'Robert Wilson Video Portraits'

Brad Pitt stands in the rain, clad in nothing but a pair of white boxers, white socks, and his washboard abs. In his right hand is a gun, and when the rain stops, he slowly raises the weapon to eye level and points it toward the viewer, taking aim. No, this isn't a trailer for Pitt's next celluloid exploit or, alternatively, some high-priced cologne ad. Rather, it's a video portrait by artist Robert Wilson, one of more than 60 he's created of assorted actors, writers, artists, athletes, socialites, and animals in recent years. In conjunction with its gala this weekend (at which Wilson will be honored), the Blanton Museum of Art will exhibit five of the portraits for the next two weeks.

The nearly life-sized images – they're displayed on 62-by-40-inch monitors – are pretty much contemporary versions of classical portraiture, with their subjects posed in a heightened fashion and so little movement in their handful of minutes – typically two to 10 – as to qualify almost as still lifes. And in that minimalistic motion, as in the masterful compositions, extravagantly theatrical settings, exquisitely subtle lighting, and protracted approach to time, these portraits encapsulate in miniature all the qualities that have made Wilson such an acclaimed creator. They transport you to some other place, strange on some levels and perhaps unreal, but compelling, where you have all the time in the world to absorb every detail. Take, for example, Alexis Broschek, 11-year-old son of German princess Ingeborg von Schleiswig-Holstein, who stands before a red curtain wearing a navy-blue suit and an electric-lime wolf mask. Over the course of five minutes, he slowly removes it and puts it on again, as an unseen Wilson creakily repeats the phrase, "There are these electric wheels." Or Princess Caroline of Monaco, posed in the manner of John Singer Sargent's Madame X seen from behind, but with the black-and-white cinematography, her silhouetted figure, and the moody Bernard Herrmann score (lifted from the soundtrack to Vertigo) suggesting a scene from some lost Hitchcock thriller starring her mother, Grace Kelly. For seven minutes, you can lose yourself in the delicately shifting shadows, just as you can in the inky darkness that envelops the black panther gazing impassively our way as a pianist plinks out the notes of "Is That All There Is?" so slowly that the tune is almost unrecognizable and as Wilson recites text about Hamlet and Ophelia by Heiner Müller. Let go of time, and Wilson's video portraits can yield rich rewards. Just don't let time get away from you: They're here only through Feb. 16!

"Robert Wilson Video Portraits" will be exhibited Feb. 1-16 at the Blanton Museum of Art, MLK at Congress. For more information, visit www.blantonmuseum.org.