Vik Muniz Memory Rendering of John John (Vik Muniz The Best of Life):
'John John' is a selection from Vik Muniz's The Best of LIFE series from 1989. Muniz's Best of Life series marked a seminal point in Muniz’s career - one that was defined by his fascination with the concept of the “image within”—the image that people hold in their memories—a motif that Muniz has continued to explore throughout his career.
Silver gelatin print. 1989.
11 x 14 inches (including boarders).
Some minor soiling marks, signs of handling and creasing to upper right corner; in otherwise good overall vintage condition.
Unsigned proof aside from the main edition of 10.
Provenance: acquired directly from Fernando Natalici- master printer who worked with Muniz on the execution of this series.
Includes a signed letter of provenance from the above.
Related auction history:
Phillips Photographs New York, 2017.
Collections:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Vik Muniz The Best of Life: a history:
"Muniz, new to the United States in 1983, purchased the book The Best of LIFE at a garage sale in Chicago. It became a source of comfort and connection to his new surroundings. According to the artist, “The Best of LIFE was the only ‘family’ reference I had at the time. I learned to love those images. The Margaret Bourke-Whites, the Alfred Eisenstaedts - the feeling of sharing a picture, the sensations that two or more people know the same thing, live the same moment.” The concept that other people, even strangers, could all connect to the familiarity of these ‘known’ images was not only a comfort, but increasingly intriguing to Muniz.
After losing the beloved book in 1987 Muniz began to try and recall the images from his memory, writing and drawing his recollections of them. During these recreations the actual images were never referenced and he was able to truly delve into the concept of the “image within” finding that everyone remembered the images differently, even if by only subtle differences. “I discovered that people store images in radically different ways: their descriptions had a completely different structure than mine. The visual world is like a crossword puzzle: we all have the same puzzle but each of us solves it differently.”
After working on the drawings for two years Muniz felt that his memory renderings were still not fully realized in their current state. In turn, he photographed the drawings and then gently manipulated the photos by softening their appearance. To further synthesize the series, he printed the photographs with a halftone screen that many publications use in printing. By bringing his memories of the iconic images back to their original state—photographs printed in halftone—viewers are able to recognize the images while simultaneously knowing they are more ‘pictures of thought’ than the actual photos themselves, bringing into question the veracity of our own memories of the images and events.
As Muniz stated, “What I did with The Best of LIFE series was to make these very subjective, transparent images more objective and opaque by adding more interpretive layers.” This is a seminal series for the artist perfectly articulating his desires to not only explore his own fascination with visual memory, but to connect to all who experience the images." (Source: Phillips)
Artist bio:
Mixed-media artist Vik Muniz recreates historical artworks with unusual materials, then photographs the results. He’s previously used chocolate, sugar, trash, and toys to appropriate and reinterpret the work of artists ranging from Andy Warhol and Mark Rothko to Caravaggio and Jacques-Louis David. Muniz has exhibited in New York, London, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo, among other cities. His work belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. In addition to his mixed-media works, Muniz has also starred in )Waste Land_ (2010)—an Oscar-nominated film about garbage pickers at a Brazilian landfill—and led a number of social justice–oriented projects that focus on education and development in his native Brazil. In 2001, the artist represented the country at the Venice Biennale.
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