The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Still Life after Morandi (from Pictures of Magazines)

Still Life after Morandi (from Pictures of Magazines)

2004
(American, b. 1961)
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.)
© Vik Muniz / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Location: not on view

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.
  • Lago, Pedro Corrêa do. Vik Muniz: Catalogue Raisonné, 1987-2015: Everything So Far = Tudo Até Agora. [Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]: Capivara, 2015. Reproduced: Vol. 2, P. 524
  • {{cite web|title=Still Life after Morandi (from Pictures of Magazines)|url=false|author=Vik Muniz|year=2004|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2004.68