Vik Muniz 'faked' Mona Lisa's buttocks

Once, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen had the Mauritshuis built with money earned in Brazil, including in the slave trade. Now a Brazilian is exhibiting in that same Mauritshuis with perfect 3D replicas of the backs of famous paintings. He made five new ones especially for this exhibition. Four well-known masterpieces from the Mauritshuis, but also a painting relating to the Brazilian adventures of the time.

Vik Muniz is an amiable, extremely lively man who knows what he wants. For director Emilie Gordenker, it took a bit of a switch: 'At the Mauritshuis, we are not used to working with artists who are still alive, who have opinions of their own!' Muniz, a sculptor and photographer, immediately knew what he wanted to make for the Mauritshuis.

Old machines on glass easels

As a child, he grew up with the only art being poor reproductions in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. A first visit to the Museu de Arte de São Paulo at the age of eight changed his world. There, thanks to architect Lina Bo Bardi, paintings on glass easels beckoned to visitors, but Muniz's real fascination arose only when he looked back. Through the glass, he now saw the backs of the artworks: 'Like old machines, with cobwebs and other things that children find interesting: wood and strange parts'.

Naked

We take a giant leap in time. Fifteen years ago, Muniz, now an artist, sees the back of Picasso's Woman ironing. 'It was a bit like seeing her naked. So I asked if I could take a picture, like you do when you see a woman naked.' A photo series of the backs of paintings followed, but it didn't stop there. Muniz: 'If you use an idea immediately, you keep it from growing and developing.' Patience was therefore at the forefront of the Versos. Finding the pictures ultimately dull and lifeless, he came up with the idea trompe l'oeils making reconstructions indistinguishable from the original. In the process, he worked with a team to copy everything down to the smallest detail - for Rembrandt's The anatomy lesson had to recreate the right kind of canvas for a weaver of historical fabrics in the US.

Muniz: 'Who ever fakes a back? Nobody! The moment the front of a painting is varnished, it is meant never to change. On the contrary, the back keeps changing, becomes a kind of passport of everywhere the canvas has been, what has happened to it. The front goes around the world, appears on posters, becomes an image without materiality. With the back, I always have a feeling as if I am peeping, as if I shouldn't be here. Many people always have that feeling when they visit a museum. For the first time, my works now hang in museums, where the original sources of inspiration also hang. That makes the story complete.'

At the Mauritshuis, the works face the wall. It is hard to imagine that the fronts are empty, just as it is surprising that some canvases are much larger or smaller than they appear from the front. Picasso's Woman Ironing is thus there, but also Van Gogh's Starry Night and Leonardo da Vinci's La Gioconda (Mona Lisa), the latter equipped with an ingenious system that sends text messages about any change in the condition of the canvas.

Red triangles

Vik Muniz: Verso is an exhibition that can be viewed in several ways: as art, but also as historical documentation of everything that paintings experience and as a fascinating insight into the practice of museum management. What about the red triangles, which indicate which works should be evacuated first in the event of a flood?

From the Mauritshuis, Muniz asked to copy the backs of four works: Johannes Vermeer 's Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, The putter by Carel Fabritius and The anatomy lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt. At the museum's request, he made a fifth copy: of the View of the island of Itamaracá in Brazil by Frans Post. Johan Maurits 'the Brazilian' personally commissioned this painting. It connects both Muniz and the Mauritshuis to their shared history in a special way.

The very strangest find at the exhibition is a simple sticker. It Girl with a Pearl Earring actually still has a covering plastic plate at the back, covering everything interesting. Therefore, Muniz chose to reproduce this backside without the plastic plate. However, that would make it unrecognisable which painting it was, and Muniz absolutely did not want any signs near the canvases. The solution? A new sticker on the original back, and then recreate it for the copy. And yes, who actually copies whom?