Experiments of Vik Muniz

A Brazilian Vik Muniz born in 1961 is a New York based artist who experiments with media. His momentary works are of objects arranged to make an image which he then photographs the arrangement resulting in the final piece. This makes one question the truth and realness of a photograph. When one typically thinks of a photograph, they think it is of something that is real, not objects arranged to make an image.




Muniz began his career in the late 1980’s as a sculptor moving from Brazil to Chicago and ending in New York. During this time most of his works were often jokes or visual puns. A famous piece of art during this time was “Clown Skull”, a human skull augmented with a clown -nose shaped bump. In 1990 was when Muniz started creating work that portrayed his signature style of photographing his drawings or creations. “The Best of Life” was a photograph which he drew pictures of photographs included in the coffee table book “The Best of Life” from memory after losing the book. The drawings of the photographs were then photographed and shown as photographs. Muniz continues this method today.

Vik Muniz then moves to making a drawing out of a nontraditional material and then photographing it. Such examples are, “Equivalents” (1993), “Pictures of Wire” (1994), and “Pictures of Thread” (1995), where he makes drawings out of readily recognizable non-art materials such as, cotton, wire or thread. Muniz participated in the 1997-1998 New Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York because of his because “Sugar Children” in 1996. Muniz has expanded his range of materials working with chocolate syrup, caviar, diamonds, earthworms, and much more. He has exhibited his work in several different museums and galleries around the world.


I find Vik Muniz’s work to be the most interesting art work I have seen in a while. I feel that it is very creative and unique and I find it enjoyable to view. Some examples of his creative art are his two detailed replicas of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, in which he made one out of jelly and the other out of peanut butter. He also created a replication of da Vinci’s The Last Supper working with sugar, wire, thread, and Bosco Chocolate. His recent work of creating larger scale works, geoglyps, which are pictures carved into the earth. Another recent work “Pictures of Clouds” is humorous where he had a skywriter draw cartoon outlines of clouds in the sky. I really think Muniz is a great artist whose unique style is very eye appealing, creative and enlightening.