Stevie Wonder

The Sculptural Photography of Vik Muniz

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Detail of Gente Indo, 2021, seen in full further below, just to the right of the middle.

Brazilian Artist Vik Muniz is like the weather. The next time you look, his work will be completely different. A seemingly endless font of creativity, he continually invents new techniques with which to create, and has since he began creating Art in 1987. This fact alone is enough to put him on the list of important Contemporary Artists. His massive 16 1/2 pound, two-volume Catalogue Raisonne shows the Artist creating entire bodies of work in materials as diverse, and as far from the Art-world norm, as chocolate sauce, or ketchup, or jelly, in true Duchampian fashion. However, Mr. Muniz is so prolific his C.R. is already 6 years out of date! A look through it does reveal that the Artist’s process is to invent a technique, create an entire body of work with it, then invent another completely different technique, most likely in completely different materials, and create another body of Art using it. Rinse and repeat, over and over and over, for 35 yers now. Through it all, Photography remains central to his oeuvre. Originally a Sculptor, Mr. Muniz Photographs most of his works, those which are too delicate or ephemeral for display. Along with the extreme creativity in their creation, the other remarkable common thread that runs though his oeuvre is his work is often visually stunning and as a whole, in spite of the variety 0f techniques used, somehow manages to coalesce into one of the most unique bodies of work created since the mid-1980s.

Gente Indo, 2021, Dyptich, Archival inkjet print, 158 1/2 by 57 1/2 inches, One of a kind. Click any Photo for full size.

Needless to say, I had no idea what I was in for this time when I ventured through the doors of Sikkema Jenkins on February 17th, as Mr. Muniz returned with his latest work in a show titled Scraps, that runs through April 9th. His last show, Museum of Ashes, in late 2019, which I wrote about here, included two themes and two equally stunning bodies of work, including one made of its own ashes.

Oklahoma, 2020, Archival inkjet print, 50 1/2 by 71 inches, One of a kind. Good luck trying to count how many pieces make up this amazing recreation, from a media image, of this horrific event.

Detail of the right side seen from an angle.

This time, there is one theme and one body of work on view all sharing a complex process of creation. I’ll let the press release explain- “Muniz’s newest body of work, entitled Scraps, developed from the use of textures in his previous Surfaces series and his interest in mosaic compositions. He begins his collage process by sourcing painted elements from his studio and assembling them into an abstracted mosaic, which is then photographed, printed, and cut up; the cut pieces are arranged and layered to form the new, final photographic image. The physical element of painting is thus subtracted from resulting art object but is evoked visually through the cut prints. These multiple levels of dimensionality effect a dynamic sense of composition, and a sublime tension between part and whole.” I was told that the end piece of Art replicates an original Photo that either he had taken himself, or sourced from the media.

Jakarta, 2021, Archival inkjet print, One of a kind. In this Photo, it looks like a Photo. Standing in front of it, due to all the layers and pieces it’s made up of, it has a depth no 2D Photo can capture, a bit like Sculpture, that comes closer than a Photo does of what it must have felt like to stand there.

In Scraps, his subjects range from the mundane (Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, 2021, below) to the monumental (Oklahoma, 2020, recreating the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing), a number of cityscapes and large crowd scenes, and a stunning over-life sized portrait. I can’t begin to imagine how many individual pieces are in each work, or how long it took to make one. Unlike some of his pieces, the work in Scraps, though infinitely complex and one-of-a-kind, are Photo based and so are stable enough to display. They are mounted in case-like frames that allow three dimensional space for the multiple layers attached to the paper. Each one may be pondered from a distance, or studied in detail as close as one would care to for a different experience, like the work of Chuck Close.

Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, 2021

Scraps also wonderfully combines Painting and Photography in a new way. As seen in the detail from Gas Station Sink, New Jersey, the cut up pieces of Photos that went into this are of Paintings from Mr. Muniz’s studio.

“He begins his collage process by sourcing painted elements from his studio and assembling them into an abstracted mosaic, which is then photographed, printed, and cut up; the cut pieces are arranged and layered to form the new, final photographic image. The physical element of painting is thus subtracted from resulting art object but is evoked visually through the cut prints. These multiple levels of dimensionality effect a dynamic sense of composition, and a sublime tension between part and whole1.”

