Lucas Samaras
Untitled

Untitled
Untitled
Untitled
ArtistAmerican, born Greece, 1936–2024
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Untitled
Date1978
PlaceUnited States
MediumDye diffusion transfer print
DimensionsImage: 9 7/16 × 7 1/2 in. (24 × 19 cm)
Sheet: 10 7/8 × 8 7/16 in. (27.6 × 21.4 cm)
Credit LineMuseum purchase funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Polaroid Foundation
Object number79.95
Non exposé

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Department
Photography
Special Collections
Object Type
DescriptionSince the late 1960s, Lucas Samaras has created large-scale Polaroid self-portraits, assuming a wide variety of poses and personas. Though his final work is photographic, the composition comes together through a combination of photography, painting, installation, assemblage, drawing, and sculpture. Here, the composition appears to be creating itself. Clippings climb the wall and scissors hang ready in mid-air. Amid this dizzying array of objects and images, Samaras’s portrait is hidden on the upper left, the scissors pointing menacingly toward it as if the artist himself will be sacrificed for the art. “Self-investigation…is as noble a search as any other,” Samaras said. “I have always shared what I have learned about myself with the public.”
Provenance[PaceWildenstein, New York]; purchased by MFAH, 1979.
Exhibition History"Photo-collage," Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, August 25–October 3, 1982.

"Past/Present: Photography from the Permanent Collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston," Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, December 8, 1991–February 9, 1992.

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
no apparent inscriptions

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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