Vik Muniz and appropriation

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Vik Muniz is an artist who frequently appropriates from existing art and photographs and recreates those images in unusual mediums which he then photographs. He has taken the Mona Lisa and recreated it in peanut butter and jelly, and redone The Last Supper in chocolate. Yummy! In this example Muniz has recreated Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children out of found objects such as tires, ladders and oil barrels. A lot of the works Muniz appropriates fall into the public domain so there aren't a lot of copyright issues to deal with.

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Muniz has used some modern images as well such as this photo of Jackson Pollock painting. In this image Muniz has successfully transformed the original photo into a new photo through the use of chocolate syrup. In this case the original was a sort of documentary type photograph. It appears to be a substantial portion or possibly the entire photograph has been appropriated. It is highly doubtful this work would have any negative impact on the market value of the original. Therefore, this work is probably protected under Fair Use. Whats interesting about Muniz's work is that it could be argued that his photographs are only documents of his installations or temporary artworks since the pieces are made out of food items or temporary arrangements and not really tangible works at all. Very sticky stuff...