Lucas Samaras, a multi-disciplinary artist known for the strange and often violent transformations he made to ordinary objects in his sculptures, and in the self-portraits that dominate his output, emerged in the 1960s with confrontational installations and performances. 

One of the most experimental artist of his generation, Samaras can be described as an avant-gardist and theoretician who embraced Dada, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism in his work. During the early years of his career, when he was mainly involved with sculpture, photography, and happenings, he turned to drawing in pastel. During four successive phases between 1958 and 1983, he made more than 200 small works in what he called “colored dust.” A group of 48 of these intimate pieces are currently on view at the Morgan Library & Museum. The artist, who participated in the installation, also created a wallpaper background digitally composed of myriad photographic images of plant and animal forms.

His earliest pastels, made between 1958 and 1962 were done on cheap construction paper and reflect his interest in the paintings of Henri Matisse, Josef Albers and Hans Hoffman as well as in pop culture, including porn magazines. In a 1961 piece done with shimmering reds and oranges, he riffed on the still-lifes Matisse had done in Nice between the wars, adding metallic substances to the mix. 

In the mid-‘60s Samaras turned to geometric abstraction, translating themes from large-scale Minimalism and Pop Art paintings into hard-edge forms on the small pages he used for his pastels. He also began using only black bristol board, a better quality surface that intensified the shimmering qualities of the pastel pigments. 

After a hiatus of nearly ten years, Samaras returned to pastel with an intensity that rivals his production in Polaroid, and is clearly influenced by the NASA space program. Three pieces from August 1974 evoke views of cloud formations over Earth as seen from space. The patterns and colors then become the background of a sheet geometrically divided into views from orbit and from splashdown.

These motifs continue to inform a group of psychedelic interiors with disembodied eyes, and opaque windows that promise no escape. While self-portraits appear in each section of the show, the artist has kept the best for last. Among a group of 12 pastels done between 1981 and 1983, which includes lovers suspended in a killing embrace, are seven Heads that appear to unmask the inner workings of the artist’s being with a heightened intensity matched by the extreme coloration he was able to achieve in his “dreams in dust.”

Dreams in Dust: The Pastels of Lucas Samaras continues through August 21 at The Morgan Library & Museum. Info
On Friday, July 15^th, Margaret Holben Ellis, Director of the Thaw Conservation Center and Lindsey Tine, Assistant Paper Conservator, will give a gallery talk at 1 pm. 225 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info

Images, Row 1: Left: Lucas Samaras, Untitled, July 16, 1961; center: Lucas Samaras, Untitled, May 30, 1960; right: Lucas Samaras, Untitled, July 16, 1961. All © Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery. Row 2: Left: Lucas Samaras, Untitled, August 11, 1974; center: Lucas Samaras, Head #142, July 14, 1981; right: Lucas Samaras, Untitled, August 14, 1974. All © Lucas Samaras, courtesy Pace Gallery.

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