Lucas Samaras
Untitled

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Artist Lucas Samaras (American, born Greece, 1936–2024)American, 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

Not on view

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Photographs by LGBTQ Artists

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

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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