New York City, after George Bellows 2011

Vik Muniz made this New York City image after George Bellows, but with something unusual: trash, bits of refuse, detritus. I think that’s why it tickles me. The surface is a wild, textured field. Get up close, and you can almost feel the grit and grime of the city. What at first looks like a quick, expressionistic painting reveals itself to be something painstakingly constructed, a real labor. See that bright green block, near the bottom right? That’s got to be an old container of some kind. It's this one bright spot that pulls you in. Muniz, like Bellows, turns the mundane into something monumental. But while Bellows used paint, Muniz uses the city’s own throwaways, its ghosts. It makes me think about Rauschenberg’s combines or Schwitters collages. Art is just this ongoing conversation, right? Always borrowing, always building, and messing things up. And this piece, it's a beautiful mess.