BILL VIOLA WINS CATALONIA INTERNATIONAL PRIZE

Video artist Bill Viola was announced yesterday as the recipient of the twenty-first Catalonia International Prize for the creation of “artistic and technical, personal, and spiritual work,” according to the Latin American Herald Tribune. The prize is awarded annually by the Catalan regional government “to a person whose creative work has made a significant contribution to the development of cultural, scientific, or human values anywhere in the world.” The panel of judges said that “Viola is not only the inventor of video art, but he is also a visionary who said that electronic technology is also a road toward intimacy, toward spirituality.” Viola, fifty-eight, began using video for artistic purposes, along with other artists, in the mid-1960s and developed the new medium of expression at the beginning of the ’70s.

The prize, which comes with a cash award of about $136,000 and a sculpture by Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies, will be presented to Viola in person in Barcelona on June 30. Past recipients of the honor include Aung San Suu Kyi, Vaclav Havel, Harold Bloom, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Mstislav Rostropovich.