Vik Muniz:

“A Twisted Kind of Realist”

“Some early man threw his spear at a bison only to discover that it

wasn’t a bison but a termite mound that carried an uncanny resemblance to a bison. He was

“fooled” by nature. He went back to the tribe and told the

other hunters about the bison. Soon they were throwing their spears at the termite mound while he crouched behind the

bushes laughing. That was the first artist.”

– Vik Muniz

Two Ways of Life,O.G. Rejlander, 1858

Early Photography

Double Mona Lisa after Warhol, Vik Muniz, 1999

PB&J Mona Lisa

0: Biography

The Artist’s Studio

1: Artistic Experimentation / Works and Processes

Clown Skull, from Relics

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917

Faux Readymades

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917

Faux Readym

Ashanti Joystick,from Relics

Tug of War, 1989Tug of War

Tug of War, 1989

“collapse each into the other's reality in order to subvert ultimately their respective reality-

claims”

Tug of War

I Am What I Read (Entertainment Center), 1989

I Am What I Read

Tug of War, 1989Tug of War

Brancusi

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“…To photograph an object is to transform it

into a mental substance…”

Veronica (from Individuals Series),Vik Muniz, 1992-93

Individuals Series

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Man Ray, Jean Cocteau Creating a Self-Portrait

Out of Wire, 1926Jean Cocteau

Pictures of Wire

Pictures of Wire

Pictures of Thread

Wanderer Above the Sea of Ashes,After Caspar David Friedrich, 1999

Wanderer Above the Sea of Ashes

Pillows 1999

Beggars & Pillows

Pillows 1999

Pillows 1999

Piss Christ, Andres Serrano, 1989

Oxidation, Andy Warhol, 1978

Madonna and Child, Andres Serrano, 1989

Warhol / Serrano

Piss Christ, Andres Serrano, 1989

Oxidation, Andy Warhol, 1978

“Serrano’s photographs were not piss,

they were yellow… Warhol, on the other hand, showed the real thing and

made an abstraction out of it…

I want to work with both notions simultaneously without

relying too much on outside explanations…”

In my work, I am not that interested in the nature of the material that I photograph as much as in

the way the viewer recognizes the material in the photograph. Serrano’s

work relies on the viewers’ awareness of information about the subject; Warhol, on

information about the process.

Warhol / Serrano Quote

Magazines, Light Filters, Ink

Peter Jennings(Light Filters)

Edson, from(Pictures of Magazines) Yogi Berra,

(Pictures of Ink)

Light Filters

Peter Jennings(Light Filters)

Yogi Berra,(Pictures of Ink), 2000Pictures of Ink

PicturesOfMagazines

Edson, from“Pictures of Magazines,” 2003

The Treachery of Images,Rene Magritte, 1928-29

Peter Jennings (Light Filters), 1999

Treachery of Images

“Vaccine” Photos

Pictures of Chocolate

…introduces us to

unconscious optics as does

psychoanalysis to

unconscious impulses

Rosharch (After Warhol),from “Pictures of Chocolate” 1999

Pictures of Chocolate

Action Photo, after Hans Namuth, 1997,Pictures of Chocolate Series

Toy Soldier from Monads Series, 2003

“Each monad is a distinct

individual possessing its own kind or degree of

consciousness and existence”

Monads

Toy Soldier from Monads Series, 2003

Unidentified photographer, Portrait of Pvt. Edwin Francis Jemison, 2nd Louisiana Regiment C.S.A., ca. 1860-62

Monads Soldier

The Cottingley Fairies, After Elsie Wright, Rebus Series, 2004

Rebus Fairies

Alice Liddell (after Lewis Carroll), 2004

Alice Liddell dressed up as a beggar-maid, Charles

Dodgson 1858

Rebus

Alice

Liddell

Self-Portrait (I Am Too Sad To Tell You, After Bas Jan Ader), (Rebus) 2003

Rebus Self Portrait

I’m Too Sad To Tell YouRebus Self-Portrait

I’m Too Sad To Tell You

Rebus Self-Portrait

“Pictures mean

different things at

different

distances”

Self-Portrait (I Am Too Sad To Tell You, After Bas Van Ader), (Rebus) 2003

Rebus Self

Portrait

I Am Too Sad To Tell You, Bas Jan Ader, 1970

Self-Portrait (I Am Too Sad To Tell You, After Bas Jan Ader), 2003

(Rebus Series)

Muniz / Ader

“Children for me are very important. They are in that class of

people who understand power, like magicians and con men. We are

born with everything. But I think we forget.”

-- Vik Muniz

…I believe the metaphor of the Peaceable Kingdom has

everything to do with our lost childhood power of imaginative naming and our blissful ignorance of ourselves as an image… This curse has resulted in a cultural lifetime of self-control, self-censorship, and

estrangement from unadulterated wonder…”

-- Mark Alice Durant

“Peaceable Kingdom”

Expulsion From Paradise,Brancacci Chapel,Masaccio, c. 1426

Brancacci

Rebus / Brancacci

Other works

Starry Night, from “The Back of Paintings,” 2002

Shadowgrams

Aftermath series

Pictures of Junk

Memory Renderings

Earthworks /“Earthworks”

Castle on a Grain of Sand,2005

A Creative Time Project(YAY LEENIE)

Cloud Cloud

Brushstroke,from Pictures of Chocolate

“The painter constructs, the photographer

discloses”

– Susan Sontag, “Heroism of vision”

End