The smudge of chocolate syrup left on the bottom of dessert dishes that you just can't resist licking is but one of the unconventional materials used by this São Paulo-born artist who, seventeen years ago, left Pirituba, a poor neighborhood in the western part of the city, to star in American museums and galleries. "At first they ignore you, then fight you and finally they imitate you. I went through all three stages", summarizes 39 year old Vicente José Muniz, aka Vik Muniz, a photographer much talked about in the 24th São Paulo Biannual International Art Show, held in 1998, whose first individual exhibition at the prestigious New York Whitney Museum takes place this month. "I've been through worse times here than in São Paulo, but now my work is in the museums I always revered", says Vik, the son of Vicente Lopes Muniz, a waiter, and Maria Celeste Muniz, a retired telephone operator. After tasting success with the Elvis Presley portrait painted in chocolate and the Mona Lisa sculptured in jam, he will have, for the first time, a retrospective exhibition of his work in Brazil, comprising the last 12 years. In March, his work will be at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and, in June, at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) and the Camargo Villaça Gallery, in São Paulo.
In New York, the price of a work signed by Vik Muniz ranges from 5 to 15 thousand dollars. But, by the end of last year, his painting Action Painter went for US$ 45 thousand at Sotheby´s auction. This Brazilian artist´s success has been such that his work deserved one-hour long documentary Worst Possible Illusion by American movie director Anne-Marie Russel, to be premiered this month, on the 22nd, in Manhattan. His exhibition The Things Themselves: Pictures of Dust will be at the Whitney Museum until May, 20. Once again, an unusual theme: pictures made out of the dust gathered at the very site of the exhibition. In an interview in NY, Vik talked about his troubles with American women, and how a love story affects an artist's work. "I am a professional cuckold" and "I love the idea of having sex with a whore" are two good examples of the candidness of this talk. Among childhood memories, he tells us of the day he roasted and ate a parrot he shot and killed. Vik also explains why he prefers art to sports and the reason why he's not much into the so highly acclaimed Sebastião Salgado's photographs.

TRIP Do you eat your chocolate works?
VIK MUNIZ [laughter] I do while I'm painting them, because the brushes have to be cleaned… But not after they are ready.

TRIP How did you make the decision of living in the United States?
VIK Actually, I wanted to leave Brazil since high school. I felt the moment would come when I wouldn't be able to develop any further, there. I started planning my exit from Brazil very early in life. The fact that I already had relatives here [in the United States] plus the opportunity of making some money made me think up a scheme to get here. When I arrived, I didn't speak English at all and wasn't sure about what I wanted to do. As difficult as this may seem, it's an ideal situation for one to reinvent oneself.

TRIP How was your life in Brazil?
VIK Look, it was so dull I don't even want to talk about it. I did practically nothing. I went out, partied, things like that. I was lost, really. I took some jobs in advertising that allowed me to save some money, but I wasn't happy with myself and what I was doing. When I left Brazil, it was like some unavoidable thing. I believe one always has to leave the place where one was born. You've got to leave to be able to come back.

TRIP What are the most remarkable memories of your youth in Pirituba, west of SãoPaulo?
VIK There was a dancing place called O Piritubão (The Great Pirituba) [laughter]. There was also the Pirituba Movie Theater, where only spaghetti-westerns were shown. The same movie was played for months on row. I had a very happy childhood there, in São Paulo. The one problem was that we grew up during the military rule. Everything was secret and there was no access to information. But there was a positive side to it. We Brazilians learned to say what we think without really saying it. It's rather poetical.

TRIP How was your arrival in the USA?
VIK I left Brazil in a terribly hot day and arrived in Chicago in freezing cold. On the plane, I took sleeping pills. My uncle and aunt were expecting me at the airport. I slept in their car, slept at their home. When I woke up, the next day, they said they had a surprise for me. We went to an airshow. So the first thing I saw in the United States was a plane twirling twice in the air and then going down, down and down to finally explode on the ground. I looked at it, pretty scared, and said to myself: "Wow, it's just like in the movies!" Then I relaxed and thought: "I like it here. I have barely arrived and already planes are falling before me… Just my kind of thing…".

