Pop Artist George Segal Dies At 75
Hoodoo
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000609/us/obit_segal_5.html
Friday June 9 9:55 PM ET
Pop Artist George Segal Dies At 75
By BRENDAN SCHURR, Associated Press Writer
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - George Segal, an American pop art icon of
the 1960s known for his life-size plaster sculptures, died of cancer
Friday at his New Jersey home. He was 75.
Segal began his career as a painter but later turned to sculpture.
``I couldn't divorce myself from the sensual things of life - things I
could touch,'' he once said. Segal said he never felt trapped in the
art form, even though it was his plaster sculptures that put his name
among the top pop artists, including Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg
and Roy Lichtenstein. ``When pop art first became noticed, I felt I
was sitting on the tail of a rocket. Amazingly, it still flies,''
Segal said in 1989.
In 1999, he received a National Medal of the Arts from President
Clinton. Segal's three-dimensional sculpture scenes include
``Cezanne's Still Life,'' a breakfast table with ripe fruit, tea pot
and milk pitcher modeled after the famous painting, and ``Woman
on Orange Bed,'' a nude woman lounging on a rumpled,
sun-streaked bed. He also created a life-size bread line and other
sculptures depicting the Great Depression at the Franklin Delano
Roosevelt Memorial in Washington. One of the five bronze figures
in the bread line, installed in 1997, is a self-portrait.
``I wanted to take sculpture off its pedestal,'' Segal told The
Associated Press in a 1985 interview at an exhibition of his works in
Paris. ``I wanted something solid, something I could walk into and
walk around and be a part of. But I also want this marriage between
the physical and the state of mind.'' To get his full-size, life-like
figures, Segal wrapped the bodies of real models in wet plaster limb
by limb to make a mold into which he recast plaster.
``I like the freshness of the paint, the strokes, I like making the
marks,'' he said in the Paris interview. ``But I moved into three
dimensions because all these very intelligent abstract conceptions
and ideas about art blocked my painting on flat canvas.'' David Janis,
a New York art dealer who was Segal's agent, said Segal's works are
in 150 museum collections and many more private collections.
``Segal was the most influential American figurative sculptor of the
20th Century, and certainly one of the most important of the 20th
Century, period,'' Janis said Friday. ``He had a very sophisticated
and deep understanding of people and expressed that through his
sculpture,'' he said. Janis said Segal died at his home Friday in
South Brunswick, about 15 miles northeast of Trenton.
Segal grew up in New York and studied art at Cooper Union, the
Pratt Institute and New York University in New York, and at Rutgers
University in New Jersey. His family moved to South Brunswick in the
1940s, where his father ran a chicken farm. Segal later bought a
chicken farm across the road from his parents and operated it for
about 10 years. He taught art and English for several years in local
high schools before he was able to earn enough to live off his art.
Segal is survived by his wife, Helen Steinberg; daughter, Rena Segal;
son, Jeffrey Segal; and brother, Morris.
Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Remove the obvious pest deterrent for personal replies.
Opus the Penguin
the exclusion of his acting credits. Most people will *really* remember him
for his work in films such as "The Owl and the Pussycat," and
"Rollercoaster," and in the television series "Just Shoot Me."
I didn't realize he was 75. He looked about 10 years younger. We'll miss ya,
George.
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Opus the Penguin
Will C
sculptor/artist, not the
actor on Just Shoot Me.
I don't believe George the actor is 75 yet.