What Do You See? The Collection of Sidney Rothberg, Part I

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.