where ideas come from

I saw this Shell ad on "The Economist" magazine. It reminded me of something I had seen before but I couldn't quite remember where.
Determined to find the name of the artist who inspired this ad, I asked the help of my friend PL. He's a brilliant art director, and with his photographic memory, he quickly pointed me to this, the cover of the New York Times Magazine, Year in Ideas 2004 (subscribers only, sorry)......and to this, the cover of the Communication Arts, Photography Annual, from August 2005.Basically the same pictures.
But I still wanted to know the name of the artist who inspired this all, so I searched for "visual complexity", and from this site, I finally found the original source: British artist Jeremy Deller, who won the Turner Prize in 2004 with his "History of the World" mural. See below. I was amused to see that the jacket and the sweaters are almost the same color.And here the print version in black & white.