Lauren Hahn
Brochure Excerpt
03-07-07
George Segal
George Segal’s Walking Man Sculpture
In the 1960’s many different art genres were flourishing. Movements in Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and especially in Pop Art were particularly poignant during this time. George Segal was able to incorporate all of these movements into his sculptures while still distancing himself from other artists both in his choice of medium and in style.
George Segal was born in New York City in 1924. His upbringing and education in and around the urban setting of New York contributed enormously to his work as an artist. In the beginning of George Segal’s career, he chose paint on canvas. Early on, though, he struggled with the inability to accurately depict three dimensionality on canvas. 1958, George Segal began to experiment in the artistic medium that would ultimately become his hallmark: plaster sculpture. After years of perfecting his technique, Segal finally stumbled upon the process which would ultimately make him famous – the live casting method. In years past, the live casting method was widely discredited as a respected art. Sculpture had always been thought of as the free-form modeling of the human body, not the modeling from the body. His ultimate success came because he was able to break into a genre that no one until his time had really attempted to popularize.
George Segal’s Walking Man follows the general “type” exhibited in many of his sculptures. The use of a stark, white plaster figure set against an urban, everyday scene is what typifies most of Segal’s sculptures. Segal was revolutionary in his development of both figure and environment. For example, in Walking Man, the sculpture encompasses both the figure and the urban doorway he walks past. The dichotomy of the purely artistic plaster figure against the mundane, usual doorway creates a tension between art and everyday life.
So what about George Segal’s sculpture Walking Man allows it to be considered portraiture? While some creative license was taken, in all reality, Segal’s sculpture is a physical likeness of an individual. Not only is form and environment depicted in Segal’s art, the artist furthermore pushes to portray emotion through the use of facial expression and body language. Using innovative techniques, George Segal was able to produce portraiture in new and different forms.