Vik Muniz - Latin America New York Monday, November 24, 2014 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Xippas, Paris
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Paris, Galerie Xippas, After Warhol, 20 November, 1999 - 29 January, 2000
    Rome, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma, Vik Muniz, 27 September, 2003 - 6 January, 2004 (another example exhibited)

  • Literature

    P. Corrêa do Lago, Vik Muniz: Complete Works, 1987 – 2009: Catalogue Raisonné, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, p.328 (illustrated)
    After Warhol, exh. cat., Galerie Xippas, Paris, 2000, p.36-37 (illustrated)
    Vik Muniz, exh. cat., Museo d'Arte Contemporaneo Roma, Rome, 2003, p.112-113 (illustrated)
    M.dos Anjos, J.Elkins and S.Rice, Obra incompleta / Incomplete Work, Rio de Janeiro: The National Public Library, 2004, p. 70-71 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    “ Process enters my work as a form of narrative. When people look at one of my pictures, I don’t want them to actually see something represented. I prefer for them to see how something gets to represent something else." Vik Muniz

    A self-described “student of media,” there is virtually no medium that Vik Muniz has not explored to its most extensive limits. From Pictures of Chocolate to Pictures of Diamonds, Muniz is a master at blending a wide array of unlikely materials with iconic images borrowed from art history and popular culture. His vision of the reaches and possibilities of art is immense, and by linking his artistic past with our contemporary present, he has created his own personal visual language. In doing so, he invites us to reflect on the inexhaustibility and regenerative potential of the creative image.

    In his After Warhol series, Muniz invokes the iconic images that Andy Warhol engraved into the global canon of contemporary art. In the present lot, Muniz engages specifically with Warhol’s portrait series of Jackie Kennedy from the 1960s. Building on Warhol’s appropriation of popular images and his commentary on their pervasive reproduction, Muniz actively joins in a discussion that has been ongoing since the very invention of photography: How does the widespread use of reproducible images affect our ability to intimately interact with their subjects? Have the effects of technology and photography in popular culture made us immune to an image’s aesthetic power? Art theory has long been rife with debates about the impossibility of initiating a powerful visual connection with an audience desensitized to imagery. As illustrated by his After Warhol series, Muniz firmly disagrees. He argues that the acts of looking and interpreting what we see are at the forefront of what makes us human. “Looking” is among the most instinctive and natural of all human actions.

    The present lot thus exemplifies the artist’s foray into the science of visual observation and its creative manifestations. Muniz adds a layer of art historical engagement by recreating these historic portraits out of ketchup — a mundane substance that has permeated our everyday life, which Andy Warhol himself referenced in paintings and sculpture. Muniz’s use of the medium results in a collaborative process between art history, the artwork itself and its audience. The present lot is a dynamic center of exchanges, and Muniz’s lesson is the ultimate reversal: the true subject of these portraits may not be Jackie Kennedy, but rather the perceptive interplay between images and viewers.

13

Jackie (Polyptich) (after Warhol)

1999
8 c-prints
each image 34 x 26 3/4 in. (86.4 x 67.9 cm.)
each frame 36 1/2 x 29 1/4 in. (92.7 x 74.3 cm.)

This work is number 1 from an edition of 3 plus 3 artist's proofs. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Estimate
$150,000 - 250,000 

Contact Specialist
Laura González
Director of Latin American Art
New York
+1 212 940 1216

Latin America

New York Auction 24 November 2014 2pm