$21,590
Estimate: $10,000 - $15,000
What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I
Auction: February 27, 2024 at 12 PM ET
Signed ‘Samaras’ and dated ‘11/8/84’ verso, Polaroid collage
10 3/4 x 32 in. (27.3 x 81.3cm)
Pace MacGill, New York, New York.
Christie's, New York, sale of February 20, 2002, lot 184.
Acquired directly from the above sale.
The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
On the surface, the three works by Lucas Samaras in the Sidney Rothberg Collection: Panorama, 1984 (Lot 84), Reconstruction #104, 1979 (Lot 101), and Untitled #2, 1982 (Lot 117) appear so divergent stylistically that they may not even be considered to be created by the same artist in the same time period. Reconstruction #104 is a large-scale, hand sewn fabric collage, with patterns, colors and textures converging and connecting in all different directions within the picture plane. A collage of cut and pieced Polaroid self- portraits, Panorama shows a figure stepping up into the light as he moves from left to right across the collage. Untitled #2, a colored pencil drawing on black paper, splits a figure’s face into two joining heads, with three eyes, two noses and a sunset landscape bridging the forehead.
The three works perfectly encapsulate Samaras’s project: they are diverse and experimental, they engage with perception and the psychology of the self, and they illustrate the artist’s hands-on engagement with a multitude of mediums and artistic approaches. Pushing boundaries of categorization and defying relegation to a specific artistic movement, Samaras manipulates the conventions of self-portraiture to explore the very act of seeing itself.