For half a decade, artist Lucas Samaras has been celebrated for his psychedelically distorted self-portraits. Now he has turned his lens on the art world with “Poses,” at the Pace Gallery (November 9 to December 24). Samaras began the project with casual head shots of family and friends, which he amped up with Day-Glo colors in Photoshop. “I had exhausted interest in my own face,” the famously reclusive artist says. “I wanted to see other people close up without having to live with them.” The resulting 106 images capture artists Jasper Johns and Robert Whitman, power figures such as Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry, and philanthropists like Agnes Gund. Cindy Sherman, another avatar of self-portraiture, gets red hair (far right), while her partner, rocker David Byrne, looks like he has stuck his finger in a light socket (near right). Throughout, Samaras says, he aimed for the feeling “you get in the movies when you see a face or an expression and you’re transported.”
Photos: Byrne: Pose 0444, 2010, pigment print; Sherman: Pose 0520, both ©Lucas Samaras, courtesy of the Pace Gallery
