Polaroids (Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morris)

Attila Richard Lukacs is one of the art world’s most talented and controversial contemporary artists, best known for his epic paintings that depict masculine, homoerotic imagery, featuring figures such as gay skinheads and military cadets. His work has been exhibited at documenta in Kassel, Germany, as well as in New York, Paris, London, Berlin, and Cologne, among other cities.

A co-publication between Arsenal Pulp Press and three Canadian art galleries, this is the first book to document the work of this important artist, from an unusual perspective—a collection of some 1,200 full-color Polaroid images (twelve per page) taken by Lukacs over the past twenty years as core referents for his paintings, assembled and collaged by Vancouver artist and curator Michael Morris.

Lukacs regularly employs a Polaroid camera as part of his artistic process, using his friends and acquaintances as models; taking advantage of the Polaroid’s unique characteristics, his painterly sensibility is evident in the rich hues and romantic sensuality of these photographs, which are strikingly similar to the paintings that resulted from them.

The book is physically enormous, allowing the Polaroid grids to be printed at their full size. It also features essays by award-winning author Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo); curator Scott Watson; gay writer Stan Persky; and Vince Aletti, the American curator and photography critic for The New Yorker.

Stunning and bold, Polaroids: Attila Richard Lukacs and Michael Morris is a remarkable visual and written document on one of the most compelling visual artists working today.