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Arts and Culture

Lucas Samaras, Doorway

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Lucas Samaras Doorway Full
All Photos By Gail

While Lucas Samaras’s Doorway is billed as a “Mirrored Room,” it isn’t actually a room that you can enter, as you can, say, a Mirrored Room installation by Yayoi Kusama. It is really more of, well, a Doorway: a Mirrored Cube inside of a Mirrored Shell that is open on the front and back ends, to allow view through. When I viewed this work at Pace Gallery on the final day of its exhibition, the open ends were roped off to prevent anyone from touching, walking on or accessing the work close up. Bummer. Continue reading Lucas Samaras, Doorway →

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Lucas Samaras, Book 4

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Lucas Samaras Book 4
Book 4, 1962: Book with Pins, Table Knife, Scissors, Razor Blade, Metal Foil, Piece of Glass and Plastic Rod (All Photos By Gail)

From MOMA Dot Org:

In 1960 Samaras began a series of Surrealist-inspired boxes filled with personal materials that he encrusted in needles, mirrors, shards of glass, and brightly colored beads. The boxes were followed by room–sized installations and subversive Polaroid self–portraits. Like Samaras’s boxes, Book is a multifaceted object and a miniature world in itself. Although it includes eight fictional narratives written by the artist between 1959 and 1967, it is not a storybook. Each thick amoeba–shaped page contains surprises, such as pop–ups, pockets, interlocking layers, foldouts, and hidden pamphlets. Samaras’s working maquette (scale model) for Book offers a glimpse of the handcrafted origin of this sculptural book.

Book 4 is part of the permanent collection at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art.

Lucas Samaras Book 4

Lucas Samaras Book 4