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Sarah Lucas ('Self-Portrait with Skull')

© Sarah Lucas

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Sarah Lucas ('Self-Portrait with Skull')

by Sarah Lucas
Iris print, 1997
29 in. x 19 in. (737 mm x 482 mm) overall
Given by Sadie Coles HQ, 2001
Primary Collection
NPG P884(8)

Sitterback to top

  • Sarah Lucas (1962-), Artist. Sitter in 15 portraits, Artist of 12 portraits.

Artistback to top

  • Sarah Lucas (1962-), Artist. Artist of 12 portraits, Sitter in 15 portraits.

This portraitback to top

In this vanitas image, the inclusion of the skull is a metaphor for death. This is one of twelve prints; in each Lucas appears in a different guise.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 14 Read entry

    This is one of twelve stridently ‘unfeminine’ photographic prints gifted to the National Portrait Gallery. Lucas appears in different guises: a fish slung over her shoulder, obscured by beer froth, in front of a line of knickers, crouching on a lavatory pan and, in this example, seated with a skull. The results seem designed to gain attention with their vaguely grubby, partly sexual innuendo. The emphasis seems more on a lack of vanity (she wears jeans and trainers), but there is a simultaneous awareness of Vanitas – particularly here with the traditional skull, but also with props like the dead fish.

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Portrait setback to top

Subjects & Themesback to top

Events of 1997back to top

Current affairs

The Labour party - re-branded as New Labour - win a spectacular landslide election and Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister. Their electoral campaign promised that 'things can only get better' and that their priorities would be 'education, education, education.' While New Labour's 'third way' centralist approach put off some party traditionalists, it secured the popular vote.
Princess Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed die in a car crash in Paris.

Art and science

J.K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the first of seven fantasy books chronicling the life of Harry and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: learning magic, breaking school rules, romantic entanglements and their struggles against the evil Lord Voldemort.
Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announce that they have cloned the first mammal from an adult cell: '6LL3', or Dolly the Sheep.

International

Governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten hands the island back to China after one hundred and fifty years as a British Colony. Although sovereignty was restored to China, it was agreed that the Island would become a 'Special Administrative Region' under the 'One Country, Two Systems' principle, effectively keeping its capitalist economy and way of life for a period of 50 years.

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