Stedman Gallery, Rutgers University–Camden | September 6–December 10, 2016
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE: DRAWINGS AND SCULPTURES GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY DONALD LOKUTA Stedman Gallery Rutgers University–Camden September 6–December 10, 2016
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE To celebrate Rutgers 250, the year-long celebration of Rutgers’ 250th anniversary on November 10, 2016, the Stedman Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of the work of the renowned American sculptor George Segal (1924–2000), who earned an MFA from Rutgers University–New Brunswick in 1963, and who was conferred an honorary doctorate in 1970. A selection of (mostly) black and white drawings and sculptures is accompanied by George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta, an exhibition organized by the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. George Segal is one of America’s most respected and popular artists, best known for his life-size plaster sculptures of ordinary people doing ordinary things, which he created by covering friends and relatives with plaster-soaked surgical bandages. George Segal in Black and White presents sculpture installations, plaster fragments, pastel drawings, and photographs by Donald Lokuta that document the artist in his studio, providing an overview of Segal’s work and aesthetic choices. The essays that follow offer different points of view from which to approach the exhibition. Rena Segal, daughter of the artist and president of the George and Helen Segal Foundation, provides an intimate tour of Segal’s studio, one that is animated by life-long remembrances. Donna Gustafson, Zimmerli Art Museum curator of the George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta, contextualizes Segal’s work in relation to that of his contemporaries and relates his work to photographic practices, including those of Segal’s longtime collaborator, Donald Lokuta. Rutgers University–Camden scholar and art historian Martin Rosenberg provides a close reading of Graffiti Wall, exploring the humanistic and formal complexities of this sculpture while distinguishing Segal’s work from that of his Pop art contemporaries. Art historian and curator Susan Isaacs examines two works that Segal developed for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., Appalachian Farm Couple and Fireside Chat, relating the challenges of the present to the trying circumstances of the Depression. Renaissance specialist Elizabeth Pilliod positions Segal’s technique within the long and varied traditions of body casts. The Stedman Gallery is grateful for the generosity of the George and Helen Segal Foundation for the loan of the George Segal sculpture, fragments, and drawings. The Zimmerli Art Museum has generously made available the photographs of Donald Lokuta. This exhibition and RCCA arts education and community arts programs are supported by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation; Campbell Soup Foundation; Subaru of America Foundation; and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Nancy Maguire, Associate Director for Exhibitions Cyril Reade, Director
George Segal, Lee, 1999, pastel, charcoal on paper, 30 x 44 in.
Cover: George Segal, Graffiti Wall (detail), 1990, plaster, paint, wood, plastic, 96 x 192 x 54 in.
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GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE 5
REMEMBRANCES Fireside Chat Man listening to radio Roosevelt speaks Grandfather listens Appalachian Farm Couple in front of barn doors Graffiti Wall symbols explained by the graffiti artists to my father He sees a Parking Garage and a couple standing in the entrance An empty restaurant space Quiet prevails Portraits of family and friends pay homage to Rembrandt’s light Pastel marks are like etching surfaces Fragments are gestures seen from the corner of your eye. May 2016 My father lived and worked in New Jersey. The descriptions of his work are my remembrances. Models are family and friends. Their identity is unimportant since they are anonymous people in daily situations. For the FDR Memorial, my father saturated himself in the Farm Security Administration photographs by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Ben Shahn. Upon entering the studio, I kept the workspace as my father left it. Drips of plaster and paint remain on the floor, along with outlines of where models once stood. Portraits are above the flat files and back wall in the studio. The light and pastels marks on the portraits are reminiscent of Rembrandt’s etchings. My father once did etchings and was impatient with the process and used pastels to resemble marks on an etching plate. Pastels that were once on top of the flat files became a series of still lives. Below there used to be a pile of body parts that at one time awaited my father’s attention.
In another room there is a series of still life paintings based upon objects found on a table in a Jersey diner that my family frequented. Across the room from the paintings are a wall of fragments and reliefs. Some fragments are painted and others were left white. The fragments are glimpses of someone, while catching a gesture from the corner of your eye. In another room, The Dancers, a group of five figures, are based upon Matisse’s dance paintings. Each model tried to outdo the other with their pose. The one with the leg up had to be held by someone while the plaster set. Woman Walking under Scaffold stands like an Egyptian sculpture. The light comes through the top of the piece like the light shone in the pyramid that my father saw in Egypt. While walking downtown in NYC, my father saw three men, two sitting and one standing against a wall. It became Graffiti Wall. One of the graffiti artists he met explained what the symbols meant. I do not recall the explanation. Next to this piece is Street Crossing. People are in their own world, not paying attention to one another as they cross the street. A quote from my father’s catalog Sequence: Both New York and New Jersey felt energetic, jagged. Chaotic and fragmented, in a continual decay and rebirth, with the glory and sadness of the process evident everywhere.1 Rena Segal 1
George Segal Sequence: New York/New Jersey 1990-1993 (New York: Umbra Editions, 1993).
