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for The Greeting
The Greeting
Artist
Bill Viola
(Born 1951, United States; died 2024, United States)
Date1995
MediumVideo/sound installation
DimensionsProjected Image: 111 × 95 in. (281.94 × 241.3 cm)
Duration: 10 minutes, 22 seconds
Duration: 10 minutes, 22 seconds
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase
Object number1995.30
Status
Not on viewCopyright© Bill Viola
Category
Label TextThe video installation The Greeting, 1995, is a translation of the sixteenth-century painting Visitation, 1528–29 (Parrocchia dei Santi Michele e Francesco, Carmignano), by the Mannerist Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo. Pontormo’s Visitation depicts the New Testament story of Mary’s visit to her older cousin Elizabeth shortly after both women miraculously become pregnant, Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. Bill Viola created a secular but psychologically gripping translation of Pontormo’s image, one in which the precise meaning of the event remains fluid, ambiguous, and open to interpretation.
The Greeting begins with two women engaged in conversation at a street corner. They are soon joined by a third woman in a brilliant orange dress, who appears to be pregnant. She greets and embraces one of the women, whispering something to her. Projected life-size, the figures in Viola’s video nearly fill up the entire screen, akin to those in Pontormo’s composition. Whereas Pontormo depicted four individuals in his Visitation, in Viola’s version the viewer watching the video becomes the fourth presence in the group. Viola places the meeting under the magnifying glass of time. A performance that took 45 seconds to complete is slowed down to unfold over ten minutes. Subtle expressions of intimacy, jealousy, suspicion, and empathy become almost glaring. The windblown forms of the women’s dresses are as mesmerizing as their body language is revealing of the tensions within the momentary triangular relationship.
The Greeting begins with two women engaged in conversation at a street corner. They are soon joined by a third woman in a brilliant orange dress, who appears to be pregnant. She greets and embraces one of the women, whispering something to her. Projected life-size, the figures in Viola’s video nearly fill up the entire screen, akin to those in Pontormo’s composition. Whereas Pontormo depicted four individuals in his Visitation, in Viola’s version the viewer watching the video becomes the fourth presence in the group. Viola places the meeting under the magnifying glass of time. A performance that took 45 seconds to complete is slowed down to unfold over ten minutes. Subtle expressions of intimacy, jealousy, suspicion, and empathy become almost glaring. The windblown forms of the women’s dresses are as mesmerizing as their body language is revealing of the tensions within the momentary triangular relationship.
2013-14