by cultural arts manager Kira Perov. Viola and Perov married later this year, beginning a fruitful lifelong friendship in terms of working and traveling together. They lived in Japan for a year and a half on a Japan/USA basis in 1980. They studied Buddhism with Zen Master Daien Tanaka as part of a cultural exchange fellowship. Viola was also an artist-in-residence at Sony Corp's Atsugi Laboratories during this period.

He began teaching Advanced Video at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, in 1983. He represented the United States at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, presenting Buried Secrets, which included one of his finest creations, The Greeting, a modern interpretation of Pontormo's The Visitation. The Whitney Museum of American Art in 1997 produced and toured internationally a major 25-year retrospective of Viola's work.

At the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 1998, Viola was the 1998 Getty Scholar-in-residence. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000, a decade later. He completed Going Forth By Day, a digital "fresco" cycle in High-Definition video produced by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2002.

The Passions were on display in Los Angeles, London, Madrid, and Canberra in 2003. This was a major collection of Viola's emotionally charged, slow-motion works influenced by Renaissance devotional painting traditions.

Federico Utrera (King Juan Carlos University) wrote the first biography of Viola, entitled Viola on Viola, which was published in Spain in 2011.

Bill Viola Studio is managed by his wife, Kira Perov, who is the executive director. She has been with Viola since 1978, managing and assisting with his videotapes and installations. She outlines their current location work. Perov has edited all of the studio's publications.

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Awards

• 1984 Polaroid Video Art Award for outstanding achievement, USA
• 1987 Maya Deren Award, American Film Institute, USA
• 1989 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award, USA
• 1993 Skowhegan Medal (Video Installation), USA
• 1993 Medienkunstpreis, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, and Siemens Kulturprogramm, Germany
• 2003 Cultural Leadership Award, American Federal of Arts, USA
• 2006 NORD/LB Art Prize, Bremen, Germany
• 2009 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT, Cambridge, MA He was awarded $75,000 and was able to go to MIT and help enhance the creative groups there.
• 2009 Catalonia International Prize, Barcelona, Spain
• 2010 Honorary doctorate from the University of Liège, Belgium
• 2011 Praemium Imperiale, Japan