Detail.

The remarkable thing for me about this technique, and many of his prior inventions, is their way of reinventing the world- everything looks new again, and in Scraps he proceeds to walk us around that world through these new eyes.

Gavea (for Jorge Hue), 2021, Archival inkjet print, One of a kind.

Detail. Here, as in every part of every piece, if you stand to the side, you can see the layering, with, apparently, the same image in each layer. The effect is different from the Cubism of Picasso & Braque, but is still multi-dimensional.

I met Vik Muniz at his 2019 show and spoke with him again at the opening of Scraps. I commented that there was a new kind of cubism going on in this work and he replied that people had been talking about cubism in his work in another recent show.

Vik Muniz discusses Nameless (Woman with Turban) after Alberto Henschel, 2020, Archival inkjet print, 90 by 59 inches, One of a kind. Mr. Muniz was saying how this woman is ubiquitous in Brazil.

What I was referring to was the intriguing layering that is seen in every work on display. Not apparent in pictures of them, which flatten the third dimension, as you stand in front of them, the multi-dimensionality is immediately apparent. It draws you closer and almost forces you to look again from an angle. As for a “new type of cubism,” unlike most work that hangs on a wall, every piece in Scraps has layers that protrude from the surface, or are layered on top of each other giving each part of the piece more or less depth. Moving slightly to the side, back and forth, allows the viewer to look behind the upper most layer(s). There he or she will find something fascinating. Each layer is identical. The effect, up close or at a distance, is sculptural, something I also mentioned to Mr. Muniz. “Sculptural” work that is labelled “Archival inkjet prrints,” that are “One of a kind.” Seeing them for first time I thought their effect akin to a kind of “static cubism,” since there is no sense of movement as there is in Picasso’s cubism, because each underlying piece being identical to the one above, shares the same perspective.

Boy, 2021, Archival inkjet print, 37 by 31 inches. One of a kind. I was told this piece is based oa Photo of Mr. Muniz at age 4.

Vik Muniz has had a long and successful and accomplished career, and is quite well-known, though he is only in mid-career. Still, it seems to me that his is the kind of work that almost any Art lover could take a shine to. I could see Via Muniz becoming an “Art superstar” very easily. Perhaps the only thing holding his work back from a very large level of popularity is that it really needs to be seen in person to appreciate. A large traveling U.S. mid-career retrospective might do the trick. It’s time. 

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “The Secret Life of Plants” by Stevie Wonder from Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants, 1979.

BookMarks-
If you choose to buy from a link below, I will receive a small commission, with my thanks. There are no such links in the body of the piece, above.

Gramacho, 2021, 50 1/2 by 70 1/2 inches, One of a kind. A work based on the Documentary, Waste Land, 2010, which Vik Muniz starred in.

Perhaps the best introduction to Vik Muniz is in the award winning documentary Documentary, Waste Land, 2010, which he starred in. It’s a look at the garbage sifters outside of Rio de Janeiro as Mr. Muniz creates portraits of them and learns about their lives. It’s available to stream or on DVD.

Vik Muniz: Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer, Aperture-The best overview I’ve seen on Mr. Muniz and his Art to 2005. Numerous illustrations, though not many full page images. Still, you get a lot of fascinating information about the creation of the Artist’s amazingly innovative techniques that other books don’t have. Copies of this out of print book trade for very reasonable prices (around $10).

Vik Muniz has released at two Catalogue Raisonnes that I know of, and a third book that calls itself “Incomplete.” Box Vik Muniz: Catalogue Raisonne 1985-2015  is the most current, complete, look at his output. It’s a beautifully produced, huge 16 1/2 pound, two-volumes in a slipcase, set, with countless large Photos of all his work to 2015. It’s a constant treat for the eye. I asked Vik about the fact that it is now 6 years old (published in 2016) and if he planned another one. He said that he was considering doing a Catalogue Raisonne online. So, this may be the last CR in book form. Note- It’s listed as being in Portuguese. The English set is titled Vik Muniz Catalogue Raisonne 1987-2015: Everything So Far (ISBN 978-8589063579). I’d recommend checking with the seller on the language before buying.

