This iron-overloaded little hedgehog shields its inner self like a proper knight shields his lady. No one can access the fictional narratives the artist wrote in it, so one starts to wonder what Lucas Samaras hid inside. The Big Secret of Eternal Life? The Secrets of the Universe? What is the message to the brave one who is capable to reach the words despite the menacing pins, broken glasses, the knife, the scissor, the razor blade, the metal foil, and the plastic rod?
The MOMA states that this object is a miniature world. Humans can protect their worlds very threateningly, like this thorny book does. How many people do we show our real selves in our life? Not many really. We constantly keep ourselves from the others because of the fear of disillusionment and ridicule. Thus we hide our fragile souls and minds behind needle-walls and blade-bars. One has to have guts to scrape through these thorn bushes.
In Samaras’ case, hiding his personal world means he hides the pain of WW2 memories when he and his family had suffered a great deal. As a little boy, he only saw devastation, death and misery in the world. The aggressive looking book could be a reference to the horrible violence he witnessed.
Lucas Samaras once said in an interview, “Whatever I do has to be well done. And it even has to approach an area of beauty rather than ugliness. It can be rough, but it has to be beautiful.” Truly it is beautiful no matter how frightening the book cover is. The horde of pins create a fine pattern, a thick texture that one would like to stroke, because one piece of pin is sharp but hundreds of overlying pins give the illusion of a glittering sea.
Lucas Samaras created more dangerous books and boxes in the 60s, as part of a surreal series. Book 6, for example, is wide open with its pages full of needles. Book 8 is an open spiky book too, with little objects in the middle of the thorny pages like a tormented soul’s eviscerated nook.
The originally Macedonian, but New-Yorker-in-heart, Lucas Samaras is now eighty years old. He painted weird self-portraits, performed art, tried photography, and explored many materials and concepts of all kinds. He is a real visual artist. He never followed any trendy art style thus his works cannot be labeled with any art movements, only with the artist’s own uniqueness. Some people call him wizard. So the words he hid in Book 4 must be a spell.
Despite all the efforts of the artist, I still believe books have to be read. Even if you risk being hurt. It is worth the scars. So Lucas Samaras can attach as many pins and knives to that book as he wants, I choose to open it anyway. I want to know what is hidden inside.
I have to hurry though, because the papers are turning yellow, the three tiny pins which keep the book open are trembling and I will miss the essence of something beautiful, and at the end, when all the pages crumble and escape the letters, nothing will last, only the iron pins, the scissor, the knife, the razor blade, and the regret.
