Viola Joke

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 10:12 PM Eastern on 3 May. See below.]

In my brief comments on The Tristan Project (well, OK, my comments on the happening's director, Peter Sellars, were something other than brief) I remarked that the few still images I'd seen from videographer Bill Viola's video contribution to the Project were irredeemably tacky. I've now seen more still images from that video, and realize that irredeemably tacky was not quite the right description. Unadulterated, unmitigated, pretentious kitsch would be the more accurate way to have put it; images more appropriate to slick, four-color wall calendars than to anything else; quasi-erotica with overweening pretensions to capital-A Art. Oh, and as should be needless to say, none of them have remotely to do with Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

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Update (10:12 PM Eastern on 3 May): And for confirmation, see this.