The earlier Catalogue Raisonne, Vik Muniz: Obra Complete 1987-2009, is beautiful and only one, large volume, but it only goes to 2009 and is in Portuguese only. Then there is Vik Muniz: Obra Incompleta/Incomplete Works, published in 2004, which is in both English & Portuguese and was published to accompany a retrospective, is also very well done and contains a very well chosen selection of his early work.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. Scraps, Press release. ↩

To- Whoever Owned This Book Before Me

This site is Free & Ad-Free! If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing. You can also support it by buying Art & books! Details at the end. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

I don’t know who you are, but this Post is for you.

“This book” is an out of print exhibition catalog from the Stuart Davis show at The Metropolitan Museum in 1991. Another of the shows I missed and will forever be sorry I did. Thank goodness it lived on in this superb catalog. Show catalogs are an interesting thing. Widely available while the show is on, they soon go out of print and then become sought after by Artists, specialists and die-hard fans as time passes.  Though The Met said they were going to make all their older publications available as .pdf files online, some, like this one, have been skipped no doubt because it was co-published by a big commercial publishing house, who has a say in that, in this case Abrams.

12 years ago I bought a used paperback copy of it at the now defunct Academy Books and had worn it out. I’ve had my eye out for another copy, one in good condition at a reasonable price for a while. I need it now because I’m in the middle of a Post on the “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” Show at the new Whitney Museum. My go-to (often) bookstore, The Strand, had one recently, but it wasn’t much better than the one I had, so I passed. A few days later, it was gone. So, I was driven to look online, and finally found this copy.

The Book. The catalog for The Met's 1991 Stuart Davis show, long out of print. Notice the cover Art.

The Book. The catalog for The Met’s 1991 Stuart Davis show, long out of print. Notice the cover Art.

I bought it online from a bookstore. When it arrived, unlike some of my recent experiences buying books online, I found it to be in better condition than I had hoped. People seem to want to upsell the condition of books, which is so shortsighted. Most buyers are going to notice an obvious flaw in something so why try and get over on someone and have it sent back to you and probably get some, deservedly, bad feedback in the process? To help keep it this way, I decided to put a book jacket on it. I’ve been looking through it, but I hadn’t looked inside the back cover. When I removed the dust jacket to wrap it, I did. I found Stuart Davis, himself, looking out at me from a 1912 Self Portrait he painted, apparently in New York, given the background, while he was living in Hoboken, NJ, at age 20. It was in an archival envelope. I opened it up to discover it was the first page of an article about Davis and the 1991 Met Show, carefully removed from an unknown magazine (circa 1991-2) and placed in this envelope to protect it, and so it wouldn’t discolor the book.

Stuart Davis, in his 1912 Self Portrait, looks out at us, 104 years later.

Haunting our City. Stuart Davis, age 20, in his 1912 Self Portrait (with NYC’s old Elevated Subway in the background) looks out at us, 104 years later, from inside the back cover. The original painting is here.

On the back of the last page of the article, someone had cut out and carefully taped the bibliography for the article. Impressive!

DSC00537PNH

This was something similar to what I’ve done for many years, myself. If you have eclectic taste and/or like Artists or Musicians that aren’t very popular it may be a long time before you find something in print about them. When I did? I’d read it over a few times, then cut it out and save it. I’d stick it inside a book about them (if there was one), inside a record jacket, or later, a CD jewel case.

I buy used books often, since many books I’m interested in are now out of print. Sometimes, the unpleasant aroma of old cigarette smoke hits you, making you wonder if that finally led to this book being here. They don’t make the cut. Sometimes, they come with a previous owner’s name written inside. I usually don’t like anything written in a book. But this one time? I wish the owner had written their name in it.

One day all too soon, physical Art Books will be a thing of the past, as soon as image quality in eBooks catches up with their printed counterpart in a reasonable file size. That might be a while yet. For me? It would be a mixed blessing. Mostly? I have too many large books, as I’m often reminded, so freeing up some space would make a big difference in my life. Beyond that, though, there is something beautiful about a physical Art Book, something that hooked me since I bought my first one, on Rembrandt by Bob Haak as a teenager, and still does. I suspect they will then trade among collectors, like Lp’s do now. No one will ever open an eBook and have this happen to them.