TRIP Was it easy to learn English?
VIK I didn't speak English. I went to night school to learn the language, because I worked all day in a supermarket. There were students from everywhere: Russians, Hungarians, Italians, Africans, Chinese, and our teacher was a tiny woman who spoke in a tiny voice. Of course I learned Hungarian, German, Italian and even Chinese, but wouldn't learn English. It was frustrating. I thought I was dumb. Then I talked to an old Brazilian man I used to play checkers with. He said: "You are doing it the wrong way. What do you enjoy doing?". I answered: "I like to cook and to make things out of wood.". He said that I should take cooking or carpentry lessons, instead of going to an English school. I did that, and in two months I was speaking English. I believe photography is also something can't be taught at school. I teach it, and of course that's a paradox. The best way to learn photography is to direct it outwards. To work with photography the way you would learn a language.

TRIP What about solitude? Did you feel lonely, then? Do you, now?
VIK No. I try to be always in good company. I don't know why, but most of my friends are latin. I have many American friends, also. But it was hard in the beginning, in Chicago. I didn't know anyone. One of my first works, called Best of Life (a remake by the artist of seven world famous photos, like the one of the single student in front of the war tanks, in Peking, at the Tian-an-men Square, in 1989), arose because I didn't know anyone, couldn't relate to people. So one day I bought this book, Best of Life, with photos everybody knows. It was like buying a family album that could make me relate to other people.

TRIP Was it hard to get acquainted with American women?
VIK Well… During my 17 years in New York, I think I had only 3 American girl friends. The others were all Brazilian or Latin. Not because of the language, though. It's a cultural thing, really. There is something about Brazilian women, Latin women in general, that you can't find in other cultures. In the beginning, I tried, because it was more convenient. There are more American women here, of course, and I was curious about them. Yet it was something so strange that I always felt guilty after sex. "Why did we do this? We shouldn't have done it.". This happened all the time, and I never realized why. Then it dawned on me that language works physically, also. There is something I like to say: "It is much better to kiss in your own language." Kissing in Portuguese is entirely different from kissing in English.

TRIP Did you ever get married?
VIK Yes. To a Brazilian woman (make-up artist Maria Lucia Mattos, to whom he was married for five years.). After some time, we split up.

TRIP Did you marry her here?
VIK Yes, but she went back to Brazil. We have a boy, Gaspar, he is ten now. Unfortunately, he is going to be an artist, like his father [laughter]. I am kidding, I think I have the best job in the world: you work when you feel like it, and do what you enjoy doing. The only thing is that you think about it 24 hours a day.

TRIP Do you talk to him often?
VIK Ah… twice a week. Strange, this frequency is a bit altered right now. But when we see each other it's all quality time. When I am with him, I am only with him.

TRIP What was the experience of marriage like, for you?
VIK There is not much difference between being married and living with somebody. But I feel being married brings anxiety to some people

TRIP Do you think the traditional marriage dream is changing?
VIK I think marriage changes along with other moral and religious concepts. Today you are not with somebody because of a social contract. You are with this one person when you could be with many other people. This makes your partner feel special. I stopped thinking "you are the only one for me.". This is rubbish. It is much more interesting to think there are millions of people for you, but you chose precisely that one single person who is beside you.

TRIP Do you suffer a lot when your love affairs end?
VIK I am a professional cuckold [laughter]. Usually I am the one who is left for somebody else.

TRIP And when that happens, how does it affect your art work?
VIK I have more time to play with myself… in both senses [laughter]. Mostly, when someone betrays you, you've got to reconstruct yourself. When despised, you have to rebuild your self-confidence. And when we do that, one builds a lot of structures around oneself. These structures are the basis for many works of art.

TRIP You said you were betrayed. Did you ever betray someone?
VIK I did, a lot. I do not police myself. I believe everyone should do whatever they like and want to do, every moment, every instant. Right now I am with someone new, an artist (German born Brazilian Janaina Tschape, 27), starting a new relationship, and discovering new things. One of these days, for instance, we had to find angel wings… We spent the hole day looking for angel wings to buy. It was great. For the first time in my life, I am with somebody who is a lot like me. I have an urge to be by myself all the time. And there is no better way to be with yourself than being with somebody that is exactly like you.

TRIP What makes you happy?
VIK Sex.

TRIP How do you deal with the idea of sex without love?
VIK Look: I have done it, I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't think I can have it in my life as normal practice. When it happened, it was like an experiment. It may happen again, but it depends a lot on the state of mind you are in.

TRIP Most guys from our generation had sex for the first time with a whore. Was it like that for you?
VIK My uncle Firmino was the manager of a night-club at Rego Freitas (a street in central São Paulo). Because of that, I had great clout there. I think "sex without love" and "sex with a whore" are two different things. I love the idea of having sex with a whore. The fantasy is that a prostitute is a woman who does not need you. She is seduction itself. She is independent. Every man is fascinated by this fantasy. But I also love the surroundings, the environment, the physical site where all this takes place. So, often, when my friends and I didn't have money, we went to such places just to talk, to share experiences. It was cool. Sex was almost like an excuse to be with these women. Sex with a whore is bad, but relating to a whore is a wonderful psychological experience. I would like to have a lasting friendship with one of those women. At the same time, there is the sad side of the story. There is something melancholy and tragic about them. My favorite bar in New York is the Monteiro, where sailors and whores are the only patrons. Can you think of two other categories of people you can learn more from? Of course not. That place, Monteiro, should be turned into a school [laughter].

TRIP What attracts you in the opposite sex when you chose a woman?
VIK First the body. I am Brazilian and, of course, the first thing you look at is the ass. But I've seen many bodies decay before my eyes. I call it "the menace of the intellectual cellulitis". A girl that looked beautiful may turn into a monster once she starts talking.

TRIP Do you get along well with gays?
VIK I relate to them psychologically, socially, intellectually, in the best possible way. Physically, it never crossed my mind. I don't think I could even try to. Ninety percent of the people I work with, in the artistic world, are gay. And, to be quite frank, I do prefer working with them than working with straights. American straights are even worse. I am more at ease with gay people.

TRIP Let's talk a little about Art History. When do you think Humanity realized it could express itself artistically?
VIK I don't think art just happened. People try to study art as something active. I believe it is passive. Art did not begin when some guy painted an animal on the walls of his cave. It started when that man saw in the walls of his cave something that looked like an animal. Then he painted a little eye in it. The beginning was this hability to see one thing within something else. We keep talking about modern art and skip the important details. To understand this incredible universe we live in today, we should remember that most of the time we exist only in our minds. When do we really exist? One exists when one has a toothache. Apart from moments like that, we only think we exist.

TRIP Aren't art exhibitions elitist, as a rule?
VIK I believe art can't be elitist. A work of art can't be made to be seen by a specific kind of person. It should be for everyone. When my exhibition at the International Center of Photography opened, it was the most important thing I had done up to then. I was the first photographer under 40 to have a retrospective exhibition there. I was 37 and had never studied photography, never studied art. Today, I teach photography in a university. For me, to be there was the most amazing thing in the world. Photographers I admire were there. And, at the same time, there was a guy delivery guy I know who had never been to a museum. He got to know my work because whenever he came with a new package he saw me working. He liked the sugar children. Later on, he had a daughter. Idrew her picture in sugar and gave it to him as a present. I invited him for my show. It was the first time he had been to a museum. Some people don't understand this sort of thing. Some people criticize my work for being popular, or because children enjoy it. As if pleasing children or people who are not art connoisseurs were a crime.

TRIP How does your family in Brazil see your success abroad?
VIK To my father, for instance, being an artist or an art professional is something strange. He never imagined someone could earn a living the way I do. I come from a very poor family. I was raised at the same time in this poor environment and downtown São Paulo, talking to rich, cultured people. I lived between these two worlds, all the time.

TRIP Did you ever suffer any hardship?
VIK It was a sort of dignified poverty. Let's say you can't feel you are missing a lot when you don't know there is a lot out there to be missed. In a way, this dignity came from a certain kind of ignorance, but it is lucky it was like that. Here (in the United States) there are lots of unhappy people, even with all they have. In Brazil, I never felt I was going through hard times. My family always provided for me as best they could.. Nowadays, it's sort of strange when my parents come to see my exhibitions. It's like a miracle for them. I photographed Brazilian kids for the Bienal (the São Paulo24th Biannual International Art Exhibition). The money went to charities that work with these children, because I always try to give back a little of the image to the reality. My father went to see these photos and I thought it was funny that he looked very moved when he came back home. He told me he had looked at my pictures and started crying. A teacher asked him why he was crying. 'Because Vik Muniz is my son", he said. And all the children that were with this teacher asked my Dad for his autograph. It was the first time someone had ever asked for his autograph. He signs his name very slowly. It must have taken ages [laughter].

TRIP What do you miss the most, when you think about Brazil?
VIK Friendship. In the United States, friendship doesn't have the same meaning … In Brazil you like someone and you want to be with this person for no special reason. This human side of Brazilians I haven't found anywhere else.

TRIP This caring for children, giving them part of what you get for your work, did it happen naturally?
VIK In the beginning of my career, all I wanted was to go on working. I needed money to be able to do more and also to live. But now that my work sells, that it is shown to the great public and financial success starts happening, I think more and more about how to make something out of this money and also how I can help people with my name and what I do. I am planning a trip to India to photograph, in the spices of that country, the seven colors. It's usually small children who work there, turning out the spices. They die early, never having been to school. What I want to do is to photograph a child where he or she works and use the money of the photographs to pay for the education of some of them. If you help a child, you are doing something big. If each person who has money did that, the world would be a better place to live in.

TRIP You said your work is selling well. Can you define success?
VIK Success is when people know more about you then you yourself do.

TRIP In the beginning, did your father agree to the idea of your leaving Brazil to look for work in the United States?
VIK What happened at that Bienal was very funny also for that reason. When I left, he thought I was being terribly silly. He was sure that, if I stayed, I would be able to find a good job. When I arrived in the United States, I spent five years taking jobs like delivering for supermarkets or pumping gas 12 hours a day, six days a week, for US$ 3.50 an hour. I even slept in the street four nights, because I didn't know anyone. I went through worse times here than in Brazil, but I always managed to maintain a good mental life, reading and visiting museums. Now, my work hangs in the museums I revered.

TRIP Your work gives the impression of having suffered no influences. It seems to be a trip of your own. Do you agree?
VIK I never could see the details in anything. I always see the whole, the bigger plane. It is a problem, really, because I can't give much attention to small things. People, individuals, personal experiences, they all enter my work, but get transformed in this big soup I try to describe it in a more comprehensive way.

TRIP Your work has been shown in several countries, but it is still unknown in Brazil. Why?
VIK Because I started working abroad and only eight years after that my work started being shown outside the United States. I owe it to the late Marco Antonio Villaça (an art gallery owner), my art manager in Brazil, a man of incredible wisdom, a pioneer in introducing photography as art in Brazil. I know it was already seen as art before, but not with the fierce enthusiasm and dedication he put into it. I owe him a lot. Because, when Marco showed my work to foreigners, he always told them I am a Brazilian artist. He made me notice in my work the Brazilian traits of which I was unaware. Marco died on the first day of the past year. I miss him a lot.

TRIP If you had to send just one piece of work to a country not acquainted with your art, which would choose?
VIK Valentine, a Caribbean girl I drew in sugar.

TRIP Did you ever feel snubbed in Brazil or in the United States?
VIK Yes. That is something everybody feels, in the beginning. Because there are three stages when someone is doing something really new and different. First they ignore you, then fight with you and, finally, they imitate you. I have been through all three stages.

TRIP What was your reaction when saw copies of your work?
VIK A chocolate painting of mine was copied. I hung it on my refrigerator's door. I was flattered. Look, I didn't invent painting. I didn't invent chocolate either. So anything can be copied, no problem. Only, please, don't put my name on the copies. This is incredible. Before, property was taken very seriously. Now, the idea of property and expansion is more intellectual than anything else. The media is a much more sophisticated concept. What people have is what they think. Money, for instance. Nobody carries piles of paper money anymore, as they did in the beginning of the Real plan. Now, money is a number, a notion. Everything is an idea. The idea that was photographed doesn't mean a thing. The themes are all there, they already existed before, they are variations on the few themes that exist. For instance, there are about 20 magic tricks. When a magician invents a new trick, he gets famous, like Houdini. Every famous magician became famous because of a new trick he invented; all the rest is variations on the same tricks. Every artist is a copycat. He copies something, in some way. It is important to realize that. One always puts some of oneself into the copy.

TRIP Do you like money?
VIK I a-do-re it. As a poor boy, I have always wanted to have money. But I like for what it can get, not to have it in the bank. That doesn't mean a thing. When I started having more money than I could spend, I felt like an idiot.

TRIP Do you think people pay a fair price for your work?
VIK I think I earn much more than I work for. I would never pay for one of my works the amount of money they are getting at auctions, for instance. If, at an auction, a photograph goes for 34 thousand dollars, I'm not buying it. I would pay that for a picture painted by some famous modernist painter or a photograph taken in the 19th century. But I would never pay that money for a contemporary art work, because I know the artists and we exchange works.

TRIP What do you think of Sebastião Salgado?
VIK His work makes me think a lot. I have been to several of his retrospective exhibitions. Something bothers me: the fact that the man is an artist, almost in a classical way. His knowledge of composition and light is very deep, he has a plastic and classical knowledge of the image. And he puts all this really sophisticated knowledge into images of pain, hardship, suffering. This is what disturbs me in his work. You see someone starving to death, or a corpse, the way you might regard a picture of some flowers in a vase. I don't think I can blame the artist for wanting to do his best. He is almost incapable of taking a bad picture, and that disturbs me. I think that when registering the sad truth the pictures should come out shifty, the photograph should be loaded with fear. One should be able to see the photographer was scared out of his wits when he took the picture. When Sebastião Salgado photographs a horrible scene, you always get the feeling he his completely in charge of the situation.

TRIP Your work relates a lot to the past. Do you wish you had been born in another time?
VIK I wouldn't like to have been born in another time, but I am fascinated by the past. Sometimes I say I belong in the 19th century, but it is not true, because I wouldn't exist the way I exist if I had been born then. I am a man of the 21st century, but all the things that filled my life with meaning and usefulness in the 20th century were invented in the past. I feel nostalgic about that. My art, photography, instantly transforms people in beings of the past. That's why there is no way I will ever stop talking about the past, because what I do is to document instants, and there aren't documents of the present. The one single thing that registers the present is the eye.

TRIP How do you, from the United States, assess Brazil's evolution?
VIK From the historical point of view, one day, one month or the 17 years I have been away from Brazil are not time enough to evaluate what is going on. The country has gone through some serious crises and there are wounds that will take generations to heal. The transition from military rule to democracy was followed by a great economic crisis. Even so, as a whole, Brazil is a very rich country, culturally, intellectually and economically. I believe in the motto, "Brazil is the country of the future". What I don't know is whether or not this future is near. It is fascinating to see how Brazilians learn new things and adapt themselves to them.

TRIP About your relationship with time: you are 39 years old. What gets better near the forties?
VIK My sexual performance, my physical beauty and my lucidity.

TRIP Why sexual performance? Was it worse before?
VIK No, but now I can talk about it in a much more professional way. The performance itself has gotten worse, but my way of talking about it has greatly improved [laughter].

TRIP Do you like sports?
VIK No.

