Vik Muniz valuation
Makes pictures out of sugar, chocolate, dust and rubbish, photographs them, and lets the original go.
Vik Muniz was born in Sao Paulo in 1961, worked in advertising, and moved to New York in 1983 after being shot in the leg while trying to break up a fight — the compensation paid his way.
What a work by Vik Muniz is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Vik Muniz was born in Sao Paulo in 1961, worked in advertising, and moved to New York in 1983 after being shot in the leg while trying to break up a fight — the compensation paid his way. He began as a sculptor, and the work he is known for grew out of an interest in how images are read: familiar pictures remade from unlikely materials and then photographed. Sugar Children drew the children of plantation workers on St Kitts in sugar; Pictures of Chocolate redrew famous images in chocolate syrup; other series used thread, dust, diamonds, caviar, toys and torn magazines. For Pictures of Garbage he worked with the waste pickers of the Jardim Gramacho landfill outside Rio de Janeiro, a project followed in the documentary Waste Land.
The photograph is the work. The arrangement in sugar, chocolate or rubbish was temporary and usually no longer exists, so what comes to market is the print. Most are chromogenic or digital prints made in editions, and images are frequently editioned in two or more sizes, each with its own edition and artist's proofs, so size and edition number identify the work rather than the image. Formats vary with the series and the decade, from modest early prints to very large colour works. Large prints are often face-mounted or framed to specification, which makes surface scratches, mount failure and fading the practical concerns. Signature and edition are usually on a label or certificate, and the studio holds the records.
What you are buying is the photograph
The pictures are made by building an image out of something improbable — sugar, chocolate syrup, rubbish from a landfill, dust, diamonds, scraps of magazine — photographing it, and then dismantling it. The construction is not the work and in almost every case no longer exists. The photograph is the work, which is obvious once stated and is the single most common misunderstanding about this market.
That matters practically because the same image usually exists in several sizes, each with its own edition size, and a large print from a small edition and a small print from a large one are different propositions with the same title. Establish the exact dimensions, the edition number and size, and the series the image belongs to before anything else, and photograph the label or inscription on the reverse rather than paraphrasing it.
Venice, Rebus and Jardim Gramacho
His first solo exhibition came in 1989. In the 1980s he photographed drawings, softened them and printed them through a halftone screen, and by the mid-1990s he had turned to sugar, dust and chocolate syrup; Action Photo, after Hans Namuth's picture of Pollock at work, is from the chocolate series of 1997. Sugar Children was in the Museum of Modern Art's New Photography 13 that year, and he represented Brazil at the Venice Biennale in 2001. In 2008 MoMA invited him to make a show from its collection, Artist's Choice: Rebus.
Pictures of Junk, in 2006, rebuilt Old Master scenes from mythology out of rubbish. He gave the profits of Pictures of Garbage to the waste pickers' association at Jardim Gramacho, including the proceeds of Marat (Sebastião), sold at auction in Britain. Waste Land, Lucy Walker's film of the project, was nominated for an Academy Award, and the landfill closed in June 2012. UNESCO made him a Goodwill Ambassador in 2011.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
