Lucas Samaras: Offerings from a Restless Soul features over 60 works drawn from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's rich collection of the highly idiosyncratic body of work made by Lucas Samaras. The Metropolitan Museum's installation includes a new gift of 17 objects that range from Samaras' abstract work of the 1960s to his recent digitally based pieces. Designed with the input of the artist, the installation will be installed in both the north and south mezzanine galleries in the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for modern and contemporary art.
Born in 1936 in Greece, Samaras grew up amidst the traumas of World War II and the Greek Civil War. He moved to the United States as an adolescent, settling first in New Jersey before moving to New York City. He was a key participant in many of the early "Happenings" staged by Claes Oldenburg, Allan Kaprow, and Jim Dine. He was among the first artists to exploit the Polaroid photograph when it was introduced. Moreover, he is a skilled draftsman, painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and, most recently, a creator of brilliantly colored, phantasmagoric photographs that he has manipulated digitally.Samaras studied at New York's famed Stella Adler Conservatory for Acting in the late 1950s. Although he never became a professional actor, the black-and-white head shot he had taken for promotional purposes became fodder for his art. For a 1963 self-portrait, using one of his favorite implements, he impaled his visage in the head shot-with the exception of his eyes-with hundreds of pins. Between 1962 and 1989, Samaras made 135 highly complex box constructions. One early example, Box #10 (1963), is covered with pins, tiny springs, and colored yarn. Characteristic of his box constructions, Box #10 opens to reveal fantastic, sparkling objects in its many hidden compartments; additionally, when the tiny button on the underside of the lid is pulled, the familiar head shot is revealed-this time framed by rainbows of yarn.Videos