Fireside Chat and Appalachian Farm Couple are part of the FDR Memorial in Washington DC. Models for both sculptures are family friends. My father told me that his father shushed everyone so he could listen to the fireside chats. My grandfather (his father) was taken that Roosevelt was compassionate with the working class people. The model for Fireside Chat, a family friend, liked to listen to Willie Nelson when he posed. He related to his story telling in his songs, like the public related to Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio. The table came from my father’s mother’s house, and the radio was given to him by my mother’s sister. A former Bell lab scientist and his wife, who writes and lectures about EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology), posed for Appalachian Farm Couple. The barn doors were actual doors from a barn my father found in New Jersey. On one of many visits to NYC, my father took a photo of a Parking Garage and most likely parked in it and on his way out noticed a couple standing in the entrance. Restaurant Scene is an empty space that could be in any New Jersey diner that my father frequented. One can feel the presence of a person that was once eating and absorbed in their own thoughts.
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George Segal, Rena, 1999, pastel, charcoal on paper, 30 x 44 in.
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE 7
SCULPTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, AND EVERYDAY LIFE: GEORGE SEGAL AND DONALD LOKUTA George Segal (1924–2000) is known primarily for his plaster cast men and women in situations reminiscent of everyday life. In truth, his practice extended beyond plaster and bronze into painting, photography, and all manner of graphic representation from etching and silkscreen to charcoal and pastel. He began his career in New York in the late 1950s as a painter struggling to balance his interests in narrative with the art world’s prevailing taste for Abstract Expressionism. In 1953 he met Allan Kaprow (1927–2006), who taught in the Department of Art History at Rutgers in New Brunswick and lived about a mile from Segal in New Jersey. Kaprow introduced him to the circle of avant-garde artists around the composer John Cage (1912–92) and the dancer Merce Cunningham (1919–2009), and in 1956 Segal joined the Hansa Gallery, one of the co-operative galleries on East 10th Street that provided exhibition opportunities for young artists. Kaprow also encouraged him to enroll at Rutgers (he earned an MFA in 1963 and was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1970). Rutgers introduced him to another band of young artists who sought to erase what they perceived as the false boundary between art and life. Included among this group were Robert Whitman (b.1935) and Lucas Samaras (b.1936); the Fluxus artists George Brecht (1926–2008), at the time a research chemist at Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, and Robert Watts, an artist/engineer who taught in the Fine Arts department at Douglass College. Segal hosted annual picnics at his farm in South Brunswick; one of the most storied included an event staged by Kaprow called Pastorale on the Segal farm in the summer of 1958 that is now remembered as the second Happening.1 The score for this performance includes instructions for the arrangement of the audience, actions by participants, and calls for the placement of a bell in the chicken coop.
One of the hallmarks of the emerging art featured in Happenings, as well as in the musical scores composed by John Cage, and the dance being performed at the Judson Dance Theater, was the incorporation of everyday, prosaic experience. Segal’s sculptural tableaux with their figures at rickety wooden tables, standing at counters, loitering on street corners or in doorways, participated directly in the development and presentation of these ideas. While Segal stood alone among the artists of his generation for his unwavering interest in representing the common man, setting his work within the context of the experiments in time-based media (like music, dance, photography, performance, and Happenings) brought important dichotomies into play: movement and stasis, specificity and generality, figure and ground, object and environment. In the early 1960s, Segal was lionized as one of the Pop artists, but as the history of that decade is being rewritten, it becomes apparent that Segal has little in common with artists like Tom Wesselman (1931–2004), Andy Warhol (1928–87), Roy Lichtenstein (1923–97), and even Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929), who comes closest to Segal. Beyond the few figural groups that include references to American popular culture, Cinema (1963) for example, there is little to connect his work with Pop art’s embrace of a media-saturated environment or the ironies that layered their representations. Rather than critique the consumer culture that post-war America brought to the world, Segal remained interested in stories of the common man with whom he identified and sympathized. This is not to say that Segal worked in only one key. While understanding the divisions of American life and mining the spaces of working class life for subjects and settings, he also found subjects in art history and relished the fragment, the ruin, the still life, the portrait, and the contemporary nude.
Donald Lokuta, George Segal Sculpting the Heads for Appalachian Farm Couple, 1991, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in.
