Still Life after Morandi (from Pictures of Magazines) America, 21st century

Still Life after Morandi (from Pictures of Magazines)

2004

Vik Muniz

(American, b. 1961)

America, 21st century

chromogenic process color print

Image: 182.8 x 214.6 cm (71 15/16 x 84 1/2 in.); Framed: 190.5 x 222.2 cm (75 x 87 1/2 in.)

John L. Severance Fund 2004.68

Impression: 4

Location: not on view

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Description

Vik Muniz combines his skills as a painter, sculptor, draftsman, performance artist, and photographer to create exquisite visual objects that affect the way people view images. From his unlikely inventory of materials - chocolate syrup, ketchup, sugar, wire, sewing thread, dust - he constructs ephemeral works that range from masterpieces of art history to simulated cumulus clouds, Hollywood film stills to iconic photographs from popular culture. Still Life after Morandi is from the latest, critically acclaimed series in which Muniz explores unconventional modes of rendering and the mechanics of perception in this age of visual overload. From a photograph, he laboriously recreated a still-life painting by 20th-century master Giorgio Morandi by meticulously assembling a small collage (roughly 8 x 11-1/2 inches) of 1/4-inch disks punched from color magazines. He then photographed the trompe l’oeil object and made immense color prints from the resulting negative. In a mosaic, pointillist technique, Muniz skillfully rendered the soft light, the narrow band of subtle warm tones, and the textured surface associated with his easily identifiable, appropriated subject matter. Enticed by a seemingly familiar image, the viewer’s interest is sustained by the work’s visual beauty and perceptual ambiguity.