Volume 46, Number 7 · April 22, 1999
Museums: Making It New
By Ada Louise Huxtable
Towards a New Museum
by Victoria Newhouse
Monacelli, 288 pp., $45.00 (paper)
One of the most powerful and haunting experiences of the retrospective exhibition of work of the artist Bill Viola at New York's Whitney Museum last year was a double-sided video projection showing a walking man; small and distant at first, the figure advanced slowly and deliberately, until, larger than life, it filled the whole screen on both sides. As the figure grew, flames began to lick at the bottom of the screen on one side, and water appeared to rain down from the top of the screen on the other. While the man's relentless advance continued, the hot orange flames leapt higher and higher and the cool rain became a torrential downpour. The final images were of a full screen of brilliantly flaming fire, and on the reverse, a drowning avalanche of water. Both figures had been totally consumed.
Review, 6334 words
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