Photography plays an important role in this exhibition of the sculptor George Segal and the photographer Donald Lokuta (b. 1946). When Lokuta met Segal in 1984, Segal had already begun to experiment with photography and use it as a means of documenting his travels and ideas for sculpture. He agreed to participate in Lokuta’s project to create a visual biography of the artist and the studio, in part because of his own interest in photography. Together the two artists traveled around New Jersey and New York to make photographs. Lokuta, who was both a professional photographer with an established career and a professor of photography and photographic history at Kean University in New Jersey, developed film for Segal; together they reviewed contact sheets and edited work. For the sculptor, photography was a means of recording a direct experience of the world. It provided research for future projects and acted as a model for his graphic work. Segal’s tightly cropped and evocative portraits of his friends and family were often drawn from photographs he took. The portrait of his daughter Rena in a Striped Sweater is both tender and highly dramatic with deep shadows and vivid highlights that recall the chiaroscuro effects of Rembrandt’s portraits and the dark and suggestive tones of silver gelatin prints. Both Segal and Lokuta admired Robert Frank (b. 1924) and his visionary book, The Americans, published in Europe in 1958 and in the United States in 1960. The black and white photographs of Frank’s book string together a series of individual moments marking the fissures between and among a wide range of Americans who the photographer captured congregating in parks, on public transportation, the street, and in bars and diners. Frank’s use of light and dark, his disregard for sharp focus, and his eye for unscripted moments resonate with Lokuta’s and Segal’s ideas about the primary importance of the everyday as a site of poetry. Like Frank, Segal focused on details that evoke complications and allow stories to spill out between the figures in his sculptural groups. Lokuta’s photographs
Donald Lokuta, Studio Detail, Body Parts, 2000, gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in.
of the studio also search out complex moments full of possibility. Among them are the shots of unguarded concentration on the part of the artist and the dark recesses of the studio where a jumble of cast body parts lies in disarray, or a series of cast heads waits patiently on a work table, or a model stands immobilized within plaster-encased legs. Segal found subjects for his sculpture by taking note of how his fellow humans moved, worked, played, and lived in the world. Lokuta discovered subjects in Segal’s process and environment. Both were inspired by the urban landscape, Jersey’s diners, and everyday life. Photography’s ability to freeze moments and create iconic images that stand in for an ongoing sequence of events is an important parallel for George Segal’s work. His figures may stand silently and sometimes awkwardly in place—as we do when we are waiting—but in that silence and pause, we recognize the condition of human life—moments of being both alone and self-aware. For most of us, those moments are overshadowed by periods of sociability and companionship. The poignancy of Segal’s figures, who insistently remind us that they are modeled on actual, living people, lies precisely in this everlasting moment—a photographic moment—and a paradoxical stillness that seems to breathe life but is eternally still. In time and timeless, these figures stand in the moments between—between stasis and movement, between thought and action, and between past and present. Donna Gustafson According to Geoffrey Hendricks, this was the second Happening staged by Kaprow. The first was on April 22, 1958, in Voorhees Chapel on Douglass Campus. See Joan Marter, Off-Limits: Rutgers University and the Avant-Garde, 1957-1963 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999) 8-10.
1
ENGAGING THE ART OF GEORGE SEGAL: A DIALECTICAL APPROACH The art of George Segal, produced over a span of five decades, is both highly original, and extraordinarily complex. Beginning his career as a painter, he found his true métier in his highly individual and innovative approach to sculpture. Although he began his career in the post-war period dominated by Abstract Expressionism, and came to public attention with the artists associated with the Pop movement, it is impossible to pigeonhole, or to easily classify him or his work. Though his work always reflected formal concerns, in common with the abstract art that had such an impact on him as a young artist, he, like many of his contemporaries, rejected two key Modernist dicta promoted by critics such as Clement Greenberg (1909–94): that artists working in a particular medium should only utilize characteristics intrinsic to that medium, making work that was “pure,” in its means and aims of expression, and that art should exist in a higher, separate realm from daily life. From early in his career, Segal took a hybrid approach to media, rather than a pure one, chafing at the limitations imposed by Modernist dogma. As to the relationship between art and life, his work reflects, albeit in a very different way, the often-quoted statement pronounced by Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008): “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)”1
Although Segal exhibited with, and is often associated with, the Pop artists, including Andy Warhol (1928–87), Roy Lichtenstein (1923–97), and Tom Wesselman (1931–2004), in his work, the impersonality, commercial gloss, and emotional distance of much Pop art is replaced by personal engagement, specificity, and a broader and deeper engagement with life, informed by a deep knowledge of history, myth, and the history of art. As Samantha Baskind and others have noted: “George Segal fused an expressionistic style with the human form to register psychological and social meaning in his work.”2 These meanings are often tied to the human condition as experienced in modern urban life, including a sense of loneliness and anxiety. Given the complexity of Segal’s work, one useful critical approach to it may be to approach it in terms of the concept of dialectics, here understood to mean a synthesis of opposing concepts and qualities. Within the limitations of a brief essay, I will suggest a few of these apparent dichotomies merged in Segal’s work, to provide some critical lenses for engaging with it. In terms of many of these seemingly opposite qualities, Segal’s work embodies a principle of “both/and,” rather than “either/or.” The most obvious of such dichotomies is realism or figuration vs. abstraction. Since Segal cast his figures directly from the models, who were most often his family and friends, and occasionally himself (with casting assistance), they cer-
George Segal, Graffiti Wall, 1990, plaster, paint, wood, plastic, 96 x 192 x 54 in.
