Catalogue of the Exhibition Bill Viola and Shirin Neshat Presented

On 8 December, 2003, the General Staff hosted the presentation of the catalogue for an exhibition showed by the Hermitage as part of the international video art festival
[PRO] SMOTR from 18 November, 2003, to 18 January, 2004. The publication has been prepared by the State Hermitage Museum jointly with the PRO ARTE Institute and sponsored by Ford Foundation.

1,000 copies of the 48-page catalogue including 26 full-color and 2 black-and-white illustrations have been issued in English and Russian by Lubavich Publishers, St. Petersburg. The book is prefaced by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, Adam Weinberg, Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Ye.F. Kolovskaya, Director of the PRO ARTE Institute.

The first of three articles in the catalogue, The Meeting, is authored by A.V. Ippolitov, Senior Research Assistant at the Hermitage Department of West European Art, and focuses on Bill Viola's video installation Greetings (1995) from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

One of the most remarkable contemporary artists, Bill Viola by his video installations puts the audience into a fluid environment woven of images and sounds. Video art is the means to realize the artist's dream, bringing the painting to life. Bill Viola's video installation was created in 1995 for the Venice Biennale to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the early Florentine mannerist painter Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo. The subject was taken from Pontormo's painting Visitation (about 1530). The master was inspired by the small engraving Four Witches (1497) of Albrecht Duerer (1471-1528), showed in the catalogue alongside Pontormo's painting and drawings.

The second article Turbulent written by Dr. D.Yu. Ozerkov of the Hermitage Department of West European Art tells of Shirin Neshat's installation, created in 1998 and displayed in the Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York. An American artist of Iranian origin, Neshat is one of the most popular and original contemporary artists who work in cinema and video. She focuses on the interplay of male and female roles within the Islamic society. Emphasizing the male/female watershed, Neshat projects her films on opposite walls putting her audience into the center of action, where it is forced to play an active part. Her minimalist videos are restricted to combinations of black and white. Characters' costumes and symbols associated with religious and social codes of the Islamic society are full of metaphors, which exert an almost hypnotic effect on the audience. Contrasts in opinions of the roles of man and woman in Muslim countries are underlined by contrasts of colors.

The closing article Nizami's Khamsa of 1413 of Dr. A.D. Adamova, Senior Research Assistant at the Hermitage Oriental Department, describes unique Persian miniatures of the 15th century from the Hermitage collection illustrating a manuscript of Khamsa (Quintuple or Five Poems) by Nizami (1141-1203), one of the greatest lyrical poets of the East. Created in 1431 in Herat for Tamerlane's son Shah Rokh (1404-1447), this is a masterpiece of the art of manuscript highly appreciated during the 15th century in Near and Middle Eastern countries.

The catalogue

Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, Director of the State Hermitage Museum, is introducing a new catalogue to journalists