Lucas Samaras

unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, mounted, framed, Buhl Collection and Guggenheim Museum exhibition labels on the reverse, 1990

Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, 1993

New York, Thread Waxing Space, Collection in Context: Selected Contemporary Photographs of Hands from the Collection of Henry M. Buhl, September - October 1996, and 8 other national and international venues through 1999 (see Appendix 1)

New York, Guggenheim Museum, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection, June - September 2004, and 4 other international venues through 2007 (see Appendix 1)

West Palm Beach, Norton Museum of Art, A Show of Hands: Photographs and Sculpture from the Buhl Collection, January - March 2008

Marianne Courville, Collection in Context: Selected Contemporary Photographs of Hands from the Collection of Henry M. Buhl (New York, 1996), pl. 38 (this print)

Jennifer Blessing, Speaking with Hands: Photographs from The Buhl Collection (Guggenheim Foundation, 2004), pp. 149 and 245 (this print)

This vibrant Polaroid print is in generally excellent condition. The colors are saturated, the range of red, blue, and green hues is striking, and there is no apparent fading. Upon close examination in raking light, a soft, one-inch linear impression is visible above the sitter's shoulder in the lower left quadrant. A few scattered fingerprints on the surface of the print are also visible upon very close examination.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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The multi-talented Samaras, whose explorations in sculpture, painting, drawing, and film in the 1960s and 1970s marked him as one of the most fundamentally experimental artists of his generation, was untrained as a photographer.  The Polaroid camera, with its instant delivery of a finished print, allowed him to work alone in his home studio and see the results immediately.  Early work with black-and-white Polaroids lead to the truly groundbreaking Photo-Transformations, color SX-70 self-portraits whose emulsion Samaras would manipulate by hand.  In the 1980s, Samaras was granted use of Polaroid's 20-by-24-inch camera, which at one point in 1980 was loaned to him at his New York apartment.  The unique photograph offered here was made with this camera.

In his work with Polaroids, Samaras is his own subject: he performs as both photographer and sitter, using his body as an object to be explored, shaped, and often distorted, first through pose and then through manipulation of the medium.  These tableaux vivants are magnetic, a mysterious world in which the artist separates himself from his own face and limbs and creates a new reality.  ‘For me, looking in the mirror produces a sense of wonder,’ Samaras told John Gruen in an ArtNews interview in 1976.  ‘I say, “Who is that?”  I look at my hand . . . and say “What is that?”’ (quoted in Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on Their Art, edited by Brooks Johnson, Aperture 2004, p. 286).

In the present image Samaras also demonstrates his talent at lighting.  With colored gels intended for theatrical use, Samaras creates in this image dramatic modulations and saturated passages of color, all enhanced by the Polacolor process.  No less dramatic is the artist himself, who peers with demonic intensity.