The holidays are over; the new year is up and running. The future beckons.
But toward what?
In my own experience, three recent memorable encounters with art have pointed the way to what to expect as the millennium unfolds.
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One came late in 1999 during a long, emotional viewing of the retrospective of Bill Viola in the Art Institute. Viola is an artist who works in the forms of television and video, relatively new tools in visual art. But he uses these new forms to explore the themes that have always fascinated great artists, no matter what the century.
One piece in particular mesmerized me. “Heaven and Earth” consisted of two television monitors mounted vertically and facing each other. In the bottom half was a video of a newborn child; in the top was the video of a dying old woman. Her image reflected on the tube below that showed the moving pictures of the child.
You did not to have to be aware that the infant was Viola’s son and that the woman was Viola’s mother, who died before the child was born, to be tremendously moved by this compassionate portrait of life and death, captured for eternity in a television tube.
As much as any artist of the Renaissance, Viola had taken the techniques of his time and advanced them to a new level of proficiency. At the same time, he had used these innovations to deal with themes that are universal and ageless.
No wonder the Viola show drew a large crowd of young viewers. They were seeing an invention of their time, brilliantly used and profoundly felt, that made the technical wizardry of music videos look like silly putty.
Another unforgettable encounter came last spring in Bilbao, Spain, when I saw for the first time the Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Gehry. I had read stories and seen photos of this amazing building, but no second-hand view prepared me for the shock of discovery that came in seeing it firsthand.
In many ways, the museum is a remarkable tribute to advanced technology. For the first time as a major component of architecture, it made use of titanium, the metallic element that until then had been confined mostly to space satellites and sports equipment. The other major factor in the building design is limestone, cut with the aid of computers so that no single block is exactly the same.
Such inventions in art would have been impossible a decade or two ago, but the only reason they make such an indelible impression today is that they have been harnessed and focused by the vision of an artist. What use are computers in art if they have no spirit behind them? And what good is a new building element if it is not guided by genius?
In the way it sits, formidably but invitingly, in the midst of its urban environment, and in the awe it inspires through the astounding use of light and space in its interior, this Guggenheim is the worthy successor to the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. It is of its time, and forever.
Finally, last month in Chicago, the performance artist Heather Woodbury brought a brief segment of her marathon “What Ever” solo work to Steppenwolf Theatre for a one-night performance. Her art is as simple as it can be: just Woodbury on the stage alone, microphone in hand, transforming herself into a galaxy of characters she has invented for the complex, interwoven story of a modern-day odyssey across the length and breadth of the United States.
Each in separate ways, Viola, Gehry and Woodbury are doing the eternal job assigned to artists in society, which is to reflect and enlarge the experience of humanity in their work. It can be done with new and sophisticated materials, or with simple and traditional means. In either case, it can be accomplished only with the oldest and most precious element of art, the spirit within.
No matter what the technology, no matter what the conditions, no matter how great the challenge, our artists will find the way.