New York City, after George Bellows 2011

Vik Muniz made this image, “New York City, after George Bellows,” out of paper, glue, and his own desire to make something from nothing. Look how the city emerges from a haze of blues, yellows, and greens. I imagine Muniz in the studio, surrounded by piles of paper, cutting, tearing, arranging, and rearranging until, little by little, a picture begins to emerge. It’s a slow process, a real commitment. You know, making something out of nothing feels like the most meaningful thing you can do as an artist. Check out how he uses tiny scraps of paper to create the illusion of depth and texture. Up close, the surface is a chaotic jumble of fragments, but from a distance, it all comes together into a coherent image, like a mirage or dream of Bellows's New York. Painters are always in conversation with each other. Muniz takes Bellows’s gritty urban vision and transforms it into something new and unexpected. It reminds me that painting is a conversation across time, a way of engaging with the past while forging a path toward the future.