UNIT 3, OUTCOME 3

ARTISTS AND STUDIO PRACTICES

Vik Muniz

Oscar-Claude Monet
VIK MUNIZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEqJ7tIPpmE
Biography
Vik Muniz was born in Brazil in 1961.
He is a Contemporary artist (art of
today, produced by artists who are
living in the twenty-first century. It is
Art that reflects on contemporary
society and the issues relevant to
ourselves, and the world around us.)
He moved to Brooklyn, NY, with his
family in 1983.
Muniz has created works in the
mediums of sculpture, drawing and
photography.
He is famous for incorporating
unusual and everyday materials into
his photographic process.
These materials included dust,
diamonds, sugar, dry pigment,
ketchup, caviar, garbage and wire.
Examples of Vik Munizs Artwork

Sigmund, Cibachrome print, 1997, 152.4 x 122 cm Metachrome (Flowers, after Odilon Redon II), 2016
Archival pigment print, 101.6 128.3 cm
Focused Example #1

Valentina, The Fastest

Gelatin Silver Print

1996

35.6 x 27.9 cm

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Subject Matter
Valentina, The Fastest is an artwork

depicting a young Caribbean girl from St.

Kitts.

Valentina was one of the children that Vik

Muniz and his wife met and got to know on

holiday, and she was a young lively girl,
who enjoyed running.

In the artwork, the girl is facing the camera,

with a smile on her face- she is exuding a

sense of happiness and fulfillment.

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Influences
On vacation to St. Kitts, Muniz and his wife
went swimming with the local Caribbean
children every day, and learned a lot about
their lives. During the trip, they also visited
the sugar plantations, where the childrens
parents worked extremely hard in the
scorching sun. The parents lives were sad
and bitter.

Muniz took photos of the children and

brought them back to New York. Of his
artwork, he wrote:
The radiant childhood of those children will
inevitably be transformed by sugar. I
realized they take the sweetness out of the
children by making them work in the fields.
Its very hard work. All of the sweetness of
them ends up in our coffee. Children who
become sugar- it hit me like a brick.

Therefore, Muniz was influenced by the

sweetness of the children in contrast to the
bitterness and harshness of the working in
the sugar plantations.

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Cultural/Historical Contexts
Valentina, The Fastest was
created in 1996 in New York.
It is a contemporary piece
reflecting on the social climate
of the sugar plantations in St.
Kitts.
The sugar Muniz uses within the
artwork signifies the happiness
of childhood and emphasises
the hard labour of the local trade
in the sugar plantations.
Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm
Communication of Ideas & Meanings
The ideas and meanings communicated in
the Pictures of Sugar series is a sense of
irony. The parents of the children go to
work in the sugar fields for 16 hours a day
and are sad and tired. The irony is that the
young, happy children will most likely follow
in their parents footsteps, and the
production of sugar threatens to drain away
the sweetness from the children.
Muniz communicates this meaning through
the subject matter and material. He uses
images of the young children smiling, in
collaboration with the material of sugar, to
represent the bitter sweet irony that awaits
the children as they grow up.

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Materials, Techniques & Processes
Valentina, The Fastest is part of
Munizs Pictures of Sugar series.
In this portrait, Muniz used cupfuls
of sugar, where the sugar granules
were individually arranged on black
paper, through the process of
sprinkling it over the surface.
The final artwork is a gelatin silver
print, which is a photographic
process used with black and white
film and printing papers.

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Gelatin Silver Print Process
In the gelatin silver process, the plate
would be cleaned, and the subbing layer
would be prepared under normal lighting.
The subbing layer is a solution made up of
heating distilled water, gelatin, chrome
alum hardener solution and photo-flo.
The warm solution is poured over the
glass plate and spread evenly by tilting the
glass.
The paper or film used to make gelatin
silver prints and negatives is coated with an
emulsion that contains gelatin and silver
salts.
Gelatin silver prints and negatives are
developed out rather than printed out,
which means that exposure to light
registers an unseen image that becomes
visible only when developed in a chemical
bath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqWyJstBSoo&t=376s

Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm

Aesthetic Qualities
Within the Pictures of Sugar series, Vik
Muniz incorporates tone, contrast and
emphasis to create an ironic atmosphere.

Contrast is achieved through the placement

of white sugar on the black paper, while
tone highlights the subjects facial features-
which are expressions of happiness.