tainly appear “realistic,” in some sense. From very early on, Segal also chose to place his figures in settings that evoked “real” environments. Yet his subjects, his figures’ poses, the overall compositions of Segal’s works, and his environments are carefully chosen and contrived to convey particular psychological and expressive qualities, paying careful attention to the abstract qualities of line, form, space, color, as well as specific aspects of pose, gesture, and facial expression the artist deemed necessary to convey the desired content. These qualities of Segal’s work have often led critics to see a kinship between his work, and that of Edward Hopper, an artist for whom Segal had the greatest admiration, who also transcended the obvious realism of his approach to convey a greater sense of emotional and psychological depth.3 The specific process Segal used in creating his sculptures, basing his figures on casts he shaped by molding plaster bandages directly on his models, both drew on the specific characteristics of his models, and transformed and transcended that limited and specific character, to make deeper statements about the human condition.4 Beyond realism or figuration vs. abstraction, there are numerous other dichotomies that seem merged in Segal’s works. Through a careful analysis of one work in the exhibition, we might demonstrate some of these apparent dichotomies, as well as the utility of the suggested dialectical approach in engaging more deeply with Segal’s creative practice. By the time Segal created Graffiti Wall in 1990, he had been developing and refining his artistic approach for more than three decades. Upon first encounter with this work, we see three male figures, two seated and one standing, against the backdrop of a “wall” seemingly scrawled with brilliantly colored graffiti. As with many Segal environments, there is an apparent ordinariness of the scene and the figures, to which the viewer can easily relate. The energy, vibrancy, and color of the two-dimensional painted “wall” dramatically contrast with the colorlessness and stasis of the three-dimensional figures. Paradoxically, the figures, cast from life, appear more lifeless and enervated, as suggested by the word “Spectre” on the wall, than is the inanimate background. At the same time, the figures appear both specific, and generic. Although we can empathize with these figures of our fellow human beings in ordinary situations, we cannot enter fully into their interior mental and emotional worlds. We are drawn in, but are also kept at a distance. For all of their apparent human qualities, Segal’s figures are hollow shells, frozen in time within the settings the artist has so carefully contrived. As is often the case in Segal’s works, the figures are linked through correspondences of contour, form, and composition, and are physically close, but do not communicate. Each seems frozen and lost in his own thoughts, a sense of which is conveyed through Segal’s careful choice of pose and gesture, which, in each case, conveys a melancholic resignation. Although Segal’s works often engage us immediately through their apparent relationship to our everyday experience, they repay a deeper scrutiny by enhancing our understanding of the human condition, in all its complexities and contradictions. Martin Rosenberg 1
Artist’s statement in Dorothy C. Miller, ed., Sixteen Americans, exh. cat. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1959) 58.
Samantha Baskind, Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America, (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014). 42. See 189, n.1, for a summary of some of the major scholarship on Segal.
2
3
George Segal quoted in Phyllis Tuchman, George Segal (New York: Abbeville Press, 1983) 111.
4
For a concise summary of Segal’s sculptural technique, see Tuchman, op. cit., 113-15.
