George Segal 1924-2000 - Obituary

Art in America, Sept, 2000 by Phyllis Tuchman

When sculptor George Segal, 76, died June 9 in South Brunswick, N.J., after a long illness, he left behind a formidable body of work, ranging from his signature life-size plaster cast figures set in real-life situations to bronzes, oil paintings, black-and-white photographs, pastels, graphics, other types of multiples and charcoal drawings. During the heyday of abstraction, Segal was a representationalist, earning acclaim as a Pop artist in the early 1960s. Besides the popular and critical appeal of his art--he had solo museum exhibitions on four continents, and created many public sculptures--he accrued numerous honors, the most recent being the National Medal of Arts presented by President Bill Clinton and the Praemium Imperiale presented by the Emperor of Japan. Additionally, his figures, fragments and reliefs inspired successive generations of artists, from conservative verists of the 1970s such as Duane Hanson to cutting-edge talents of the 1990s such as Kiki Smith and Juan Munoz.

Born and raised in the Bronx, where his father was a kosher butcher during the Depression, Segal had about as much chance to become a world-class artist as many inner-city kids have today to become basketball stars in the NBA. When an exam revealed the young boy's aptitude for science, he was sent to Stuyvesant High, the New York public school known for graduating future Nobel Prize winners. During World War II, the 20-year-old interrupted his college studies to help his dad run the chicken farm the relocated family operated in New Jersey. Following stints at Cooper Union, Rutgers and the Pratt Institute, Segal ended up at New York University, studying alongside Larry Rivers and Alfred Leslie in classes taught by Tony Smith and William Baziotes.

Although he continued to paint after NYU, Segal, who married in 1948 and was the father of two by 1953, worked his own New Jersey chicken farm, taught adult art classes and even became an English teacher at a local high school. In 1961, he was teaching a night class when one of his students, whose husband was a chemist at Johnson & Johnson, brought in some newly perfected plaster-impregnated bandages. Because he had made several life-size plaster statues in the late 1950s, Segal immediately understood the sculpture possibilities of the bandages. By adding water to them, even a child could make a mold. Enlisting family and friends to model for him, he set the stage for the creation of sculptures that conveyed the nobility and richness of everyday life.

Nothing was too grand or too mundane to attract his attention: his early groupings of plaster-cast figures and real-life objects include The Dinner Table (1962), Woman Shaving Her Leg (1963), The Gas Station (1964) and The Diner (1964-66). Not many artists who emerged in the 1960s tackled themes based on the Old Testament, but Segal did in works such as his two versions of The Sacrifice of Isaac (1973, 1978). Daring to be profound rather than ironic, he wasn't afraid to treat the same subject as the masters he revered in museums all over the world, or to champion Every man without sentimentality. He also frequently addressed transformative historical events in his work, from the Holocaust to the Kent State massacre and the Stonewall riot.

Belonging to a generation whose members could tell you where they were when Franklin Roosevelt died, Segal was ideally suited to contribute to the FDR memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1997. His multi-figure bronze casts portray a breadline, an Appalachian farm couple and a man listening to one of FDR's fireside chats. Although Segal is still best-known for his plaster casts, his bronze figures in the FDR Memorial may well be his lasting legacy. Renewing a tradition of public monuments that stretches from antiquity through the 19th century, they transform a crucial, complex period in American history into an immediate experience accessible to all. More people will tour this setting than will ever see his work in museums.

In person, Segal came across as unassuming, warm, curious and thoughtful. Bespectacled and bushy-haired, he loved to sit with coffee and cake at his dining table talking for hours on end, before taking visitors outside to his former coops to see his latest creations. Although he had always worked on paper, Segal won over legions of new admirers in recent years with his large charcoal portraits of friends and relatives. His ability to coordinate hand and heart always rang true. With consummate pleasure he limned the magic of daily life.