© Bill Viola
Currently not on view
Six Heads,
2000
Bill Viola, born 1951, New York, NY; active Long Beach, CA
2001-177
Viola’s oeuvre centers on the exploration of existential themes—emotional states, consciousness, sleep, memory, mortality, rapture—through his pioneering use of the medium of video. In 1998 the artist spent a year studying representations of the passions (states of instinctive human emotion) as depicted throughout the history of art and as represented in texts by Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sufi writers. Six Heads comes from this period of immersive consideration of the cultural, spiritual, and narrative power of representations of human expression.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Six Heads
Dates
2000
Maker
Medium
Color video on plasma display
Dimensions
plasma screen: 102.9 × 62.9 × 17.8 cm (40 1/2 × 24 3/4 × 7 in.)
video case: 17.3 × 11.2 × 3.1 cm (6 13/16 × 4 7/16 × 1 1/4 in.)
dvd cases: 19.1 × 13.5 × 1.5 cm (7 1/2 × 5 5/16 × 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Donald G. Fisher
Object Number
2001-177
Culture
Type
Mr. and Mrs. Donald G. Fisher, San Francisco, California, gift; to Princeton University Art Museum, 2001.