GEORGE SEGAL,THE GREAT DEPRESSION, AND THE FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL 2016 marks the 75th anniversary of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, so it is indeed fitting that the Stedman Gallery has on view several plaster works by George Segal that were created in 1991, later cast in bronze in 1995, to become a part of the large Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.1 These sculptures, Appalachian Farm Couple and Fireside Chat, speak to the despair and the dignity of the people affected by the Great Depression.2 Segal said of the memorial: “My FDR imagery in Washington was designed to mesh with the brilliant essence of FDR's words: ‘I see one third of the nation ill fed, ill clothed, ill housed,’ unmistakably announcing the President's conviction that it was the responsibility of national governments to help alleviate these problems.”3 2016 is also an election year where strong progressive voices have emerged. On June 20, 2016, Hillary Clinton (b. 1947) gave a stump speech in Columbus, Ohio, on the topic of the economy in which she cited FDR’s important programs to end the Great Depression; she connected this to the response of President Barack Obama (b. 1961) to the Great Recession of 2008, and warned against the same kind of nationalism and isolationist policies that led to the Great Depression now being expressed by others.4 Given the current political and economic climate, these two powerful sculptures appear as relevant today as when they were designed and certainly as meaningful and important as the events they depict from the past. An additional sculpture that is part of the FDR Memorial, Depression Bread Line, though not on view in the Rutgers exhibition, is very much related to the other two. Segal created all three of these pieces, with the help of the photographer Donald Lokuta, in the summer of 1991. The artist undertook research on the period, particularly looking at Farm Security Administration photographs, interviewing friends who had lived through the Great Depression, and reading about it. He wanted to be historically accurate and present the mood of the people. The influential book on the rural face of the Great Depression by Margret Bourke-White (1904–71), You Have Seen Their Faces, published in 1937, with its photographs of the poor from South Carolina to Arkansas, provide such images and, no doubt, had an impact on Segal’s interpretation of the period in his Appalachian Farm Couple.5 The topic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) and the Great Depression was close to Segal’s heart: “I was devastated at the impact of [the] Depression on people all around me.” The artist listened to Roosevelt’s fireside chats with his father, an immigrant from Poland who greatly admired FDR, commenting “... I remembered my father. I was a kid, I'd come running in the house, yakking, and he'd say ‘Shhhh—Roosevelt's on the radio.’ And after Roosevelt finished his fireside chat, my father said, ‘Here's this rich guy, he speaks perfect English, presidents in his family, how does he know what I'm dreaming about?’ So later, what should public sculpture look like in a democracy? It should be about the dreams of poor immigrants.”6 Fireside Chat, in its intimacy and human scale, makes reference to Segal’s memories, specifically the recollections of his father listening to Roosevelt on the radio. The scale of Segal’s sculpture is fundamental to its content. He chose to continue his affinity for life-size figures, even in major outdoor monuments, saying, “I've psychologically had to commit myself to lifesize [sic]. If I made a human figure that was 3 or 4 times normal, it becomes a gigantic bulk, with a totally different response than a lifesize [sic] figure.”7 According to Lokuta, Segal identified with
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GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE 15
the common man; the models stood in for humanity, and Segal enjoyed watching people interact with the sculptures, especially seeing grandparents explain the Great Depression.8 The models for the three works were Segal’s friends. Miles Frost, an educator, posed (was cast in plaster) for Fireside Chat. The models for Appalachian Farm Couple were scientist, artist, and curator Billy Kluver (1927–2004) and his wife, writer Julle Martin. Martin was actually from Appalachia and provided information to Segal. Finally, the models for the Depression Breadline (first to last figure in order) were: Leon Bibel (1913–95), an artist and participant in the New York City Works Progress Administration, Federal Art Project in the 1930s; Martin Friedman (1926–2016), former director of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Donald Lokuta, who assisted Segal in making most of his major sculptures between 1984 and Segal’s death; the artist himself, cast by Lokuta; and Daniel Burger, manager of merchandising at the Mezzanine Gallery in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Lokuta suggested that Segal include himself in the grouping so he could be with his friends throughout eternity.9 Segal’s works for the FDR Memorial are especially relevant at present. Since the installation of the FDR Memorial in 1997, wealth has concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. A 2015 federal report indicates that over 50 percent of public school children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.10 The unemployment rate at the height of the Great Recession was 10 percent, not the 25 percent of the Great Depression, but the former is notable for its longterm unemployment rate when compared to any of the more recent recessions.11 In addition to being described as a humanist, Segal has also been identified as a populist who wanted everyone to be able to relate to his work.12 This is especially true for the sculptures on the subject of the Great Depression, a theme he requested to undertake for the FDR Memorial.13 No doubt, if he were alive today, he would see the connection between the past and the present. J. Susan Isaacs See the website for the FDR Library and Museum which has many resources on FDR and the Great Depression, including photographs of the period: https://fdrlibrary.org.
1
The author wishes to thank research assistant Laura K. Ryan and Professor Donald Lokuta for generously sharing his time and insight.
2
“ART; How a Sculptor Learned to See The Invisible,” The New York Times (16 August 1998) http://www.nytimes. com/1998/08/16/arts/art-how-a-sculptor-learned-to-see-the-invisible.html?pagewanted=all.
