‘Chicken Wire Box #19,’ 1972, acrylic paint on chicken wire. Lucas Samaras was one of those who made us think in new terms about what constitutes art. [The Estate of Lucas Samaras/Courtesy of Pace Gallery]
In an “auto-interview” by Greek-born American artist Lucas Samaras, published in the 1971 edition of the “Samaras Album,” his supposed interlocutor begins a sentence by saying, “I thought art was…” and Samaras replies, “Think again.” Narcissistic, incendiary, obsessive, pioneering and enigmatic, Samaras, who died last year at the age of 87, was one of those artists who, by treating themselves as the main subject, made us think in new terms about what constitutes art.
I was referred to the edition by Artemis Baltoyanni, founder of The Intermission Gallery, who, in collaboration with Pace Gallery, will present the exhibition “Lucas Samaras: Master of the Uncanny,” bringing together a series of works that cover the entire spectrum of his career. “We have been discussing organizing an exhibition with Pace for two years, various names were put on the table, I asked for Samaras and, from the moment we agreed, I started reading everything that has been written about him or by him,” she tells Kathimerini. “This is the most exciting part of organizing an exhibition,” she adds.
The exhibition is a retrospective, including works from the 1960s to 2010, including the auto polaroids and photo-transformations, examples from the artist’s “Box” series, alongside a selection of chromatically dense mosaic paintings, fabric reconstructions, and pastel works on paper. “I feel particularly honored to show these works in the gallery, especially my favorite ‘Boxes’ and polaroids, 20 years after his last solo exhibition in Greece,” Baltoyanni says.
A retrospective exhibition was also held in 2005, organized by the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation at the National Gallery, curated by Katerina Koskina, which was accompanied by an excellent catalogue. What has impressed her the most about the artist from everything that she read?
“I’ll tell you something that I haven’t read, but I’m thinking about it more and more. I find common ground between his own ‘Mirrored Room’ and the work of [Japanese artist] Yayoi Kusama, and not only there – even with what Kusama does with the patterns that occupy the entire surface, Samaras did the same in his home. He showed an interest in this pattern that moves away from the purely artistic act and becomes a craft. I’m also impressed by how much he was concerned with beauty, external appearance, and how he tried to transform the ugly into beautiful, like a semi-erect penis, as he mentioned somewhere. He worked with his body and through the exploration of himself he discovered the world,” she says, adding that in an interview with Demosthenes Davvetas in 1983, the artist admitted that he admired his body, showed it off, offered it like a prostitute.
In the same answer, he talked about the guilt that his Greek Orthodox Christian upbringing gave him, about the fear and disgust that his nudity caused him growing up. But he exorcised all of this through his art. Ultimately, though, what was his connection to Greece? “He described himself as American, he stayed behind in the US when his whole family made the decision to return to Greece in 1964; that says something. On the other hand, he spoke about the influence that Byzantine icons had on his work, he knew that he carried a different heritage,” Baltoyanni explains.
On the ocean liner
Samaras, who was born in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, in 1936, boarded the ocean liner Nea Hellas in 1948 with his mother to travel from Piraeus to the US. He could not speak English, he could not easily socialize with his peers, so he turned to painting. In 1955 he won a scholarship to the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. In 1956 he made his first self-portrait and the following year he started working with pastels, participating in his first “Happenings,” and in 1962 the minimalist Donald Judd described his work as “a general threat to the pure boredom that dominates our days.”
This was followed by exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and now art had found its new enfant terrible, a voice that no one could interpret or classify. How was his success received in Greece?
“I don’t think Greece was ready to accept Samaras’ art at the time,” the gallerist and art adviser says. How does she think his work is understood by a young person today? “What Samaras did with auto polaroids is what a youngster does today with his iPhone. He cannot understand how radical it was for Samaras to turn the camera on himself, that he himself became his material, that he was a man and positioned himself that way. Even the lighting he used, showing his personal space. There are many things that he familiarized us with. For me, he is among the three most important Greeks in contemporary art, those who had an international impact and influence: Takis, [Jannis] Kounellis and Samaras,” Baltoyanni says.
At the end of the day, how would she describe him? “He was an ebullient personality, this slanted view of things bubbled up from within him. He was a different person, who was not afraid to manage and communicate his individuality.”
The exhibition “Lucas Samaras: Master of the Uncanny,” will be presented at The Intermission Gallery from September 25 – December 20, at Polidefkous Street 37A, in Piraeus. Hours: Wednesday to Saturday noon to 8 p.m. For more, see www.theinterrmission.art.
