Lucas Samaras

Lucas Samaras (born September 14, 1936) is a Greek-American artist.

Lucas Samaras
Self-portrait, Photo-Transformation, Polaroid SX-70 print, 1973, Getty Museum
Born (1936-09-14) September 14, 1936
Kastoria, Greece
NationalityAmerican
EducationRutgers University
Known forPhotography, Sculpture, Printmaking

Life and work

Samaras was born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures.[1] Claes Oldenburg, in whose Happenings he also participated, later referred to Samaras as one of the "New Jersey school," which also included Kaprow, Segal, George Brecht, Robert Whitman, Robert Watts, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. Samaras previously worked in painting, sculpture, and performance art, before beginning work in photography. He subsequently constructed room environments that contained elements from his own personal history.[2] His "Auto-Interviews" were a series of text works that were "self-investigatory" interviews.[3] The primary subject of his photographic work is his own self-image, generally distorted and mutilated. He has worked with multi-media collages, and by manipulating the wet dyes in Polaroid photographic film to create what he calls "Photo-Transformations".

Samaras represented Greece at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, The Venice Biennale (June 7- November 22, 2009) with the multi-installation "PARAXENA" in the Greek Pavilion in the Giardini.[4]

Samaras has been the subject of several portraits by Chuck Close, in media including painting, daguerreotype, and tapestry.[5]

The Catalogue Raisonné of his works is being prepared by the Wildenstein Institute.

His sculpture Stiff Box 12 has been outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art since 1997.[6]

Notes
  1. Stiles, p. 290.
  2. Id.
  3. See Stiles, p. 349, for "Another Autointerview," 1971.
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2009-05-31. Retrieved 2009-06-04.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-04-27.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) Stone, Nick. Chuck Close: Lucas (press release). Retrieved 4-27-2011.
  6. "Exchange: Stiff Box 12". exchange.umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-25.

References
  • 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
  • Goysdotter, Moa (2013). Impure Vision: American Staged Art Photography of the 1970s. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. ISBN 9789187351006.
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