Robert Wilson Video Portraits

While museums around the world are shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Apollo’s usual weekly pick of exhibition openings will be replaced by a selection of digital initiatives providing virtual access to art and culture.

Robert Wilson, the artist and theatre director, made his first set of ‘video portraits’ in the 1970s: sitters included the Surrealist writer Louis Aragon, the museum director Pontus Hultén, and Hélène Rochas (of Rochas fashion house). In 2004 he returned to the idea during a residency with the now-defunct VOOM HD Networks. The resulting high-definition ‘VOOM Portraits’ depict celebrities like Brad Pitt and Isabella Rossellini in suitably theatrical mises-en-scènes, along with less familiar figures – such as a black panther and a snowy owl. Broadcasting from isolation in Berlin, Wilson has now made a selection of these portraits available online for the first time (five in April and a further five in May, with more to come). View them on the artist’s website.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here

Installation view of Robert Wilson’s Ivory: Blank Panther video portrait. Photo: © Sergio Tenderini 2017