Página inicial

Arte em Circulação

 


julho 2021
Dom Seg Ter Qua Qui Sex Sab
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Pesquise em
arte em circulação:
Arquivos:
julho 2021
junho 2021
maio 2021
abril 2021
fevereiro 2021
dezembro 2020
novembro 2020
outubro 2020
setembro 2020
julho 2020
junho 2020
abril 2020
março 2020
fevereiro 2020
dezembro 2019
novembro 2019
outubro 2019
setembro 2019
agosto 2019
julho 2019
junho 2019
maio 2019
abril 2019
março 2019
fevereiro 2019
janeiro 2019
dezembro 2018
novembro 2018
outubro 2018
setembro 2018
agosto 2018
julho 2018
junho 2018
maio 2018
abril 2018
março 2018
fevereiro 2018
janeiro 2018
dezembro 2017
novembro 2017
outubro 2017
setembro 2017
agosto 2017
julho 2017
junho 2017
maio 2017
abril 2017
março 2017
fevereiro 2017
janeiro 2017
dezembro 2016
novembro 2016
outubro 2016
setembro 2016
agosto 2016
julho 2016
junho 2016
maio 2016
abril 2016
março 2016
fevereiro 2016
janeiro 2016
novembro 2015
outubro 2015
setembro 2015
agosto 2015
julho 2015
junho 2015
maio 2015
abril 2015
março 2015
fevereiro 2015
janeiro 2015
novembro 2014
outubro 2014
setembro 2014
agosto 2014
julho 2014
junho 2014
maio 2014
abril 2014
março 2014
fevereiro 2014
janeiro 2014
novembro 2013
outubro 2013
setembro 2013
agosto 2013
julho 2013
junho 2013
maio 2013
abril 2013
março 2013
fevereiro 2013
janeiro 2013
dezembro 2012
novembro 2012
outubro 2012
setembro 2012
agosto 2012
julho 2012
junho 2012
maio 2012
março 2012
fevereiro 2012
dezembro 2011
outubro 2011
setembro 2011
agosto 2011
julho 2011
junho 2011
maio 2011
abril 2011
janeiro 2011
dezembro 2010
novembro 2010
outubro 2010
setembro 2010
julho 2010
maio 2010
abril 2010
março 2010
dezembro 2009
novembro 2009
outubro 2009
setembro 2009
agosto 2009
julho 2009
junho 2009
maio 2009
abril 2009
março 2009
janeiro 2009
dezembro 2008
novembro 2008
setembro 2008
maio 2008
abril 2008
dezembro 2007
novembro 2007
outubro 2007
setembro 2007
agosto 2007
julho 2007
junho 2007
maio 2007
abril 2007
março 2007
fevereiro 2007
janeiro 2007
dezembro 2006
novembro 2006
setembro 2006
agosto 2006
julho 2006
maio 2006
abril 2006
março 2006
fevereiro 2006
janeiro 2006
dezembro 2005
novembro 2005
outubro 2005
setembro 2005
agosto 2005
julho 2005
junho 2005
maio 2005
abril 2005
março 2005
fevereiro 2005
novembro 2004
junho 2004
abril 2004
março 2004
fevereiro 2004
janeiro 2004
dezembro 2003
novembro 2003
outubro 2003
setembro 2003
agosto 2003
As últimas:
 

abril 9, 2010

Vik Muniz por Rafael Cardoso

Vik Muniz

Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba, Brazil

It is not unusual for artists in Brazil to claim they are better known internationally than locally. This not so subtle ploy occasionally succeeds in wresting attention from journalists cowed by fear of being the last to know. But, is such a contention even remotely plausible in this day and age, when information of most sorts is no more than a few clicks away? Case in point: Vik Muniz. As recently as 2003, when Muniz did a show at Paço Imperial, one of Rio de Janeiro’s premier venues for contemporary art, there were no crowds and no media hype, though he was already a major star in the artistic firmament, more likely to be seen at MoMA, New York, or the Venice Biennale than in his native São Paulo.

