Lucas Samaras...

Lucas Samaras

Fig 1. Lucas Samaras, Untitled March 2, 1965; Faux-jewel encrusted, velvet – lined, hinged leather box housing antique English meat carving set with collaged photographs on handles, 2 ½ x 15 7/8 x 5 ½ in. (6.4 x 40.3 x 14cm) CLOSED
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Gift of Mrs. Andrew P. Fuller, 1976

Lucas Samaras is a sculptor and experimental artist, He constructs narrative boxes with found objects; the boxes are used to convey the diverse elements of the self. In ‘’Untitled 1965’’ (Fig. 1) Samaras attempts to convey contrasting ideas of horror and charm with the glistening, bejewelled outside of the box with the more sinister aspect of the carving set laid on the velvet lined inside of the box. He incorporates objects of fetish with more warm, comforting, family images such as his Mother. This is reflected in ‘Untitled 1965’ (Fig. 1) where the box is described as conveying the;

“‘beautiful’ mother, available to the senses,…’’ while the disturbing strange inside of the box conveys her ‘’enigmatic inside which must be construed by imagination.’’

Samaras imaginatively uses …the destructive carving tools to pry open her body and enter it again to return to her womb. If creative imagination involves projective identification, as it invariably does, then Samaras identifies with the beautiful Mother – His face magically appears (surprise) in many of the rhapsodically bejewelled mother boxes – in effect penetrating her enigmatic inside with his destructive carving tools while signalling her intense aesthetic impact on the senses. He’s a jack-in-the-box trickster, gazing at us from the fatal security of the maternal unconscious.’’


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Prather, Marla; Kuspit, Donald. (2003). ‘Unrepentant Ego: The self – portraits of Lucas Samaras.’ New York, Publications and New Media department at the Whitney Museum of American Art.