Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras | |
|---|---|
Λουκάς Σαμαράς | |
 Self-portrait, Photo-Transformation, Polaroid SX-70 print, 1973, Getty Museum | |
| Born | September 14, 1936 |
| Died | March 7, 2024 (aged 87) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Rutgers University |
| Known for | Photography, sculpture, printmaking |
Lucas Samaras (Greek: Λουκάς Σαμαράς; September 14, 1936 – March 7, 2024) was a Greek-born American photographer, sculptor, and painter.[1]
Early life and education
[edit]Samaras was born in Kastoria, Greece on September 14, 1936.[2] He studied at Rutgers University and befriended Allan Kaprow. Samaras participated as actor in Kaprow's Happenings while studying acting with Stella Adler.[3] Samaras posed for George Segal's plaster sculptures.[4] Claes Oldenburg, in whose Happenings he also participated, later referred to Samaras as one of the "Fluxus at Rutgers University" which also included Kaprow, Segal, George Brecht, Robert Whitman, Robert Watts, Geoffrey Hendricks, and Roy Lichtenstein.[citation needed]
Eventually Samaras found success as a visual artist and moved out of his parents' home after his 1961 exhibit “The Art of Assemblage” was shown in the Museum of Modern Art. Samaras stayed in New York and his dismantled bedroom was reinstalled in the Green Gallery. Samaras ever only hung his own art and that of Chuck Close in his New York apartment.[5]
Interior design
[edit]Samaras constructed room environments that contained elements from his own personal history.[6]
Self-portraits
[edit]His "Auto-Interviews" were a series of text works that were "self-investigatory" interviews.[7] The primary subject of his photographic work is his own self-image, generally distorted and mutilated. He worked with multi-media collages, and by manipulating the wet dyes in Polaroid photographic film to create what he calls "Photo-Transformations". Of the diverse nature and output of his body of work New York Times arts journalist Grace Glueck said in 1996 that "There appears to be not one Lucas Samaras, but several artists of that name”.[8]
Samaras was represented by Pace Gallery from 1965.[9] He represented Greece at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009 with the multi-installation "PARAXENA" in the Greek Pavilion in the Giardini.[10] Samaras' sculpture Stiff Box 12 has been outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art since 1997.[11] He was the subject of several portraits by Chuck Close, in media including painting, daguerreotype, and tapestry.[12]
Samaras died of complications from a fall in New York City on March 7, 2024, at the age of 87.[13]
References
[edit]
- ^ "Lucas Samaras (American, born Greece, 1936) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved 2021-08-09.
- ^ Samaras, Lucas, 1936
- ^ M.H. Miller (20 February 2025). "Inside the Sky-High New York Apartment That Became an Artist's Entire World Photographs by Andrew Moore". NYTimes.
- ^ Stiles, p. 290.
- ^ M.H. Miller (20 February 2025). "Inside the Sky-High New York Apartment That Became an Artist's Entire World Photographs by Andrew Moore". NYTimes.
- ^ Id.
- ^ See Stiles, p. 349, for "Another Autointerview," 1971.
- ^ "Lucas Samaras, Artist Whose Unclassifiable Works Evoked Strange Psychologies, Dies at 87". 7 March 2024.
- ^ LUCAS SAMARAS: Filthy Artist, Not a Prince. 032c, December 1, 2009.
- ^ "Lucas Samaras at the 53rd International Art Exhibition la Biennale di Venezia / E-flux". Archived from the original on 2009-05-31. Retrieved 2009-06-04.
- ^ "Exchange: Stiff Box 12". exchange.umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-04-27.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Stone, Nick. Chuck Close: Lucas (press release). Retrieved 4-27-2011. - ^ Kennedy, Randy (2024-03-07). "Lucas Samaras, Artist Who Was His Own Canvas, Dies at 87". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-07.
General references
[edit]- Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, editors. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. University of California Press, 1996.
- Jo Applin, '"Materialized Secrets": Samaras, Hesse and the Small Scale Box', Object, no. 4, 2002
Further reading
[edit]- Goysdotter, Moa (2013). Impure Vision: American Staged Art Photography of the 1970s. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. ISBN 9789187351006.
External links
[edit]
- 1936 births
- 2024 deaths
- Postmodern artists
- 20th-century American painters
- American male painters
- 21st-century American painters
- American photographers
- People from Kastoria
- Rutgers University alumni
- Greek emigrants to the United States
- Greek contemporary artists
- 20th-century American printmakers
- 20th-century American sculptors
- 20th-century American male artists
- 21st-century American sculptors