George Segal

“Grace Glueck has done a review in The New York Times of George Segals exhibition back in april 1984.”

“”GEORGE SEGAL is not the kind of artist whose work – to say the least – thrives on change. He long ago arrived at the image he’s exploited to such powerful effect – the life-size figure, crudely sculptured from white plaster casts made on living models, often set in tableaux or banal, minimally evoked environments. With side excursions into still life and bas relief, he has hewed to the down-home drama of his plaster people over the years, occasionally exchanging their everyday settings of house, street or restaurant for the more fanciful context of, say, a biblical legend. One important shift has occurred, however; in recent years, the artist, who started as a painter of somewhat Expressionist tendency, has been applying color – strongly or subtly – to some of the figures, thus integrating them in more painterly fashion with the real props used in their settings.” Glueck 1984″

“”The artist is by no means a novice at creating strong tableaux – witness his recent ”Holocaust” memorial, commissioned to stand in San Francicso. But here, when more than one or two figures appear, the effect is not so successful. The work titled ”Rush Hour,” with its drab crowd of loners marching in urban lockstep, each toward a dreary destination, looks stilted and cliched. And ”Jacob and the Angels,” a ”work in progress” inspired by a recent visit to Egypt, seems a corny and far-too-literal rendition of the biblical story of Jacob’s dream at Bethel, a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder that reaches from earth to heaven” Glueck 1984″

Glueck, g, (1984), ART: GEORGE SEGAL’S PLASTER PEOPLE, The New York Times, Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/27/arts/art-george-segal-s-plaster-people.html?pagewanted=1om   [ accessed 22/01/2014]

George Segal is the most influential artists I have looked at this year, he worked with mod roc and sometimes plaster. Most of his work is made with mod roc as the main material or the only material. However, in piece of work ‘depression and line’ he was casting in mod roc to make a mould, and then poured plaster into the mod roc mould to make plaster cast sculpture. This is the same process I am using within my work.