Box #89 (Primary Title)
Lucas Samaras, American, born Greece, born 1936 (Artist)
“Instead of going to an art store, we’d go to the hardware store, or to the five-and-dime . . . I took some pins and glue and saw immediately that it made fantastic textural sculpture . . . It connected with my past too—that silver tradition and Byzantine gold.” —Lucas Samaras
Unconventional materials, craft techniques, and obsessive modes of composing characterize Samaras’s work. One of his signature forms is the elaborately decorated box; he made a series of 135 of them between 1962 and 1989. Beckoning and threatening in equal measure, the boxes have been likened to reliquaries and fetish objects.
Box #89 contains an assortment of keepsakes surrounding Samaras’s image beneath a glass pyramid and chicken wire. A small silver-lidded container holding cut-up black-and-white photographs of a male nude seems to promise further revelation. Ultimately, however, the work offers enigma, allusion, and provocation—hallmarks of Samaras’s self-referential art.
Transformed Reality, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, February 18 – May 16, 1993
Contemporary Sculpture in the Collection of the VMFA, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, June 25 – August 11, 1991
The Golden Door: Artist Immigrants of America, 1876 - 1976, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, May 20 – October 20, 1976
Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.