Contemporary (Post 1975) Sculptor

George Segal is a widely known talented sculptor. He was born in 1934 in United States of America. George and Helen foundation houses most of his sculptures. This foundation has a special exhibition centre where everyone who is willing to may get acquainted with George’s works. He is an internationally renowned sculptor who has traversed all time. The utmost of all sculptures made by him was the one consisting of six people three of whom are women and the rest are men. Segal had designed them in a way that some sculptured persons appeared to sit, others leaned on the side while the rest stood (Livingstone & George 158).

“Chance sitting” was a sculpture that sold the highest of all the sculptures and fetched him 600,000 dollars. He used exceptionally distinctive ways to express himself. Segal painted his first model during a “costume party” (Livingstone & George 158). This was a radical transformation, as he never really painted his sculptures. George Segal made use of ordinary objects and subjects in sculpting his images. He got introduced to plaster bandage gauze at the age of 37 by one of his students and that made him to start molding a cast of himself. Through continued practice and discoveries, he lived to make a mark in the field of sculpturing with another of his remarkable sculptures being ‘Helen with Apples.’ This is an assemblage of ordinary objects and cast. The artist used a real table to arrange his apples in a tribute to Paul Cezanne, a French Pinter famous for still-life paintings (Kennedy & Emily 220).  The sculpture of Helen looks like an element of a still life with the whole environment of the work looking like a still life in three dimensions. He presents the sculpture in a unique and mysterious manner with only one of the apples made yellow. It is a presentation of a mystery presented in the cast and the apples (Civardi 2).

The most significant aspect used in most of George Segals’ works is the white. He casts most of his sculptures with white plaster such as in his ‘Wendy with Chin on Hand’ of 1982. This is his long-term model having bronze with the white sculpture echoing classical marbles often unearthed without any polychromy origin. It has a less refined surface than the Greek or Roman antecedents, though being an evidence of the process of a messy casting. Additionally, the manner in, which the sculpture poses, is suggestive of classical balance and elegance because of contortion and piecing up of the assemblage in the right hand of the model touching the right shoulder. That is a position that is naturally impossible to adopt easily. Essentially, the surface and pose of the sculpture becomes a manifestation of an artificial attribute constructed in a natural and beautiful illusion (Livingstone & George 158).

The sculptors of George Segal have acted as all time haunters of Pop Art since their appearance in 1962. His creations always show some flaunting of Pop Art in a subtle and striking creativity. His creativity explores several daily life themes among them being resilience and the conditions of humans (Tuchman &George 220). It is through his work that he combined the contemporary American scenarios in his sculptures portraying ordinary livelihoods through his creativity.

Works Cited

Civardi, Anne. Sculpture: Three Dimensions in Art. North Mankato, MN: Smart Apple Media. (2005):2. Print.

Kennedy, Brian P, and Emily Burke. Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights        from the Hood Museum of Art. Hanover, N.H: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College,         (2009): 220. Print.

Livingstone, Marco, and George Segal. Retrospective George Segal: Sculptures, Paintings,  Drawings ; [exhibition George Segal, a Retrospective: Sculptures, Paintings , Drawings … at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from September 25 to January 11, 1998 ; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, February 19 – May 17, 1998, the Jewish Museum, New York, June 14 – October 4, 1998,         Miami Art Museum, December 17, 1998 – March 7, 1999]. Montreal: Museum of Fine   Arts. (1997): 158. Print.

Tuchman, Phyllis, and George Segal. George Segal. New York: Abbeville Press. (1983): 220. Print.