- Artist or Maker
- Lili Lakich
United States, born 1944, active Los Angeles - Title
- Self-Portrait with Sneer
- Date Made
- November 1976
- Medium
- Colored pencil on paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 32 × 24 in. (81.28 × 60.96 cm)
Image: 32 × 24 in. (81.28 × 60.96 cm)
Frame: 34 1/2 × 26 1/2 in. (87.63 × 67.31 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.91.332.8
- Collecting Area
- Prints and Drawings
- Curatorial Notes
Lili Lakich always creates sketches before she constructs her sculptural works, many of which feature self-portraiture. This bold drawing from the 1970s anticipates the glowing neon tubes of its corresponding sculpture, also titled Self-Portrait with Sneer. As a child, Lakich was mesmerized by the glow of neon advertisements she saw while traveling across the United States on road trips with her parents. She also loved connect-the-dots puzzle books that revealed an image, comparing them to the way specific stars form constellations in the sky. In art school, Lakich disliked working in printmaking and painting but loved drawing; this attracted the artist to neon, which allowed her to draw with light. Lakich has worked exclusively in neon since 1966. She cofounded the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles with Richard Jenkins in 1981 and continues to champion this medium as an expression of serious artistry.
This drawing and its accompanying sculpture were made early in Lakich’s career after a reviewer compared her neon works to tongue sandwiches—“either you like them or you don’t”—but also described her output as “wonderfully ferocious.” Lakich responded mirthfully with Self-Portrait with Sneer, reflecting that “sometimes I do believe that spitefulness is next to godliness.”
Claudine Dixon
2023
- Selected Bibliography
- Schillo, Eve, and Claudine Dixon. Before You Now: Capturing the Self in Portraiture; Ante Usted: La Captura del Ser en el Retrato. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
- Copyright
- © Lili Lakich
