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St Paul's Cathedral, Londonīill Viola believes that there is a universal chain that links human beings: his parents continue to live inside him and he will continue to live inside his son after his death. They intimated to me that it wasn't necessary to repeat those themes but, effectively, they were setting me a challenge given that the fundamental thing about them is - for what reason and for whom would you be willing to lay down your life. Viola admits to long-term 'artist's block' about the figure of Mary and confesses: "She nearly killed us." The theme of both installations was suggested by the cathedral itself: "Until the middle of the 20th century, there were other paintings in the Quires based on Mary and the martyrs. Both videos are on permanent loan from the Tate Modern and his wife, Kira Perov, collaborated on both. It was in May 2014 that the first video, Martyrs, arrived in the South Quire aisle, to the right of the High Altar, Mary being installed to the left on the 8th of September 2016. In these recordings, as in all of Viola's works that lack narrative discourse, the slow camera maximises our chances of really seeing and feeling the sentiment expressed.īill Viola's works can be found in some of the world's greatest museums but this is the first time in 2,000 years that a sacred moving image, on video, has ever substituted painting or sculpture in a grand temple of Christianity.īill Viola (New York, 1951) took 13 years to conclude these two works for St Paul's. We are too used to the fixed image of paintings and photographs or the moving image of film. I would never like to return there." But the gaze of Viola's Mary is unlike anything else. We also trawl our literary references til we come up with those comments of Colm Tóibín's on writing his "The Testament of Mary": “I lived in the epicentre of Mary's pain. We attempt to think of this level of restraint in any other examples in painting or cinema. The scene is emotionally powerful, wrapped in the mystery between modernity and intemporality, between the most advanced technology and the purity of the miracle of sustaining life by means of warmth and a mother's milk. Behind her, the speeded-up lights of the Los Angeles horizon change from morning pinks, to evening, to nightfall over an extended length of time while she, all slow motion, doesn't take her gaze off ours. Her right breast is bared as she breastfeeds the baby boy in her lap.
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She wears a saffron-coloured tunic whose colours call to mind the Buddhist monks of Cambodia. This modern-day triptych lights up to show a shaven-headed, dark-skinned woman of indeterminate race. And then begins a fascinating experience for Christians like us, in the year 2016, in an Anglican cathedral rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. She is pointing at three plasma screens with a remote control. There, where our cultural references would lead us to expect a Baroque altarpiece with painted, gold-leafed wooden figures, we find instead a nun of quite masculine appearance, cassock, dog collar and boyish haircut. A little further and we find ourselves in the North Quire aisle to the left of the High Altar. We wander further and pass Henry Moore's sculpture "Mother and Child: Hood" in the apse. Bill Viola began working in Gothic churches to reflect their sound, that opaque silence that scales their pillars to the heavens.
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We think of Burgos, Leon, Toledo and others, with their cathedral choir stalls, their altar railings. We expect something with a bit more rage to it, something more challenging, something to be overcome. Different languages in a powerful crossover between the Baroque and the ultra-contemporary. My companion and I think of Spain. There is a Virgin Mary in a refugee camp by the graffiti artist CBloxx, two gigantic white crosses by the Indian artist Gerry Judah hanging from the central nave. Staggering present-day pieces that speak to us of current conflicts and originate from all over the world. There are flags from old military campaigns, memorials and, more importantly, there is contemporary art. Nelson is buried beneath our feet, as is Wellington. But here there is an electricity distinct from that of Rome. The glass is neither stained nor tinted, just crystal clear. We walk slowly here, amazed by the pomp and colossal size of Wren's cathedral, perhaps a little disoriented by its resemblance to St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City with its baldachin, its Solomon's Temple-like columns, its sheer dimensions and its profusion of marble.
PETER GABRIEL IN YOUR EYES SPANISH WINDOWS
As we approach the High Altar of St Paul's Cathedral in London, sunlight floods through the two great windows on either side.