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Sitting still and staring. Then the portrait blinks.


by Jerome Weeks 13 Mar 2008 2:04 PM

[flv:http://csps.edgeboss.net/download/csps/csm/flash/webmedia/wilson2.flv 400 300] The Christian Science Monitor has an article and video clip about Robert Wilson’s hi-def video portraits currently exhibited (on plasma monitors courtesy of the VOOM HD company) at the Museum of Art at the University of Iowa. The Waco native videotaped people such as Johnny Depp and Salma Hayek, pet animals and […]

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[flv:http://csps.edgeboss.net/download/csps/csm/flash/webmedia/wilson2.flv 400 300]

The Christian Science Monitor has an article and video clip about Robert Wilson’s hi-def video portraits currently exhibited (on plasma monitors courtesy of the VOOM HD company) at the Museum of Art at the University of Iowa. The Waco native videotaped people such as Johnny Depp and Salma Hayek, pet animals and even, apparently, everyday folk as they sat still — mostly all you’ll see is their breathing and blinking. Typically for Wilson’s work, it can be contemplative and lovely or boring or … a little unnerving.

But these are not your typical Renaissance portraits. They move. Not by much: there are blinking eyes, mouths chewing gum, and wind-blown dresses. The familiar figures become a bit unfamiliar and, in some cases, outright strange….

Museum director Howard Collinson says that Wilson’s VOOM work is an “amalgam of theatre and the visual arts, and that’s what makes his work unique. Each piece can be seen as a small production.”

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