Sitting

Description

Lucas Samaras, a versatile artist with roots in Pop Art and Surrealism, has turned the camera on himself since the late 1960s, with the Polaroid, or instant color photograph, his preferred medium. His self-titled AutoPolaroids elevate and reclaim a popular technology and express an obsession with the self not unlike that unleashed by the advent of camera phones. Samaras enhances his photographs with filters, scratches, manipulation of chemicals, and, as in this example, ink dots to create what he calls “visual excitement.” The majority of his work portrays his nude body, so it is noteworthy to see him here fully clothed, posing next to a nude woman whose identity is obscured by line drawings.

Sitting

Lucas Samaras

October 17, 1978

Accession Number

118904

Medium

Internal dye diffusion transfer print

Dimensions

Image: 24 × 19 cm (9 1/2 × 7 1/2 in.); Paper: 27.5 × 21.4 cm (10 7/8 × 8 7/16 in.)

Classification

color photograph

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill