Flowers and Fruits, after Pierre Auguste Renoir (Series from Pictures of Magazines 2)
Year: 2013
Medium: digital C-print
Dimensions: 123.4 x 101.6 cm (39 3/8 x 4 x 11 7/8 in.)
Acquired from nca | nichido contemporary art, 2022
“Pictures of Magazines” is a series of photographs of collages made from magazine cutouts. Muniz takes masterpieces from the history of painting as motifs and magnificently reproduces their chromatic and tactile characteristics. This work is a treatment of Renoir still life painting from 1889. Renoir painted numerous still life paintings, and this particular work features fiery red flowers (perhaps gladioli) arranged in an elegant blue ceramic vase. Fresh fruits are set on a white cloth, and brushstrokes of a somewhat Impressionistic style can be seen in the subdued green background. It is from the 1880s that Renoir started to move away from Impressionism and shift toward a Neoclassical style. In this work, Muniz may have deliberately chosen as his subject matter a painting from the transitional period that led to the unique style of Renoir’s final years. The subtle touch found in Renoir’s paintings from this period, neither his distinctive hazy brushwork nor the colorful expression of the Impressionist style, is captured with extraordinary skill in collage. When viewed up close, the humorous approach to collage—freely using photographic material that is completely unexpected in the context of the work’s overall atmosphere—gives a strong sense of the mischievous perfection typical of Muniz.
