That’s the moment. Bill Viola and the Cyrotic Logos.
The exhibit of Bill Viola’s works at the A.S. Pushkin GMIS was so successful that even the classic film magazine «Cinema Art» produced a series of articles about the video art.
In the spring of 2021, there was an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum by Bill Viola, one of the most influential video artists of our time. Alexandra Persheva, an art candidate, an expert in screen arts, talks about the historical and personal context of Viola’s birth and development, and evaluates the impact of his project on the cinema and our vision consciousness. An article has been published on the portal of the Journal of the Art of Films.
«The concept of the „decision moment“ formulated by Henri Cartier-Bresson has an important place in the practice of a documentary photographer, a unique moment when an event reaches paroxism and all actors manifest themselves, become visible. In Baroque painting, it’s a caught moment. In the movies, the final scene where the hero becomes bigger than himself, the whole universe created on the screen depends on what he did…
… Bill Viola’s video is located in space between two poles: we don’t see the whole story, we only see the crucial moment (as in the photograph), but it’s given in length (as in the movies). The image unfolds in «the continuing present,» and the viewer has the opportunity to look, feel, get into action, survive the fateful moment, hear the swing of Kairos' wings.»