The fact of Muniz’s celebrity finally made its way home this past year, with a major retrospective starting out at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro, and travelling to the São Paulo Museum of Art, in 2009, currently showing in Curitiba and soon to be seen in Fortaleza. Vik Muniz is now big news in Brazil His picture is in the society columns, and his exhibitions are packed with the kind of public that usually can’t be bothered with contemporary art. As the ultimate token of recognition, his work has come to be disparaged by the better class of art critics, who make a point of pooh-poohing the present exhibition as tawdry media spectacle. Unfazed, the artist’s most recent offering is a 700-page encyclopaedia of his labours, succinctly titled Vik Muniz: Obra completa, 1987-2009.

A career retrospective and a catalogue raisonné at the ripe old age of 48? Are we getting a sense that Muniz has achieved all he set out to do? If so, what next? Shall we expect to watch him slip into an early retirement, dividing his time between a beachfront existence in Rio and so many worthy committee meetings throughout the art world? Or, alternatively, is the present taking of stock a plea from the artist to move beyond his celebrity status and look at the work? Is Muniz more than pictures of Mona Lisa in peanut-butter-and-jelly, or is it really just so much ado, After Warhol, the knowing title of the 1999 piece that made him famous? As Andy might have said, you can hardly blame an artist for making it big.

So, does the work hold up? The answer, upon visiting the current exhibition, is a diffident yes. First off, the variety and scope of Muniz’s oeuvre is impressive. Although most everyone has seen something or other, nothing online quite prepares you for the range of accomplishment presented in the 30-odd series of works contained in the show. These are several hundred photographic prints, mostly large, glossy and gorgeous: a cross-section of his work from the 1989 Best of Life series – consisting of magazine photos, roughly sketched from memory and re-photographed, grainy and out of focus – to the deceptively figurative Pictures of Garbage (2005-2009), representations composed out of scrap metal, meticulously arranged in larger-than-life compositions and photographed from on high. Time and again, the fastidious procedure of forging pictures of things – mostly not pictorial in themselves, such as sugar, caviar, pigment, toys, rubbish, plants – made to look like what they are not: bits of visual information gleaned from the repertoire of popular culture or the history of art. The sheer virtuosity of his achievement as a maker of images is daunting; and, certainly, it is the eye-pleasing quality of the licked picture surface that keeps the general public streaming in and breathlessly whispering to one another: now, this is art.

If any substantive critique is to be made of Muniz as an artist, it must necessarily come to terms with his engagement with visual delight. Of course, this is precisely the issue he has sought to address in his work, with striking single-mindedness. How do images breach the gap between representation and substance? Why do we continue to suspend disbelief? The series Pictures of Magazines (2003) consists of celebrity portraits puzzled together from paper dots punched out of the very periodicals that showcase celebrities. From a distance, they are Lula or Pelé or a self-portrait of the artist; up close, they are a jumble of chromatic confetti that inevitably evokes the colour separation of offset printing. A photograph of a Ruysdael landscape laid out in thousands of yards of thread is neither the landscape itself nor a mere bunch of thread, much less is it an Old Master painting. Yet, 20,000 Yards (The Castle at Bentheim) (1999) partakes of all of these, and more. Echoes of Magritte’s treachery of images, updated for these latter days of digital manipulation.

To his credit, Muniz continues to define himself primarily as a photographer. Least of all, however, can his complicated visual constructions be written off as simple photographs. If nothing else, the work is a continual challenge to the facile manner in which photography is still widely perceived as a record of visual fact. Pretty obvious stuff, some might say, but it must be remembered that his efforts predate the current flood of Photoshop, taking their early cue from Warhol’s accident scenes. To be caught looking, and made to think about what that means, may still be the best antidote to the ‘spectacularization’ of society which, 40 years on from Debord, has become the sea in which we swim. Anyone foolish enough to look at Muniz’s photograph of a photograph of a crowd of gawking spectators, rendered in chocolate syrup, and still want to take a picture should definitely have their camera taken away.

Posted by Fábio Tremonte at 9:14 PM