George Segal Essay Research Paper George Segal

George Segal Essay, Research Paper

George Segal describes his artwork by saying, the inner state of the mind connects to the outside surface of the sculpture (Tuchman, 8). George Segal is known for his representation of life-sized white plaster human figures placed in everyday situations (Tuchman, 5). An originator of Pop Art, George Segal has been associated with many as an Abstract Expressionist. Throughout his lifetime, George s work has been criticized because of his abstract style. The new era of Pop Art can be attributed to the hard, dedicated work of George Segal.

Through the hard times of the Second World War to Vietnam to the 1990s, George Segal has been dazzling and wowing art enthusiasts worldwide. George Segal was born in 1924 in the Bronx. For most of his childhood he lived and breathed New York. While in the Big Apple George realized his love for art when he was still in grammar school. As years passed, George was ready to begin secondary education. He was intrigued by the idea of attending a private school, so he would be able to study art. After completing all the entrance exams, George enrolled into Stuyvesant High School, which has produced several Nobel Prize winners and today is still an elite science academy (Tuchman, 84). In 1940, when he was a senior at Stuyvesant, his family settled on a chicken farm in South Brunswick, New Jersey (Friedman, 53). As a result of the move, George had to stop attending Stuyvesant. For the next two years Segal helped his parents out on the farm while studying art, architecture and art education at Cooper Union, New York (Henkes, 32). From 1942 to 1946 he studied philosophy and literature part-time at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Henkes, 33). In 1947-48 he studied at the Pratt Institute of Design, Brooklyn, and in 1948-49 at New York University, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Art Education (Henkes, 37). His experience at New York University would have the most impact on his future.

At NYU, Segal met fellow students Larry Rivers and Alfred Leslie (Seitz, 57). They, including Segal, studied with non-representationalists, the sculptor-architect Tony Smith and painter William Baziotes (Seitz, 59). The impact that these two men had on George, took his artistic abilities to new levels and direction. George was now being influenced by outside ideas and classic art. With this, he started sculpting and developing new ways of expressing himself in his work. Continuing with his newfound ideas, he began experimenting with plaster, burlap and wire mesh (Hunter, 17). In 1958, as a way to have financial stability, while he was sculpting, George taught commercial art at Piscataway High School (Hunter, 12). Within two years his art was exhibited in Richard Bellamy’s new Green Gallery in New York (Friedman, 93). In 1961 he taught painting at New Brunswick. While at New Brunswick, he discovered the technique of using medical bandages as material for his art and used himself as a model for Man at a Table, his first plaster cast using bandaging (Tuchman, 112). From 1961 to 1964 he taught at Roosevelt Junior High School (Seitz, 97). As a teacher at Roosevelt he continued to mesmerize people. While under the supervision of Tony Smith, George produced many pieces of work that evolved around large, stocky bodies (Tuchman, 120). Initially, he did not purposely lean towards this; rather, it was just coincidental that he was choosing people of heavy set (Tuchman, 123). However, these sculptures have contributed largely to the character of Segal s art. Originally, Segal was not interested in detail, so the choice of large framed people did not hurt him, with slender people he would have to use detail because these bodies where more difficult (Tuchman, 126). In 1963 he received a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University and traveled in Europe (Seitz, 108). In the same year he exhibited at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in France (Seitz, 114). In 1968 he had his first one-man museum exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (Seitz, 119). In 1968 and 1969 he taught visual art and sculpture at Princeton University (Adams, 99). At this time his work leaned towards the portrayal of autobiographical scenes (Adams, 103). In 1970 he was awarded the degree of honorary doctor at Rutgers University (Tuchman, 133). In 1971-72 he had a retrospective at Zurich, Munich, Cologne, Rotterdam, Paris, Leverkusen and T bingen (Tuchman, 138). In 1972 he was Associate Guest Professor at City University in New York (Henkes, 88). One of his most incredible pieces of work was done in 1975, where he worked on a sculpture for the Franklin D. Roosevelt monument in Washington (Henkes, 96). This piece of work has been Segal s most publicized and seemingly his best. In 1976, he created his first bronze sculptures for public spaces. Two years later, his work was the subject of a major retrospective presented at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (Mason, 2). In 1979 he published a pamphlet on plaster cast technique in Rome, which was brought out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York (Mason, 2). In 1982, an exhibition of his work was held at the Seibu Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (Hunter, 11). In 1983 he designed a cover for Time magazine and he also was the winner of a competition for the design of a Holocaust memorial (Hunter, 17). In 1985