3
4 “Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton Economic Remarks in Columbus, Ohio,” C-SPAN. http://www.c-span.org/ video/?411393-1/hillary-clinton-delivers-remarks-economy.
Donald Lokuta has a collection of books on FSA photography and mentioned specifically Margaret Bourke-White as a photographer of interest to George Segal. Telephone interview by the author with photographer Donald Lokuta, George Segal’s assistant on the project, 27 June 2016. See website: http://www.donaldlokuta.com.
5
Both quotes are from an interview with the artist on the topic of public sculpture conducted by producer/director Amber Edwards between June 1998 and August 1999. Link available on the George and Helen Segal Foundation website. http:// web.archive.org/web/20050126181334/http://www.pbs.org/georgesegal/ihow/inhisownwrds6.html.
6
7
Ibid.
8
Telephone interview by the author with Donald Lokuta.
9
Ibid.
Carmen DeNavas-Walt and Bernadette D. Proctor, “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014,” Report Number: P60-252 (September 2015), https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.html. “Percentage of Poor Students in Public Schools Rises,” The New York Times (16 January 2015) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/us/schoolpoverty-study-southern-education-foundation.html?_r=0.
10
11
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper and Row, 1963) 1.
Joan Pachner, George Segal’s Bronzes (New York: Mitchel Innes & Nash in collaboration with The George and Helen Segal Foundation: 2001) 18.
12
13
Interview on the topic of public sculpture, Segal Foundation, http://www.segalfoundation.org.
George Segal, Appalachian Farm Couple (detail), 1991, plaster, paint, wood, metal, 108 x 108 x 53 in.
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INSIDE GEORGE SEGAL Frozen, stilled, seemingly everyday people stand with their eyes closed. From ancient times a cult of preserving familial likenesses led to taking casts of the deceased’s face just after death. The most famous example may be the death mask of Alexander the Great, said to have been formed from the thinnest veil of beaten gold on which his features were impressed. Plaster or wax casts were taken at the moment of death and sometimes during life to preserve the likenesses of Roman citizens, kings, Dante, Benjamin Franklin, even Abraham Lincoln. Casts of key parts of important contemporaries also were sought after. The critic and collector Laurence Hutton (1843–1904) acquired a cast of the expressive right hand of the renowned actress Eleonora Duse (1858–1924), providing an arresting comparison with Segal’s fragments of bodies in the present exhibition. In Renaissance Florence, full-scale figures made of wax with wooden “bones” inside were painted, clothed, fitted with wigs, and arranged around the churches in town. Sometimes recognizable celebrities, such as Lorenzo the Magnificent de’ Medici, were posed as if in adoration of a cross. Ethnographers of the early twentieth century used casting to study what were believed to be tribal differences. In 1911, in the formerly Belgian colony of the Congo, Arsène Matton slathered live models with plaster to create the set of forty heads preserved in the Royal Museum for Central Africa at Tervuren, Belgium. But these examples differ from
Cast of the Right Hand of Eleonora Duse, Princeton University Library, Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks, Graphic Arts Collection, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
If we explore what is underneath the surface in some sculptures, the answer is “nothing” or a few supporting struts. The absence within sculptures that represent bodies in Greek and Renaissance lost-wax cast bronzes is almost exclusively ideal and detached from any specific person. But other sculptures do have something inside them. Medieval “shape” reliquaries such as this one contained a tiny fragment of bone or something that touched the body of the saint. Intended not only to conserve, but also to display (note holes which contained tiny crystal windows through which the relic could originally be viewed), the “real” presence of the saint via their relic was an established tenet of relic worship and practice. Since the saints had already transited to heaven, they could intervene on anyone’s behalf there. Their earthly physical presence in relics such as this one served as a communications depot, a means for getting in touch with them.
Leonard Wells Volk and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 1860, cast 1886, bronze. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Jonathan L. Cohen and Allison B. Morrow Gift and Friends of the American Wing Fund, 2007.
George Segal’s more recent approach to making casts, which was to wrap the body with surgical bandages. Although Segal sometimes repositioned fragments of the cast, for instance, changing the angle of a hand, the shell of bandages that encased his models with its concentric wrapping and frayed edges forms the surface of the sculptures. This choice of material carries the suggestion of injuries, wounds, and sights that need to be hidden. What is under those bandages?
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Arm reliquary, ca. 1230, Meuse Valley, South Netherlands, silver, gilded silver, niello, and gems; wood core. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1947.
