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Robert Wilson seems to view the arts as a mountain climber might view the Himalayas, or an astronaut outer space. There are always new worlds, more mountains, even universes, to conquer. The polymathic Wilson, known for his work in theater and dance and opera and architecture and design, has now turned his discerning eye to portraiture.
His medium is high-definition video, and high-definition is the key phrase. Such quality was not feasible until about three years ago when Wilson began the project. What he achieves is technically gorgeous, saturated with color and vivid with contrast, suffused with painterly light and sharp edges, with stunning resolution on the plasma screen. But the work is about more than technology. Wilson captures moments and moods with an almost frightening intimacy, building in a way on what Caravaggio did in reconceiving the connection between the viewer and the picture during the Renaissance.
We think of portraits as still and we associate videos with all sorts of motion. But the Wilson video portrayals do not fit either definition. They appear to be still—but something happens, a tiny movement, breathing, the blinking of an eye, then perhaps the motion of a finger. The loops run from thirty seconds to thirty minutes, and the seeming stillness is broken in various ways at various intervals, in a manner that seems inherently correct for the subject. Each portrait loop is a vignette, real but surreal, speechless but dramatic, explicit but enigmatic.
The effect is far more powerful than what you might expect on a screen. The viewing experience is not like watching a movie or looking at a painting. The comfort of distance is breached. You are drawn into an emotional magnetic field, confronted with a penetrating, visceral intimacy, up close and deep seated. You sometimes feel a twinge of embarrassment sharing the privacy of the subjects.
And the subjects are fascinating. Jeanne Moreau, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Johnny Depp, Isabelle Huppert, Salma Hayek, Winona Ryder and Isabella Rossellini are among the celebrities, but there are also artists and animals and ordinary people.
Some are simply or not so simply themselves, but other depictions are filled with
references and allusions. Princess Caroline of Monaco is shown in a pose that her mother, Grace Kelly, first struck in a pivotal scene in the Alfred Hitchcock film, Rear Window. “It seemed to add rather than detract from her character,” according to Wilson.
The series is called the VOOM Portraits because they were commissioned and produced by VOOM HD Networks, a television company where Wilson is Artist-in-Residence. The works have been exhibited in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery and by Phillips de Pury & Company.
They have been compared to Andy Warhol’s screen tests, but if there are similarities they are quite superficial. If there is any real connection with Warhol it is not in the art itself but in how it fits into its time and how it is perceived. A generation ago, Warhol’s pop art portraits were stylish emblems of the art world he lived in, and important collectors commissioned portraits of themselves or people close to them. Could Wilson’s eloquent video portraits reproduce that glamour and cachet, and repeat that cultural and sociological phenomenon?
I think it has the potential for exactly that. The portraits are stunningly original in concept and execution—and are already sought after. There are plenty of collectors with plenty of money who might follow the age-old tradition of commissioning a portrait and acquiring an artistic icon in one gesture. The work is not going to look like anything that was created before—and maybe that is just the point for serious collectors.
VOOM Zoo is the theme of the 14th annual Watermill Center benefit on July 28th. It pays homage to Wilson’s portraits of animals and inspires the dress code of wild chic. One VOOM Portrait will be included in the art auction.