By Hannah Bernstein
The New Museum has unveiled a raunchy, political, and critical retrospective of 56-year-old Sarah Lucas, now one of the UK’s most influential artists. Through the exhibit, Lucas challenges how we define art and explores themes of gender and sexuality. Lucas does this by using many mediums including, but not limited to, film, photography, sculpture, crafts.
The show is named Au Naturel after one of Lucas’ sculpture pieces. The sculpture consists of a dirty old mattress that she found on the side of a road, two melons and a bucket which are emblematic of the female body and a cucumber and two oranges to allude to the male form. The work consists of real food, like many of her other works. The anti-establishment artist was at one point in need of resources, so she had to rely on easily affordable items for her work.. Even as she’s earned success, she continues to use biodegradable items in her work. These food items must be periodically replaced.
Pictured to the left is the creation of a piece made especially for the New Museum. Sarah Lucas invited women and men in “drag or dressed as giant phalluses” to the museum. Their job: to throw 1,000 eggs at a white wall. The egg remains stained yellow from the yolk and a few eggshells stick to the wall or lie at the base of the work. When asked about the work, Lucas responded “It’s absolutely not about making a mess. It’s about being really neat and making the most beautiful egg painting.”
Much of Lucas’ photography is composed of self-portraits. The image shown to the right is one such example. She continues her motif of eggs to call attention to her breasts and her femininity. However, her gaze commands attention and her widespread sitting position denotes a sense of power and entitlement. In so doing, Lucas is challenging society’s preconceived notions of femininity.
While the New Museum’s general mission is to expose young artists to a broader audience; this exhibit showing the lifetime work of 55-year-old Sarah Lucas serves a different function. The exhibit’s wildly original and comedic message is incredibly relevant and important in current times, which lead the New Museum to bring Sarah Lucas to a New York audience. Her comedy and questioning of identity are entirely refreshing and serve as a counterbalance to the mainstream misogyny that largely comes from our current president who has publicly called women a variety of insults, including “fat”, “disgusting”, and “horse face”.