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Lucas Samaras Biography

Lucas Samaras (born September 14, 1936) is an artist who was born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures. Claes Oldenburg, in whose Happenings he also participated, later referred to Samaras as one of the "New Jersey school," which also included Kaprow, Segal, George Brecht, Robert Whitman, Robert Watts, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. Samaras previously worked in painting, sculpture, and performance art, before beginning work in photography. He subsequently constructed room environments that contained elements from his own personal history. His "Auto-Interviews" were a series of text works that were "self-investigatory" interviews. The primary subject of his photographic work is his own self-image, generally distorted and mutilated. He has worked with multi-media collages, and by manipulating the wet dyes in Polaroid photographic film to create what he calls "Photo-Transformations".

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Lucas Samaras Quotes

If an artist does not have an erotic involvement with everything that he sees, he may as well give up. To be a human being may a very messy thing, but to be an artist is something else entirely, because art is religion, art is sex, art is society. Art is everything.

Art, Entirely, Giving Up, Human, Sex

The selfie era offers a big opening: everybody can do it; nowadays even five-year-olds know how to take a nude self-portrait.

Era, Eras, Know, Self, Selfie, Years

I am my own investigation territory.

Territory, Investigation, My Own

Making art is dealing with people on your own terms. The ideal way of using people is using them like clay, but that being out of the question, except for lunatics and leaders, art is a good alternative.

Art, Except, Leader, Making, Terms, Using People

At any rate, when I began photographing myself, I could place myself in poses that had not been investigated by other artists. It was an area other artists hadn't touched. Then, I went on from there. I manipulated my image - distorting it, brutalizing it. People thought I was mad, but I felt I had to tell these things. It gave me a kind of excitement.

Artist, Investigated, Mad, People, Photographing, Things

The Greek word for box is kouti which also means stupid.

Box, Greek, Kouti, Mean, Stupid

. . . I started photographing myself, and found that I could see portions of myself that I had never seen before. Since I face just my face in the mirror, I know pretty much what it's like. When I see a side-view I'm not used to it, and find it peculiar. . . So, photographing myself and discovering unknown territories of my surface self causes an interesting psychological confrontation.

Mirrors, Self, Views, Like, Surface

I'm looking back at what I did and how it works. In a sense I'm waiting to see how people will respond. I'm waiting to see how you respond, without asking me to tell you what I think about it, because it is your job to give me an idea of how you go about thinking about this work. And if it's too absurd then, you know, I'll kick you out!

Thinking, People, Giving, Job, Sense

You don’t have to say that nature is aware of your existence, that God knows you are here. The camera gives you proof that you have lived at least once.

Giving, God, Joy, Knows, Lived, Suffering

I was my own Peeping Tom. Because of the absence of people I could do anything, and if it wasn't good I could destroy it without damaging myself in the presence of others. In that sense I was my own clay. I formulated myself, I mated with myself, and I gave birth to myself. And my real self was the product - the polaroids.

Real, Self, People, Gave, Clay, Formulated