james lee byars

THE PERFECT KISS

In his sculptures and actions, James Lee Byars projected glamour as a tangible state of being, rooted in the word’s Scottish origins — gramarye and glamer, signifying magic and enchantment — as if glamour itself were a spell cast upon the world.

Byars used gold as his principal material to challenge its conventional meaning. Stripped of its decorative function, gold became for him a material of near perfection, a philosophical tool through which he explored ideas of purity, totality, and the limits of form. For Byars, gold functioned as a metaphysical element, a tangible manifestation of the sublime. Its reflective surfaces implicate the viewer directly, transforming perception into a participatory act.

Byars turned his own body into the work itself, becoming a living sculpture shaped by darkness and a metaphysical aura. His glamorous silhouette, both elegant and unsettling, hovered between seduction and fear, drawing the viewer into…