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Juan Muñoz
Conversation Piece N.Y. (1, 2, and 3), 1992

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Conversation Piece N.Y. (1, 2, and 3)
Artist name
Juan Muñoz
Date created
1992
Classification
sculpture
Medium
terracotta and bronze
Date acquired
2008
Credit
Collection SFMOMA
Gift of George Roberts
Copyright
© Estate of Juan Muñoz
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2008.183.A-C
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Former Director Neal Benezra takes a look at Muñoz’s figures

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transcripts

NEAL BENEZRA 

Im Neal Benezra, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Im speaking about a wonderful piece by an artist who I knew very, very well, named Juan Munoz. Its called Conversation Piece New York, (numbers 1, 2, and 3), three figures. The piece dates from the early 1990s. Juan is best known for these round-bottom figures in bronze, pieces that had round bottoms and no legs. And he made quite a number of these through the course of the 1990s. And the piece that we own is, literally, the beginning of that body of work.  

What Juan was interested in was to try to find a way to make figurative work where the figures would not be naturalistic. So the way he avoided any hint of naturalism was, one, by not having the figures have legs. They actually are in these urns, these round-bottomed bases. And theyre of course, not life-size. Theyre the size of maybe a ten-year-old or a twelve-year-old. Theyre smaller than life-size. The heads are not quite naturalistic. When you really look at them, theyre not really arms. Theyre like twisted rags. You can tell that hes evoking hands, but theyre not really quite hands. They imply something that they dont describe.  

He always wanted to create these dialogues. Its very serious work, and he was very eager to tell stories in his work, but there was also a kind of playfulness, too. Serious and playful at the same time.  

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Other Works by Juan Muñoz

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