IN 1988, THE artist Lucas Samaras moved into the 62nd floor of what was then a new white-glove condo building on West 56th Streetgvg777, an 814-foot-tall concrete high-rise that real estate agents have since named CitySpire. The block, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, is another fairly nondescript corporate street in Midtown Manhattan; perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that Samaras, who died last year at the age of 87, lived here at all.

One of the most elusive and difficult-to-categorize artists of the past century, who had, in the words of the curator Dianne Perry Vanderlip, an “impenetrable mystique,” Samaras created art in nearly every conceivable medium — sculpture, photography, jewelry, furniture, painting, writing, Photoshop collage — though his subject was almost always himself. Many of his works are self-portraits, which he began making as a teenager and continued until his death. He rendered himself in paint, Polaroids, 16-millimeter film and pastels; he did so while wearing makeup and wigs, bearded or cleanly shaven, fully nude or in a double-breasted overcoat with a fur collar. These works cover the 3,200-square-foot apartment’s walls. During a visit last fall, a representative from Pace Gallery, Samaras’s longtime dealer, pulled a black binder from a shelf, one among dozens lined up in an orderly row,superace88 app to reveal hundreds more self-portraits, intricately etched in pencil.

Andrew Moore

But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

His debunked claims about Haitian migrants stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, helped stir a firestorm over immigration in that community, which has dealt with bomb threats and evacuations after Mr. Trump made his comments.

Samaras’s desk inside the former studio, with jars of the cheap materials that the artist favored.

Samaras liked to use inexpensive objects like yarn and clothespins in his sculptural works.

Drawers of more materials. Paper clips were another recurring theme …

… as in this sculpture, housed in a cabinet in Samaras’s apartment.

In every portrait, he’s alone, with a look somewhere between bewilderment and relief, giving the impression that he didn’t come by this solitude easily and that he protected it at all costs. Samaras never married or had children. He spent nearly all of his waking hours working, but he never employed an assistant. He didn’t learn to drive a car, but he liked to walk — especially around Central Park. (“The outdoors is a luxury and a drug,” he said in 1971 while explaining his fondness for staying in.) Arne Glimcher, 86, who founded Pace with his wife, Milly, and began working with Samaras in 1965, refers to the artist as one of his closest friends. In six decades, he never knew Samaras to so much as go on a date with another person. He was a self-described onanist.

ImageSamaras’s dining room. The apartment is entirely filled with his own work, as well as with furniture he designed himself. He created the oak-and-gray-laminate table and chairs and sewed the silver lamé curtains. He also painted the brightly colored border that lines the tops of the room’s walls. In the left corner is a maquette for his installation “Doorway” (1966/2007), currently on view at Dia Beacon in upstate New York. Credit...Andrew Moore

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