Dinner #2

Since the early 1960s, Lucas Samaras has made self-depiction the focal point of his practice. Active in painting, sculpture, assemblage, and performance art, Samaras has frequently invoked Surrealist-inspired motifs and ideas in his art, with many works possessing unnerving or even threatening qualities. Dinner #2 contains no human figure. But a human presence is strongly implied by the subject—a peculiar dinner setting. As viewers, we become involved in the work by our reaction to this unsavory-looking meal, a concoction of bent and broken bits of glass, plastic, and metal. “I’m never interested in ambiguous response, ” Samaras has said. “Rather a positive negative . . . touch or not touch, the quality of seducing-repelling.”