Vik Muniz

Yejide Lever

Vik Muniz

Another day of waking up early in the morning to lectures from my psychology teacher, and sitting through my English class. Although I love English and love to write, the day can be a drag with those two classes in my Thursday mornings. Psychology class is over, off to English where I’m strolling to hear that I most likely have another project to complete. Sure enough it never fails to hear the teacher say something of this sort, “Soooooo, who in here likes art?”

 The classroom is silent as usual. Everyone looks at the Professor with a blank face. In order for someone to respond, she calls on a student which forces them to answer the question. I always think to myself, “Some people just don’t like English that much or maybe it’s too early in the morning.” The professor starts to elaborate on why she asked that question. She says, “Okay guys, we are going to have another…….,” at this time all I hear is “blah blah.” Once again I am right. This is the beginning of a new writing assignment, where we have to research an artist that is alive and include resource information. The artist that was given to me by my professor is Vik Muniz.

In the streets of Sao Paulo Brazil, Vik Muniz was born in 1961. He grew up into a stable home with his family as a child. In the 1980’s, Vik Muniz was breaking up a fight in his home town, and was shot in his leg in the process. Although this might have seemed like a down fall in life, it was the start of his art career. After receiving compensation from his injuries, he had enough money to move to New York City, where he started a new life as an artist.(wastelandmovie)

When Muniz first moved to New York City, he was mostly interested on making sculptures. After focusing on sculptures, he then introduces his self into another form of art. Some of Vik Muniz famous art work is a PP&J Mona Lisa and, pictures of chocolate. Vik Muniz started to find untraditional materials to form his style of art. He began to use cotton, wire, thread, dirt, diamond, sugar, syrup, and many more unusual materials in the art world. Vik Muniz would make an art piece out of “raw material”, and turn it into photographs. The reason for photographing it was because, if he used some type of food substance, it can easily be ruined. Photographing the art work would allow it to have the same taste from when it was originally made. The fact that he used so many unusual items to make his art pieces, made his work extraordinary.(wikipedia)

While searching for many of Vik Muniz art work, I couldn’t exactly find one that drew my attention. I decided to search more in depth about his work. I finally found something that interests me in many ways. It wasn’t only one piece of art work, it was a countless amount.

When I was researching for art work, I decided to look up videos on YouTube that shows some of Vik Muniz pieces. I came across a video that was named, “Artist Vik Muniz’s Installation at MoMA”. The video is originally from timeoutnewyork.com/video. MoMA is an abbreviation for the Museum of Modern Art. This video is based on Vik Muniz being interviewed by the editor at large (Howard Halle), about the pieces he has selected to be in an exhibition at the museum. Vik Muniz states how he went about picking the numerous pieces of art for his exhibition.

 Muniz states, “One piece and see which one comes next. I wanted to do a show about objects”(youtube). Muniz was selecting his art work starting with one piece to see which one he thought fell into place with the one before. My interpretation of using objects is using art work that has verbs. For example, an artist can have many different things in their art work, such as a person, being in a place, or just have many things in it. Howard Halle says to Muniz, “The show is called Rebus…can you explain that for me”(youtube). Vik Muniz continues to say, “Well a rebus is two languages trying to make sense… trying to create meaning”(youtube). The pieces were objects paired together in order for the viewers to have a feeling to two completely different pieces, that Vik Muniz felt was related in some way.

In the video, the object of art work that was paired together that caught my attention was a portrait drawer drawing a boxer, and a portrait that says, “I will not make any more boring art”(youtube). Although the portraits seem very different, I can relate them to each other. I feel that myself as a viewer made the two portraits as a story. The portrait drawer is painting a person, and next to it is a portrait that says “I will not make any more boring art”, as if the drawer were saying that to the boxer. I think Vik Muniz was very clever to use objects that were totally different to many people and in some way know that they were related. It makes sense to me the reason why the exhibition is name “Rebus”. He took two things and tried to make sense out of them.

Seeing Vik Muniz’s art exhibition makes me look at art in a totally different way. As a viewer of art work, you have to be very open minded to what you think an artist is trying to express in his or her pieces. Something so simple can mean so much more than what people think. I think Vik Muniz is very visual in what he wants to portray in his art work. It interests me how Vik Muniz set up his exhibition of art work. Muniz art exhibition is my favorite work that he has done. Also, I really enjoyed looking deeper into the portraits that were paired together, especially the one I discussed.

Yejide Lever

                As a viewer I noticed Vik Muniz art work is very abstract and different. In one of his art works, he painted two pictures of Mona Lisa. The difference between these two pictures and the original of Mona Lisa is that both pictures were made out of food substances. One was mad out of peanut butter, and the other was made out of jelly. Now, when people think about peanut butter and jelly, they usually associate it with the classic sandwich PB&J.

            There is another art work that he did that was very similar to the Mona Lisa pictures. The art work was untitled, but the image itself obviously described it, which could allow viewers to come up with a name for it. Vik Muniz made a piece that was a plate, and on top of the plate was spaghetti. People might wonder, how is this art work? You will realize that in the piece there is a face made out of spaghetti.  

As I explained, Vik Muniz work is very abstract. Because of all of the rare material he uses, it makes his art work interesting to see. I believe that Vik Muniz art works evokes emotion to a viewer. He uses unexpected material that allows the viewer, such as myself to see that art work is not only about using paint brush and paper. No one would ever think that you can use food to create art that is unusual.