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE 19
Other messages can be secreted inside hollow sculptures. The Japanese Kamakura wood figure of the Shinto deity Hachiman in the Guise of a Buddhist Monk, fourteenth century (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 36.413), was constructed of joined wood sections and its interior is empty. But handwritten with a brush in black ink on the inside surface of the monk’s head is the artist’s name. Clearly those signatures are not solely a statement of authorship and their location is carefully considered. Nestled inside, hidden, they suggest modesty and perhaps some hopes on the part of the artist for the religious figure he has sculpted to work on his behalf. What is inside those bandages in Segal’s sculptures? Nothing. However, the aura and aftermath of a specific and fragile human being, the concealed index of the person whose body was wrapped, is certainly “inside.”Like the fragment of a saint’s bone, the impression of the skin of the subject is an index of the living original. In some cases, Segal used the same model for multiple sculptures, suggesting that the identity of the model was not critical, allowing us to project ourselves or anybody onto the bandaged figure. But when we do know who modeled for Segal, we are confronted with deeply personal insides. And the question arises: is the inside or the outside the primary object of contemplation in his sculptures? Elizabeth Pilliod
CONTRIBUTORS Donna Gustafson is Curator of American Art and Mellon Director of Academic Programs at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University and a member of the graduate faculty in Art History, New Brunswick. Her areas of interest include American art, photography, and global contemporary art. Dr. J. Susan Isaacs is Professor of Art History at Towson University, where she teaches advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in modern and contemporary art and museum studies, and is a curator for the Holtzman and Center for the Arts Galleries. She was also the adjunct curator for the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, now the Delaware Contemporary, from 2001–09, where she remains as Curator of Special Projects. Dr. Elizabeth Pilliod, Visiting Professor at Rutgers University–Camden, is the author of Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori: A Genealogy of Florentine Art (2001); co-author of Italian Drawings. Florence, Siena, Modena, Bologna; Drawings in Swedish Public Collections 8 (2002); and co-editor of Time and Place. Essays in the Geohistory of Art (2005). She contributed to the 2010 exhibitions Bronzino as Draftsman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Bronzino. Artist and Poet at the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy.
George Segal, Caressing Hands II, 1980, plaster, paint, 28 ½ x 14 x 7 ¾ in.
Dr. Martin Rosenberg is Professor of Art History and curator of contemporary art at Rutgers University–Camden, teaching 18th to 21st century art and architecture and feminist art history. He published Raphael and France: the Artist as Paradigm and Symbol (1995), Gender Matters in Art Education, co-authored with Frances Thurber (2007), and numerous exhibition catalogues, articles, and catalogue essays, and lectured widely in these areas throughout the United States and China. Rena Segal, painter and daughter of George Segal, was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and currently resides in New Jersey. She earned a BFA from Montclair State University and an MFA from Rutgers University. Her work is in both private and public collections. She is President of the George and Helen Segal Foundation.
20 RUTGERS–CAMDEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE 21
LIST OF DONALD LOKUTA PHOTOGRAPHS IN THE EXHIBITION
Casting Sharon Gallo for The Red Scaffold 1990, silver gelatin print
View of Room 10 2000, silver gelatin print.
All photographs courtesy of Donald Lokuta and hpgrp GALLERY NEW YORK, NY.
Figure for Graffiti Wall 1990, silver gelatin print.
View of the Studio 2000, silver gelatin print.
All works by George Segal © The George and Helen Segal Foundation Inc./ Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
All photographs are 11 x 14 in. except where indicated otherwise.
George Segal, Trenton, NJ 1987, silver gelatin print.
Working on the Sculpture Parking Garage 1994, silver gelatin print.
Height x Width x Depth
Art Supplies 2000, silver gelatin print.
George Segal with Model (Wendy Worth) 1995, silver gelatin print.
Completing Depression Bread Line 1991, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in.
Fireside Chat, 1991, SF.0552 Plaster, paint, wood, metal, radio, 108 x 120 x 57 in.
Casting Brian O’Doherty (legs) for Street Crossing 1992, silver gelatin print.
Helen and George 1990, silver gelatin print.
George Segal with Model for Blue Woman on Black Bed 1996, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in.
Graffiti Wall, 1990, SF.0470 Plaster, paint, wood, plastic, 96 x 192 x 54 in.
George Segal Preparing to Cast Barbara Novak 1992, silver gelatin print.
LIST OF GEORGE SEGAL WORKS Loan courtesy of The George and Helen Segal Foundation and Carroll Janis.
Restaurant Scene, 1993, SF.0531 Plaster, paint, wood, steel, carpet, 96 x 96 x 72 in. Parking Garage, 1994, SF.0537 Plaster, paint, gelatin silver prints, plastic, 96 x 168 x 40 in.
