You know how people say that you can tell God is cruel because he lets things like famine and disease and war happen? Well here’s something else you can tell about God: he’s got terrible taste in art, because he lets Bill Viola make videos for his cathedrals.
‘Mary’ is his second (second!) permanent (permanent!!!) video work in St. Paul’s Cathedral. I asked a member of staff what ‘permanent’ means and was told: ‘Something like 300 years’. Lord have mercy. The first work, ‘Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)’ was unveiled in 2014, and sits in the opposite corner to this new companion piece of permanent (seriously, like, permanent) religious video art.
Let me take you through the work. It starts with a shaven-headed woman – playing Mary, mother of Jesus – breastfeeding a baby Christ as a timelapse of Los Angeles speeds by on a CGI background. Urgh. Then, it cuts to a river running through a red rock canyon. Mary, a different one this time, walks through the water. Then she stands on a mountaintop, sits in front of a fire in the snow, walks through a field and, well, yadda yadda yadda. Images of cracked salt flats, forests and riverbeds get collaged together, all moving in super slo-mo, ultra HD. Then – pow! – black and white shots of piles of dead fish. There’s a metaphor at play for Mary as grieving mother of the world. Then it cuts to Mary cradling the dead body of an adult Jesus, tears streaming down her face in the ruins of a church. The whole thing slowly fades to grainy, otherworldly monochrome.
If it was just that final image, the tearful Madonna with her son in her lap, the piece might just work. Maybe. But it’s preceded by so much overwrought guff that it’s basically unwatchable. It’s so slick it’s almost greasy, and it’s so obvious and overdone that it just doesn’t need to be said.
Bill Viola isn’t a bad artist – he’s an influential video art pioneer, and many of his immersive installations are affecting pieces of art – but neither this work nor its companion piece bring anything to St. Paul’s. There’s just no reason to look at 'Mary' instead of being enthralled by the rest of this stunning building. This is a gorgeous cathedral filled with glorious art. But Viola’s work here is almost worse than pointless. I think it’s turned me into a Satanist.