Bill Viola Quotes

In the 1970s, a lot of critics didn't understand video. I got a lot of bad reviews. But film-makers didn't understand what we were doing, either. There were actual fistfights between film-makers and video-makers. I was witness to one.

Bill Viola

• Bad

When you come into my pieces, it's not an intellectual experience, it's a physical experience. It's coming at your body. There's light, there's sound, the lights in some pieces are going on and off. There's loud roaring sound happening.

Bill Viola

• Experience
• Light

If you look at landscape in historical terms, you realize that most of the time we have been on Earth as a species, what has fallen on our retina is landscape, not images of buildings and cars and street lights.

Bill Viola

• Time
• Earth

When you're making video, you're giving structure to time, which is what a composer does.

Bill Viola

• Time
• Giving

You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.

Bill Viola

• Work
• Art
• Feeling

Creativity is not the property of artists alone. It's a basic element of the human character, no matter what culture you're in, no matter where you are on Earth or in history.

Bill Viola

• Character
• History
• Earth

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

Bill Viola

The human brain is probably one of the most complex single objects on the face of the earth; I think it is, quite honestly.

Bill Viola

• Earth
• Single
• Brain

You can always tell in a movie when they are setting you up for something. If someone leaves an important object on the table and walks away, the camera will have some way of indicating that to you.

Bill Viola

• Up
• Important
• Movie