Riley Hooker
2009, printed 2010
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
inkjet print
Dimensions
image: 81.28 × 45.72 cm (32 × 18 in.) sheet: 91.44 × 50.8 cm (36 × 20 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Kimberly and John F. Zwetchkenbaum
Accession Number
2013.144.6
Art Historical Context
**Riley Hooker**, a striking inkjet print by Lucas Samaras from 2009 (printed 2010), captures the ongoing fascination with identity and perception. Samaras, a pioneering Greek-American artist born in 1934, rose to prominence in the 1960s with his experimental "AutoPolaroids"—intimate, distorted self-portraits that blurred line between photography and abstraction. This work, measuring 81.28 × 45.72 cm (32 × 18 in.) in its image area, reflects his evolution into digital-era techniques while maintaining a signature psychological intensity. As a photograph classified in the National Gallery of Ar...
About the Artist
Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras, a Greek-born American artist renowned for his boundary-defying explorations of self and identity, was born on September 14, 1936, in Kastoria, Greece. Immigrating to the United States with his family in 1948 amid the turmoil of World War II and the Greek Civil War, he settled in West New York, New Jersey. Samaras pursued studies at Rutgers University from 1955 to 1959, where he befr...