when shamen make boxes...

i recently picked up a small group of exhibition catalogs from the early 1970's, one of which was from an exhibition of the boxes of lucas samaras from a show at the museum contemporary art chicago, 1971. i've always been a fan of samaras's early box pieces, particularly the ones that are covered with pins and the ones that use colored yarn to generate patterns. i hadn't seen the two above with the birds on them, which obviously connect his work with joseph cornell for reasons beyond the sharing of birds and box forms... mainly how their works feel so completely personal, hermetic, eerie, homespun, and genuinely weird (and they were also both pretty darn good at being genuinely creepy.)

while cornell's boxes have had a wonderful resurgence of relevance of late, i haven't heard many folks talking about samaras's early work in relation to younger contemporary artists who seem to be exploiting a lot of the same materials and aesthetic - beads, feathers, pins, yarn, craft, funk, mirrors, etc. i think it's high time for this seminal work to be considered in relation to a lot of what is going on now, as well as taken on its own idiosyncratic terms. like ree morton's work, samaras's boxes seem to have come out of nowhere (and remember, frank stella didn't start using feathers and glitter until the 1980's). i have to admit i think these things are pretty great.

here some of samaras's words from interview excerpts in the catalog:

...samaras had wanted to be a priest "and be in contact with death, ghosts, shadows, churches, oil, icons, jewels, costumes, music, punishment, incense, bones, devil, angels, magic."

...so in the boxes are deposited memories of childhood illness which he can also recall verbally: "stethoscope, oral-anal-armpit thermometer, antipyrene pills, emetics, douches, rubber tubes, glass vials, flouroscopes, cotton, steel contraptions, scissors, tweezers, operations, smells."

..."artworks must have more than one side or presence. i find high erotic content in things iridescent, sparkling, fragile, sharp, oily, hairy, pimply, fluffy, dendritic, elastic, pulsating. i love mirrors, shadows, vortexes, lightning, razzle-dazzle, twistedness, and nausea, but all of these things with control."