TRIP And that punch bag over there, what is it for?
VIK It's psychological, not physical.

TRIP Don't you exercise at all?
VIK I do, in the most basic way, just to keep my body healthy. I do some jogging, I work out… to be able to think properly. Physical exercise keeps the mind fit. But lots of people running after a ball… I can't grasp the meaning of it. There is this idea that competition simulates life, but the sports rules are too poor to make a good simulation. Art is a much better simulation of life than sports, the rules are more complex and more interesting psychologically.

TRIP You never studied art or photography. Do you think it is important to study, to have a college degree?
VIK In an art school you learn how to "make art", not how to be an artist. To be an artist you've got to live, go out, have a cup of coffee, talk to people. You've got to interact intensely with your surroundings. Once one of my students, a girl, said she would like to go to Amsterdam, but couldn't because she would miss my classes. I told her to go, told her that she would learn far more in the trip. I promised I wouldn't consider her as an absentee during the time of her trip. I told her to live intensely, because that's what makes an artist.

TRIP Do you think trying drugs is important for an artist?
VIK You are posing some difficult questions… [laughter] Ah… I don't know if it is important, because many artists have developed great work without ever having tried drugs. I believe living outside reality is a personal option. Nowadays reality itself is so crazy! I live so much between dream and fantasy that I think it would be useless for me to take drugs to have a psychic experience. I would like a drug that would give me the experience of reality. I have been trying to define the truth behind the illusion for the last12 years.

TRIP Are you vain?
VIK Yes, I am.

TRIP How does that vanity manifest itself?
VIK Through the mirror! [laughter]

TRIP Talking about mirrors, I noticed your bathroom is full of cosmetics of every kind. Do you use all those creams?
VIK You know, I don't use anything. I like to spend my money in the beautiful packaging, so when I go to a shop I take a long time admiring the packaging design. It's beautiful, but I don't even smell the creams, I buy them because they will look nice in my bathroom. It looks like vanity, but is not.

TRIP What kind of music have you been listening to?
VIK I started enjoying contemporary music in the last five years, because of electronic music. You can dance to many of the tunes, and some are even sort of pop, but I find them cool. Talvin Singh and Thievery Corporation are some CDs I bought lately.

TRIP Do you ever feel depressed?
VIK I have been depressed, but I am so absent-minded I soon forget all about it. [laughter]

TRIP Have you ever been psychoanalyzed?
VIK Never. I never had money enough to pay for someone to hear me out. I'd rather have people pay to listen to me. [laughter] But, whenever I needed to talk, I've always been lucky enough to find someone who wanted to hear me. Or else I just go to church and confess. It's free. I can give the church a coin, a candle, and it makes me feel better.

TRIP What king of church do you go to?
VIK Any one. If there is a confessional and they don't charge me, even the better! [laughter]

TRIP You said you prefer having people paying to listen to you talk. How did you feel right now, having 40 people paying to hear you? (right before this interview, Vik spoke to 40 Brazilians interested in art, in his studio)
VIK Guilty [laughter]. I feel guilty, but I can give them something that can't be given through a photograph. The fact that I can earn money to do that is comforting. It's nice to be paid to talk, but if I had to do it for free I would do it just the same.

TRIP Why? Do you think you talk too much?
VIK I said I would talk for free because I enjoy talking. I love spinning tales, and love hearing one, too. In my family they say I talk so much because I used to go hunting with my father and my grandfather, back in Ceará. My gradfather lived there. And there they have a rule: if you kill an animal, you've got to eat it. They weren't good hunters, so they would give me the rifle and off I'd go, with a dog called Menino ("Boy"). Once I saw a big bird on a trunk, it looked like a magnificent pheasant. I aimed, pulled the trigger and knocked down the animal. The dog went to fetch it, and then I saw it was a parrot. I tried to hide it, but my father and grandfather were approaching and had seen everything. My grandmother cooked the parrot and I had to eat it. My family say that's why I talk so much: because I ate that parrot. [laughter]. And so I did. It tasted like chicken.