Tony Smith, Die (Pictures of Dust)
For the series entitled Pictures of Dust, Muniz used installation photographs of large-scale Minimalist and Post-Minimalist sculpture from the files of the Whitney Museum of American Art as his inspiration. He then collected bags of dust from the museum's vacuum cleaners, from which he painstakingly copied his source material. The result is a perceptual hall of mirrors-images of drawings in dust from photographs depicting tons of geometric sculpture. Muniz's conceptual gesture brilliantly enfolds a single stylistic transition from the history of art-from Minimalism's primary structures and industrial solidity to the scattered "anti-form" fragility of what followed-into his own dance with dust, suggesting the ultimate ephemerality of all movements. In its largest sense, the works also demonstrate the interplay between order and chaos that is at the heart of not only what Muniz depicts but his own art as well.
Artwork Details
- Title: Tony Smith, Die (Pictures of Dust)
- Artist: Vik Muniz (Brazilian, born Sao Paulo, 1961)
- Date: 2000
- Medium: Silver dye bleach print
- Dimensions: Image: 127 x 160 cm (50 x 63 in.)
Frame: 129.5 x 162.6 cm (51 x 64 in.) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Gift of Neil C. S. Hirsch, in memory of Myra Seiden Hirsch, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.521
- Rights and Reproduction: © Vik Muniz
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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