James Lee Byars (April 10, 1932, Detroit, Michigan – May 23, 1997, Cairo, Egypt) was an American conceptual artiste and pretend artist specializing in installations and sculptures, as competently as a self-considered mystic. He was best known for his use of personal esoteric motifs, and his creative persona that has been described as ‘half dandified trickster and half minimalist seer’.
Byars’ notable do something works include The Death of James Lee Byars and The Perfect Smile, and in terms of merged sculptures, the many letters he wrote that were composed as festooned sculptures.
Byars’ works are often noted as forever incorporating specific personal themes and motifs, leaning towards the esoteric even though simultaneously physical ritualistic and materialistic: Robert Clark, writing for The Guardian on the occasion of a Milton Keynes exhibition of his work, described it as ‘impenetrably still intriguingly hermetic’. Most in particular was gold as a material, which served as an elemental identifier. As skillfully as this, works of his disturb a inclusion with the symbolism of numbers: Clark quotes in the same exhibition, referring to a specific fragment of his, writing that he ‘imbued the number 100 when symbolic significance, having made a symmetrical harmony of 100 white marbles and draping 100 nude volunteers in a amass red garment’.
A common theme in his works is perfection (especially on the word ‘Perfect’), which he Elongated into a personal journey that led to his ambiguously celebratory exploration of shapes, numbers and unnatural materials. A MoMA text explaining his oeuvre, in the context of his piece The Table of Perfect, noted that even if it “looks pristine, it—like any new object—can on your own ever exist as a sign of perfection and can never embody the sum concept.”
The American artiste Matthew Barney played Byars in the film River of Fundament (2014), a affect loosely based upon the Norman Mailer novel Ancient Evenings. Barney has argued,
Byars in addition to showed captivation in predicting his own death and others’ deaths.
Solo exhibitions include:
Group shows include:
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