Picking Flowers in a Field, after Mary Cassatt (Pictures of Magazine 2) 2012

Vik Muniz made this artwork, ‘Picking Flowers in a Field, after Mary Cassatt’, by collaging printed magazine pages. Instead of traditional painting materials, Muniz turns to the stuff of everyday life. The image is built up through countless small pieces of paper, each carefully selected for its color, texture, and tonal value. The process is labor-intensive, almost meditative, as the artist pieces together this mosaic. But what is achieved through this method? Muniz is not just reproducing Cassatt’s impressionistic painting. He is also creating an art about consumption, because each fragment once held an ad, or graced the pages of a glossy magazine. By repurposing these images into something new, Muniz highlights their original status as vehicles for desire. He also makes a subtle commentary on class, as these pictures – often peddling luxury – are now re-deployed into a painstaking process to render the original painting. It reminds us that all art, regardless of medium, is the product of skilled making, and that the materials chosen are never neutral.