George Segal with Figure for Asian Picnic 1995, silver gelatin print. George Segal with Woman on Park Bench 1998, silver gelatin print.
Appalachian Farm Couple, 1991, SF.0553 Plaster, paint, wood, metal, 108 x 108 x 53 in.
Hans Namuth Making His Last Portrait of an Artist 1990, silver gelatin print.
Caressing Hands II, c. 1980, SF.0014 Plaster, paint, 28 ½ x 14 x 7 ¾ in.
Reclining Figure for The Homeless (Helen Segal) 1989, silver gelatin print. Sculpture in Progress, Woman at Coffee Shop (first version) 1998, silver gelatin print. Self-portrait with George Segal, Asbury Park, NJ 1989, silver gelatin print.
Studio Detail, Body Parts 2000, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. View of Room 3 2000, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in. Working on the Sculpture Parking Garage 1997, silver gelatin print, 16 x 20 in.
The Legend of Lot 1996, silver gelatin print.
ISBN-10: 0-9979741-0-9
Hans Namuth Photographing George Segal 1990, silver gelatin print.
Work in Progress, Appalachian Farm Couple 1991, silver gelatin print.
Phoebe A. Haddon Chancellor
Untitled (Nude Fragment), c. 1970, SF.0224 Plaster, paint, 37 ½ x 17 x 8 ½ in.
Heads for Appalachian Farm Couple 1991, silver gelatin print.
At the National Gallery, Washington, DC 1997, silver gelatin print.
Kriste Lindenmeyer Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Untitled (Back of Torso), c. 1970, SF.0233 Plaster, paint, 25 ½ x 15 x 5 ½ in.
Room 3 with Blue Woman on Black Bed 2000, silver gelatin print.
Diner, Freehold, NJ 1989, silver gelatin print.
Lovers I, 1970, SF.0236, AP1 Plaster, paint, 24 x 17 x 8 ½ in.
Room 5, Woman on a Bench 2000, silver gelatin print.
Drawing in Progress 1994, silver gelatin print.
STEDMAN GALLERY, RUTGERS–CAMDEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Untitled (Hand on Buttocks), c. 1970, SF.0221 Plaster, paint, 9 x 16 ½ x 6 ¼ in.
Room 8 with Street Crossing 2000, silver gelatin print.
Entrance to the Segal Studio 1999, silver gelatin print.
Nancy Maguire Associate Director for Exhibitions
Helen III, 1999, SF.0475 Pastel, charcoal, on paper 30 x 44 in. Helen IV, 1999, SF.0476 Pastel, charcoal on paper, 30 x 44 in.
View of Room 6 2000, silver gelatin print.
Five Figures for Depression Bread Line 1991, silver gelatin print.
Noreen Scott Garrity Associate Director for Education
View of the Studio 1997, silver gelatin print.
George Segal 1984, silver gelatin print.
Carmen Pendleton Community and Artist Programs Manager
Lee, 1999, SF.0412 View of the Studio with Painting in Progress Pastel, charcoal on paper, 30 x 44 in. 1994, silver gelatin print. Sophie III, 1988, SF.0634 Pastel, charcoal on paper, 40 ¾ x 52 ¾ in.
Woman on Park Bench in Progress 1998, silver gelatin print.
Pam with White & Gray Sweater, 1999, SF.0415 Pastel, charcoal on paper, 30 x 44 in.
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art 1990, silver gelatin print.
Rena with Striped Sweater, 1999, SF.0480 Pastel, charcoal on paper, 44 x 30 in.
Breaktime in the Studio 1991, silver gelatin print. Casting George Segal for a Figure in Depression Bread Line 1991, silver gelatin print. Casting George Segal for Self-Portrait 1990, silver gelatin print. Casting Miles Forst for The Red Scaffold 1990, silver gelatin print.
George Segal at the Mark Twain Diner, Union, NJ 1991, silver gelatin print.
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY–CAMDEN
Cyril Reade Director
Miranda Powell Arts Education and Community Arts Program Assistant
George Segal, SoHo Restaurant, NY C 1993, silver gelatin print. Helen Segal 1989, silver gelatin print. Photographing in Asbury Park, NJ 1990, silver gelatin print. Room 4 with Sculpture for the FDR Memorial 2000, silver gelatin print. Room 9 with The Graffiti Wall and Chance Meeting II 2000, silver gelatin print.
Back Cover: George Segal, Fireside Chat, 1991, plaster, paint, wood, metal, radio, 108 x 120 x 57 in.
GEORGE SEGAL IN BLACK AND WHITE Stedman Gallery Rutgers University–Camden September 6–December 10, 2016