Polaroid photography is one of those parts of analog life that Generation Z decided to embrace, even though it wasn’t very well. As with wired headphones, the technology was impressive when it first came out, but unlike vinyl records, there are more drawbacks than benefits. It’s also important to remember that when your favorite artists were using Polaroids, they were doing so because they found the medium to be futuristic. Andy Warhol was touring parties with Big Shot, and memoirs A woman asked him in 1980: “When are you going to Xerox, baby?”
“Lucas Samaras: Sitting, Standing, Walking, Looking” at the Art Institute of Chicago demonstrates that Samaras (1936-2024) was one of Polaroid’s most innovative artistic converts. Inspired largely by the museum’s own collection, supplemented by recent gifts from the Samaras estate, the exhibition brings together more than 40 works, with photographs displayed alongside selected sculptures, paintings and drawings. It also covers the arc from his earliest works, AutoPolaroids of 1969-1970, through his massive sit-down paintings of the late 1970s and his cut-out panoramas of the mid-1980s.
A notable piece of the show is the Samaras network Autopolaroid (1969/70). This predates Cindy Sherman Untitled movie clips (1977) by a good margin and are viewed as influential, sharing their playful exploration of identity as the artist dons wigs, make-up, expressions and props to conjure a cast of diverse black and white characters. But Polaroid offers a different flavour Movie clips. They were very interested in photography, supposedly shot by people like Richard Prince and Robert Longo, and featuring Hollywood-style design and framing. Samaras is about feeling crazy in your apartment alone.
Like AutoPolaroids, his Transformation photo 11/6/73 (1973) emphasized the strengths of the medium. Here, Samaras manipulates the 20 layers of a piece of Polaroid film with his fingers or his pen in a performance that results in something intense, damaged, and surreal in the perfect way.
But New Yorkers are as interested in real estate as we are in the sublime. in Still life (1978), the artist captures a cluttered kitchen table in his studio. The paintbrushes combine with the Café Bustelo, the plants and the sketch shot for the final image we now consider. This piece came about after Polaroid was invited to test a new 8 x 10 camera. This larger format meant it couldn’t handle emulsion the way he did with SX-70 prints, so Samaras had to do the conversion in front of the camera rather than on the print. The result is a disembodied head that appears to be roaring, a ferocious piece of chaos among all the others vying for your attention. No wonder Peter Schjeldahl described him as “the award-winning artist of narcissism.”
“Lucas Samaras: Sitting, standing, walking, looking“On display at the Art Institute of Chicago until July 20, 2026.
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