291 has featured unusual portrait commissions before—namely, MoMA’s offer to sell you your genetic portrait for $550. Now the ever-entertaining (and rather brilliant) Vik Muniz is offering something different: your portrait with a loved one in chocolate for $110,000.
Sound like a lot of money? Well, work by Muniz generally sells for quite a lot. A recent print of nine Jackie Kennedy Onassis portraits in chocolate went for about $94,000 through Sotheby’s. Plus, these customizable portraits are being sold for a good cause. ArtInfo reports that all proceeds go to benefit an art and vocational school Muniz established in his native Brazil.
I’ve been a fan of Vik’s for quite a while, but never so much as after I read his autobiography-cum-artist’s statement, Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer. It’s one of the more informative, intelligent, well-written art books around…the sort of thing you might buy an artistically oriented friend in need of inspiration. My favorite part of Muniz’s current project, though, is what he says about artists’ political statements, which relates to my old post on Chris Jordan: “‘Poor people need money,’ Muniz says. ‘You need to help them directly. I don’t believe in political art. Raising awareness: You have the newspaper for that.’”
Amen!
{ 1 } Comments
You can eat it too! Clearly - its fully worth it :).
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