{"data":{"id":"769","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":769,"topgoose_id":2802,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":769,"title":"Chair Transformation Number 12","display_artist_text":"Lucas Samaras","display_date":"1969–1970","accession_number":"70.1573","dimensions":"Overall: 41 7/8 × 36 × 12 7/8 in. (106.4 × 91.4 × 32.7 cm)","medium":"Painted plywood","department":"collection","classification":"Sculpture","credit_line":"Purchase, with funds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc.","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eLucas Samaras, \u003cem\u003eChair Transformation Number 12\u003c/em\u003e, 1969–1970. Painted plywood, overall: 41 7/8 × 36 × 12 7/8 in. (106.4 × 91.4 × 32.7 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc. 70.1573\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eThis work belongs to a series of twenty-five \u003ci\u003eChair Transformations\u003c/i\u003e (seven of which are owned by the Whitney) that Lucas Samaras created in 1969-1970. Having previously “transformed” other utilitarian conveniences such as eyeglasses, knives, and scissors, Samaras altered his chairs with a perverse, witty assortment of materials including plastic flowers, lengths of colored yarn, wool, tin foil, and plastic wire. The “transformation” of \u003ci\u003eChair No. 12\u003c/i\u003e into a swirling structure covered with stippled, vibrantly-hued brushwork evokes an array of earlier modernist movements—from Pointillism and Fauvism to the biomorphic abstraction of Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist painting. Samaras has remarked that his \u003ci\u003eChairs\u003c/i\u003e and other \u003ci\u003eTransformation\u003c/i\u003e series negate “the possibility of a single Platonic ideal acting as a measure for any physical thing.” Indeed, these chairs defy their intended purpose; most of them are not structurally sound and cannot be sat in. They function instead as poetic surrogates for an absent body, imaginatively—and often humorously—asserting their presence as works of art.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"A freestanding multicolored looping sculpture with a small round table-like shelf in a gallery.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T15:42:13.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T11:59:33.663-05:00","images":[{"id":92355,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/769/70_1573_vw1_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"1150","type":"artist"}]}}}}