Finding this today? Here was a kindred spirit- someone like me. Someone I’ll never know who feels about Stuart Davis’ work the way I do. Though he didn’t write his name in it, it was personalized in a non-destructive way. Making it one’s own, but not like tattooing it with writing. There’s no need for that in this case- I get it.

That same afternoon, I went back to to see “Stuart Davis: In Full Swing” yet again, as my work continues. I had an errand to do first, so I wound up walking over to the Whitney a different way than I usually do. As I neared the corner of 7th Avenue on West 13th Street, I was stopped in my tracks, when I saw this on the wall.

DSC_7025P2NH

“…it was here that he painted many of his most important works including…”

What? Wow!

I have lived in and around NYC almost all of my life, and been in this neighborhood countless times. Yet, I’d never known he lived here! Around the corner is the Village Vanguard, for my money the world’s greatest Jazz Club, where it occupies the same basement it has since 1935. Being a lifelong Jazz lover, I bet he spent quite a few evenings there, as I have, as well. The original Whitney Museum was a short walk away on 8th Street, when he lived here (from 1934-54), as the new one is now in a different direction.

Reading the plaque, I could still feel Stuart Davis’s “Self Portrait” from inside the back cover of the book looking at me. Inside in the lobby hung a large, beautifully framed Stuart Davis Poster. Impressive considering he died 52 years ago, and it’s 62 since he lived here. Looking at the building, it looks like thousands of other buildings in New York, and, probably, the rest of the world. I stood outside pondering it. It wasn’t like the old Bowery that reeked of cheap booze and romantic Artist’s loft studio spaces, the long time homes of Allen Ginsberg, John Cage and othes from the same period, Keith Haring, Joey Ramone, among others, after. It was a nice, modern, kinda faceless apartment building. Nothing about it said that one of the greatest American Artists who has yet lived lived here, except it’s smack-dab in the middle of The Village location.

Then, I continued on, completing the short walk to the Whitney. Inside the show, I lingered in front of “Rapt At Rappaport’s,” from 1952, in it’s interesting frame.

Davis' "Rapt At Rappaport's," 1952, on view at The Whitney, now in the Smithsonian

Look familiar? Davis’ REAL “Rapt At Rappaport’s,” 1952, now on view at The Whitney, from the collection of the Smithsonian.

Davis painted it in the building I had just walked past, as the plaque confirms by name! I never knew that. I’ve seen it before, but now? I’m seeing it anew. It doesn’t depict the neighborhood (Greenwich Village) per se, in fact, it’s an “homage” to “Rappaport’s Toy Bazar,” a store his parents used to take him to as a child many years earlier. The store used polka-dotted paper to wrap gifts, hence, the polka-dots in the upper right, and the work’s title is also a pun on “wrapped.” But, on a different level, now everything about this says “Greenwich Village in the 1950’s.” The child became a man, and that man was an Artist. It drips of the Jazz he heard all around as The Village headed into it’s Jazz & Beat Glory Days. Even the title (using “Rapt” in place of “Wrapped,” for the wrapping paper) is a “Jazz-pun,” as in raptly listening. In addition to being a “souvenir” of his childhood, it’s also a little reminder, a little piece, of that more recent time, and place, The Village- from his then home there on 13th & 7th.

It also happens to be the painting chosen to be the cover Art for my new/old book.

Is this all a bunch of strange coincidences, neatly “Rapt” together with a bow on top? Covering (“wrapping”) the Davis book and being startled to see him looking out at me unexpectedly, as the prior owner had left him, lovingly curated…then accidentally discovering (uncovering?) the very place he painted it’s cover Art… and finally, seeing the original painting shown on the book’s cover. Hmmm…It feels like someone is sending me a message.

Now? Someone else lives in that apartment. Someone else owns this book.

Still? Parts of both live on from before. Very good parts.

Thank you.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “You Can’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover,” written by Stevie Wonder, Sylvia Moy and Henry Cosby, and preformed by Bo Diddley.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.