The ironic atmosphere is achieved through

emphasis on the happy expressions on the
subjects faces, and the use of the material
sugar. This irony is that the happy children-
created out of sugar, will grow up to work
tirelessly in the sugar plantations.
Valentina, The Fastest, Gelatin Silver Print, 1996, 35.6 x 27.9cm
Focused Example #2

The Gipsy (Magna)

Digital C-Print

2008

227.8 x 180.3 cm

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Subject Matter
The subject matter of the Pictures of Garbage
series are portraits of the people who work at the
recycling plant- Jardim Gramacho.
The portraits are projections of photographs,
which are then built up or constructed using
garbage.
In The Gipsy (Magna), the subject is a woman
with a happy expression on her face. In the
artwork, she is facing away from the camera into
the distance, and she is wearing a headpiece
made from material. The headpiece incorporates
garbage from the recycling plant, and her facial
features have been created using soil.
The subject in this artwork- Magna, was one of
the catadores working at the recycling plant. She
began working there after her husband lost his job
and they needed money to live and support their
son. In this artwork, Magna is smiling and looking
into the distance in pride, as she feels gratified for
working in a job that benefits the community
through recycling.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Influences
Vik Muniz was inspired by his
connection to Brazil and growing up
in Rio de Janeiro, which inspired
him to revisit the area.

His main inspiration was the

pickers. Learning about their
circumstances, led him to want to
make a difference to the community
and help support the recycling
program.

He was also inspired by the work of

artists Gavin Turk and Jean Michel
Basquiat.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Cultural/Historical Contexts
The Gipsy (Magna) was created
in 2008, in Rio de Janeiro.
Within the Pictures of Garbage
series, Muniz aimed to reflect
on contemporary society in the
art world and the issues relevant
to his home town of Rio de
Janeiro.
He did this by collaborating with
the pickers and using garbage
(the material they deal with
every day), to highlight the
enormous waste in society and
the grand effort that was being
used by the catadores to
improve the situation at the
recycling plant.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Communication of Ideas & Meanings
Within the Pictures of Garbage series, Vik Muniz
aims to give meaning to the pickers working in the
recycling plant in Rio de Janeiro.
Muniz grew up very poor, and was given an
opportunity to move to New York, where he
became a famous artist. He was aware that a lot
of other people from his hometown are not
fortunate enough to attain the same opportunities,
and he wanted to give back to the people in his
hometown community.
This idea is communicated through the subject
matter, materials and the collaboration of the
artwork. Muniz works closely with the pickers
who become the subject matter in the portraits, to
give them an opportunity to be a part of a large art
project, and to represent people who would not
normally be recognised. His use of garbage within
the portraits represents the recyclable materials
that the pickers use, and gives meaning to the
recycling program that they have set up in the
community.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Materials
Muniz incorporates
recycled materials in his
artworks including
plastic, glass, PVC,
paper and metal.

These are the materials

that the pickers use
everyday, and therefore
specifically relate to his
subject matter.
The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm
Techniques & Processes
To create his artwork, Vik Muniz
photographed the pickers at the
recycling plant, using digital
photography. The images were
edited and then projected onto
large, painted areas on the ground
of a warehouse. While the images
were projected, garbage was placed
over the top of the projections to
accurately create the compositions.
Tone was achieved in the artwork
by Vik Muniz, who placed soil in a
sifter and sifted it over shadowed
areas of the portraits.
Once the compositions were
complete, they were photographed
and then printed as Digital C-Prints.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Digital C-Print
In Digital C-Prints, a digital image goes
through prepress, where colour
correction, colour profiling and resizing
occur.
The file is then passed through a raster
image processor, where it is translated
into analogue information for the printer
to use.
The digital file is then broken into three
sections called channels, one channel
for each of these lasers (RGB- Red,
Green, Blue).
Finally, Photographic paper is fed into
the printer where the three lasers
expose the image onto the paper.
As in traditional c printing the image has
been printed but is unseen and unfixed.
At this point if the paper were exposed
to any light the image would be ruined.
Exposed paper is spooled onto a tube
and moved to the processors in
complete darkness.

The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm

Aesthetic Qualities
Vik Muniz predominantly
incorporates texture, contrast and
emphasis in his artworks.
The use of varied objects creates
texture in the background and
contrasts against the
monochromatic figures.
Muniz emphasises the garbage
within his artworks, through their
colours contrasting against the
monochromatic tones of the pickers
facial features. This highlights his
Contemporary style through his
purpose of reflecting on the life and
work of the catadores in Rio de
Janeiro.
The Gipsy (Magna), Digital C-Print, 2008, 227.8 x 180.3cm