SARAHLUCAS(b. 1962)Cigarette Tits.Cigarettes, wooden and metal chair and brassiere.31 x 19 ½ x 20 ¾ in. (78.7 x 49.5 x 52.7 cm) overall.Executed in 1999.Provenance
Sadie Coles HQ, London;
Private collection, EuropeSarah Lucas' sculptures hover between the literal and metaphoric, intermingling issues of class, sexuality and national identity. With a brand of humor that is particularly British, Lucas' use of linguistic and visual puns evoke double meanings which can equally be interpreted in a Duchampian tradition. Transforming quotidian objects and tabloid imagery into works of art, Lucas adopts a variety of means to question the constructed character she sees in human behavior and cultural patterns, while simultaneously and consciously resisting fixed meanings.

Lucas makes sculptures from a heterogeneous and unexpected range of everyday materials, such as worn furniture, clothing, fruit, vegetables, newspapers, cars, resin, plaster, neon lamps and light fittings, and in the case of Cigarette Tits, cigarettes. She chooses her materials, however, as carefully as a painter chooses a gesture: each element in her work as perversely luxurious or disposable as her image requires. These sculptures, as is the case in the present lot, are substitutes for people, each with an inherent personality of its own. The sometimes grungy appearance of many of her sculptures belies the serious and complex subject matter they address. She makes constant reference to the human body, questioning gender definitions and challenging male dominated culture. This approach is encapsulated in the classic Two Fried Eggs and Kebab 1992, in which a reclining naked female body is constructed from a table with two eggs and a kebab, and Au Naturel 1994, consisting of a mattress on which an empty bucket and a couple of melons represent female genitalia while the male is represented by a cucumber and a pair of oranges.

In Cigarette Tits, Lucas subverts sexual stereotypes through making unexpected juxtapositions of objects, punctuated with visual pun and a defiant bawdy humor. It is explained that Lucas continues to use cigarettes in her as a sculptural device, "She has since gone on to coat a variety of everyday objects, such as garden gnomes and cars, in Marlboro Lights and more recently Marlboro Reds. While her preferred brand as an ardent smoker is now Camel Lights, she continues to use Marlboro in her sculpture which she describes as the 'Coca-Cola of fags' – a reference to their Americanness and ubiquity as a mass-produced brand. By wrapping objects in cigarettes, Lucas refers to the kind of time spent on ordinary things in a world punctuated with moments of mundane self reflection. Lucas also uses cigarettes to take a poke at the English class system that traditionally labels working-class smokers as the epitome of commonness" (G. Muir & C. Wallis, In-AGadda- Da-Vida, London 2004, p. 92).