George Segal

Sidney Janis Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1973

New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, George Segal, New Sculpture, May 1970, cat. no. 2, illustrated
Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich; Switzerland, Musee des Beaux-Arts; Darmstadt, Hessiches Landesmuseum; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen; Leverkusen, Stadtisches Museum; Paris, Centre National d'Art Contemporain; Tuebingen Museum; Munich, Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus; Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, George Segal, August - October 1971, cat . no. 5, pl. no. 9, p. 12, illustrated
London, Royal Academy of Arts; Cologne, Museum Ludwig ; Madrid, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Pop Art: An International Perspective, September 1991 - September1992, cat. no. 216, pl. no. 59, p. 107, illustrated in color (in the London catalogue) and pl. 60, p. 112, illustrated in color (in the Cologne catalogue)
Bremen, Neues Museum Westerburg, Extended Loan, 1991 - 1997

Nicolas and Elena Calas, Icons and Images of the Sixties, New York, 1971, p. 37, illustrated
Jan Van Der Marck, George Segal, New York, 1975, pl. no. 109, illustrated
Exh. Cat., Nationalgalerie, Aspekte der 60er Jahre, Berlin, 1978, p. 138, illustrated
Sam Hunter and Don Hawthorne, George Segal, New York, 1984, pl. no. 200, illustrated in color
Sam Hunter, George Segal, New York, 1989, pl. no. 32, illustrated in color
Bernhard Kerber, Bestände Onnasch, Berlin and Bremen, 1992, p. 88, illustrated in color
George Segal, George Segal, Tokyo, 1993, pl. no. 17, illustrated in color
Christine Breyhan, Duane Hanson: Housewife, Berlin, 2000, p. 53, illustrated

Abandoning the style of painterly abstraction of the 1950s, George Segal found his artistic expression in figurative sculpture, and his most important contribution to Twentieth Century art was the inclusion of a three-dimensional environment for his figures to create a new sort of poetic realitsm. From the moment Segal placed one of his plaster figures in a chair in 1958, his commitment to spatial figuration expanded to include the environment surrounding the figure. As he stated, ``I want to intensify … the sense of my own inner life. I equally want to intensify my sense of encounter with the tangible world outside of me. I can’t think of divorcing the one response from the other.’’ (George Segal, Knokke Heist, 1989, p. 19). Such statements reveal Segal’s interactions with fellow artists who orchestrated Happenings, and in fact, his friend Allan Kaprow staged the first Happening on Segal’s New Jersey farm and studio in 1958. Stressing generic man over the individual, questioning the relationship between man and objects, and investigating the preoccupation with `total environments’ were all tenets Segal shared with the Happening artists of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Segal’s interest in the human condition went beyond this early influence however, as he explored more psychological considerations in the interplay between persons, whether in his later multi-figure compositions or in the relationship of the viewer to the early solitary sculptures. The Artist in His Loft encapsulates Segal’s masterful evocation of mood, narrative and graphic dynamics to create a humanist work of art in which figure and objects do more than fill space – they create a presence.

Segal’s innovative plaster technique, in which the artist molds the laden strips of linen to the face and body, convey detail of flesh and clothing, but are not intended as portraiture. The monochromatic white of the plaster conveys a ghostly quality while also allowing the figure to be a generalized character – a willing surface for the viewer to project assumptions upon or to identify with as an observer. In this way, Segal’s compositions simulate physical reality while suggesting universal, psychological truths.  Although often compared to his contemporaries in the Pop Art movement, Segal’s reference to objects is not as specific as the commercial labels, product advertisements and media images employed by Warhol and Lichtenstein.  His environments are more anonymous and expressive of life, than the cool parodies of Pop Art. Wesselmann and Oldenburg were Pop Artists more interested in the figure and in environments than painters such as Warhol and Lichtenstein, yet they also did not fuse the two to the extent that Segal did.  Wesselmann’s bedroom interiors included a painted female nude among the still-lifes, emblems and furniture, yet she is a flattened presence that is almost as much a commodity or symbol as the towel and hamper in Bathroom Collage #3.

Segal’s evocation of presence is most palpable in the isolation and self-reflection of the single figure environments of which The Artist in His Loft is a poignant example. The figure, bending forward toward a mirror while shaving, embodies Segal’s genius for capturing the frozen gesture in time, which is specific to the environment but as relaxed as any individual comfortable in familiar surroundings.  This weighty repose and sense of isolation or privacy place the viewer in the position of voyeur, free to associate with the figure. The surroundings are on equal terms with the figure in physical presence and Segal took great pains in selecting and arranging these formal considerations.   As Jan van der Marck commented in discussing The Artist in His Loft, ``Here the aggregate of plumbing and cabinetry – all painted white and a composite of what he had observed in the living-lofts of his Lower Manhattan artist friends – was the inspiration for the sculpture, and the artist shaving in front of it a counterpart of neatness. The sink, pipes, shelves and cabinets … betray too much loving attention, though not at the expense of their plaster accompaniments, to be passed off as environmental props serving as a foil for the sculpture. These surroundings are the sculpture as much, if not more than, the figure they frame.’’ (Jan Van Der Marck, George Segal, New York, 1975, np).  

The mirror is the most significant element in this three-dimensional composition, which supports Van Der Marck’s statement.  The artist, as is often the case in the lonely nature of seeking a creative identity, is left to observe his own reflection, while we – the observers – contemplate the figure amidst the plain shelves and rudimentary sink of his Spartan environment and to consider what his environment tells us about him. At the same time, how we choose to relate to the figure is revelatory of ourselves.  As Segal commented in the catalogue for the New Realism at the Worcester Art Museum in 1965, ``If you see a thing, how you feel about it and your whole host of inner reactions have something to do with that thing. You can’t help impressing your own humanity on it once you regard it.’’