Creative = Artistic ?

       

BIll VIOLA

      Last week Lawrence University had it's first convocation of the spring term, and the guest artist was Bill Viola,  according to Wikipedia, Viola is "a contemporary video artist, who is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness. " 

       I've seen the video of " The Reflection pool" before, that one made a deep impression on me. And after three other screenings and attending his speech, I found something quite interesting about him being an artist, that somehow he has this obsession with the theme of waters. His videos that I have seen so far are all related to waters.  Needless to say, " the Reflection pool" is all about waters; " Fire woman" strongly utilized waters as the major visual effect, the water scenes and fishing scenes in "Hatsu-Yume", so does many of his other works. Even when he talks, his use of language has so many metaphors that's water,river, and sea-related.  I guess it might be strange to notice, but I am so convinced that Bill Viola is very attached to the idea of waters flowing. It does reminds me of an old saying in China, “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it”.  Even though Bill Viola did not mention a thing about waters at all when he talked about his sources of inspiration,  I still found this particularly interesting, and still wonders why he didn't talk about it. 

        I really do like some of his works, he is truly a pioneer in a sense. But there are times that I do not understand what he was trying to say in his works. All of his works are sort of strange, novel, slow, and quite even. Yet the imagery effect was quite the opposite, it silenced the audience and made them wondering, what is this feeling? what's going on? His works are very effective for sure. I enjoyed some of his works, but I could not literature how I feel about his work "hatsu-yume", before seeing it I expected that I would feel most-likely related to it somehow, since I know that language(the title) and where it's being filmed. But it occured to me that the video was so elusive. 

            Yet, I do strongly agree with what he said that " all of us are artists because all of us are creative."  Everyone has the ability to create art, to see art and to appreciate it, just in different forms and routes perhaps. Nevertheless, I feel that creativity is not a guarantee.  The greatest artists should always be honest, their works are always unpretending in a way that the viewer could feel the sincerity and sympathize with it. That is what I mostly believed about creating good art. Creativity gives you the key, but to open the door, you need to know where to stand and where to hold, and that’s what’s really taking practice. 

Here is one of his work

the reflecting pool