Bathing treats a classic theme of painting: women bathing. Gary Hill doesn't break with the pictorial origins of this subject. On the contrary, by use of pictorial effects and references to the conventions of the medium, he creates a game of connotation of the video image. An analogical-digital converter was used in producing this work.

The tape is structured by a comparative schema, which opposes analogical and digital sequences. Thirty-six pairs follow one after another. The first in each group is a recording in colour and in real time of the different stages of the woman's bathing, and of parts of her body. The second holds on the last image of the previous sequence or the first image of the following one.

The idea of painting is first introduced by the treatment of colour, on both sides of this dialectical opposition. The first sequence is different from a real recording because of changing the original colours. The solarisation process allows the attribution of different colours in relation to the intensity level of grey. The resulting areas of colour are shadows underlining the volume of the recorded body. The dominating whiteness of the first sequence corresponds to a lowering of grey values and of image depth. This dematerialises the body and underlines the immaterial nature of the video image. The shadows are in semi-tones, blues, pinks, mauves and pale yellow. In the second sequence the colours are saturated and the blacks are very deep. The volume of the body is given by areas where, for example, red, blue and green are in flat tints or juxtaposed, creating a pictorial effect. The body acquires a new density. Details fade, creating an abstract image where the subject of the bath and the woman disappear. From the first to the second sequence, the video image makes the transition from the illusion of three dimensions to a two-dimensional space that refers back to the conception of modern painting.

Holding the image refers to a fixed image. It is shown within the black frame of a television that recalls the frames of paintings, so it is the opposite of the full screen of the first sequence. The fixed shot and the framing are pictorial conventions, the antithesis of real time and movement in video recording. The camera has exposed a series of different parts of the body, framed in a way that recalls pictorial presentation: the portrait for example. From the twenty-third sequence the framing changes. The fragmentation of the body into parts without a context (an arm, a knee, etc.) breaks with the identification of the subject. In art history, this has more to do with photography than painting.

The dematerialization of the body by a densely coloured light can be achieved in the three media mentioned, but in Bathing it particularly recalls Pierre Bonnard's paintings from the 1930's and 1940's, notably Nu dans la baignoire (1937) and Nu de dos à la toilette (1934).

In this way, by his treatment of the body with colours, the two dimensions, the held image and the framing, Gary Hill creates an illusion of painting. Playing on the frontiers between media and plastic techniques also introduces reflection about perception and thought processes that allow us to recognise painting in the video.

Bathing illustrates one of the perspectives in which Nam June Paik has placed this medium since 1965: "Just as oil painting has been replaced by collage techniques, canvas has been replaced by the cathode ray tube." [1]

Thérèse Beyler

[1] Dany Bloch, "Nam June Paik et ses pianos à lumières", Art Press, Paris, numéro 23, décembre 1978, p. 8-9.