Vik Muniz - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale New York Tuesday, November 10, 2015 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Xippas, Paris

  • Literature

    Vik Muniz: After Warhol, exh. cat., Galerie Xippas, Paris, November 20, 1999 - January 29, 2000, (illustrated)
    V. Muniz and P. Corrêa do Lago, Vik Muniz: Complete Works, 1987-2009: Catalogue Raisonné, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, p. 309 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “To copy is to extend the symbolic value of an image by suffusing it with new technology, thus updating its rhetorical approach. Copying has been an extensive part of my work as an artist, not only because of the constant feeling of debt I owe to artists before me, but also because of my firm belief in the nonrevolutionary pattern of creativity.” Vik Muniz, 2005

    Vik Muniz “paints” with a variety of unorthodox materials including chocolate syrup, diamonds, toy soldiers, trash and sugar to name a few, and meticulously arranges them into iconic images. These large compositions are then photographed, with the resulting print serving as the only record of the artist’s painstaking process.

    Muniz first began making works using diamonds after Lowell, a well-known diamond dealer in New York, offered to loan him the stones in exchange for artwork. In depicting Marilyn Monroe, the medium itself serves as ultimate symbol of Hollywood glamour and the fetishizing of celebrity and wealth. The use of dust from diamonds suggests the fragility of the subject - the tragic life of Monroe - as well as the impermanence of the composition itself.

    Much of Muniz’s work stems from an interest in perception; how and why an image is realistic or recognizable. This full suite of Marilyn Monroe (from Pictures of Diamond Dust) depicting the Hollywood icon in various gradations of black, white and grey, is no doubt a reference to Andy Warhol's Marilyn screenprints and paintings of the 1960s. Muniz is not only paying homage to Warhol, but also re-examining these ideas over four decades later.

Ο◆204

Marilyn Monroe (from Pictures of Diamond Dust)

2003
the complete set of four chromogenic prints
(i) Black Marilyn
(ii) Reversal Grey Marilyn
(iii) Reversal Black Marilyn
(iv) Grey Marilyn

each 55 x 49 in. (139.7 x 124.5 cm)
overall 60 x 51 1/8 x 2 in. (152.4 x 129.9 x 5.1 cm)

Each signed and dated "Vik Muniz 2003" on a gallery label affixed to the reverse. This work is artist's proof 1 from an edition of 5 plus 3 artist's proofs.

Estimate
$200,000 - 300,000 

Sold for $245,000

Contact Specialist
John McCord
Head Day Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1261

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

New York Auction 10 November 2015 11am