Rutgers celebrates legacy of George Segal

Internationally renowned artist George Segal (1924-2000) was a Jersey boy.

He is regarded as one of the most significant sculptors of Pop Art and “a giant of 20-century sculpture in America.” With works in major museums both here and abroad, his reputation extends well beyond the Garden State.

For 60 years, Segal lived and worked on a chicken farm in South Brunswick. The artist eventually converted the property’s chicken coops into a massive studio of 10 rooms where he created tableaux of everyday life, combining sculpture and painting, high art and consumer culture. His innovative and engaging assemblages of people cast with Johnson & Johnson bandages dipped in plaster are placed in constructed environments of real objects. These signature works installed directly in the viewer’s space not on traditional pedestals have influenced a generation of contemporary artists.

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George Segal is now the subject of two fascinating shows at the Stedman Gallery at Rutgers University-Camden. On view through Dec.10, they celebrate the institution’s 250th anniversary by recognizing an esteemed alumnus of the main campus. As an undergraduate in the early 1940s, Segal attended Rutgers night school in New Brunswick and took history, geography, philosophy and various literature courses.

He maintained: “it was perfect leavening for studio education.”

The flagship campus didn’t then offer art classes, so his studio courses were completed elsewhere. In 1963, he did receive a Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where he taught drawing composition. Seven years later, in 1970, he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the university.

“George Segal in Black and White” presents a select group of just 10 sculptures and six drawings dating from 1970 to 1999, the year before Segal’s death. All pieces have been loaned by The George and Helen Segal Foundation, which will be offering one work for the university’s permanent collection.

Along with several wall reliefs of cast partial figures in white, five imposing sculptural environments are arranged in separate chapel-like spaces.

On a recent visit, there was a reverential quiet permeating the gallery in contrast to the campus’s festive hustle and bustle of students arriving for the fall semester. The strong black-and-white portraits in pastel and charcoal underscore the psychological mood established by the life-size black-painted plaster figures.

Cyril Reade, director of the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts and associate professor, chose these particular sculptures, saying “the figures are less familiar to the public yet are really moving and have considerable punch. This is a “slice of the artist’s career.”

Moreover, Segal’s work is essentially autobiographic; he consistently used family, friends, and neighbors as models.

It is rather unexpected to encounter “Appalachian Farm Couple” and “Fireside Chat,” two of the three historic plaster groupings by Segal that were cast in bronze for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington. The poses of the man and woman standing in front of the barn wall and the seated figure, who is listening intently as he leans toward the radio (a family heirloom), are perfectly caught in time. Their expressive body language matches the tactile textured surfaces. In a recent telephone conversation, Rena Segal, the artist’s daughter, talked about the green-accented figures, explaining that her father wanted to suggest the patina of Old Master public sculptures that he had admired when visiting Europe.

Significantly, Segal focuses on the human condition to celebrate the common man. The figures in their gritty urban settings remain anonymous yet possess a strong presence. Many of his sculptural environments suggest psychological tension. As seen in “Graffiti Wall” and “Parking Garage,” it is easy to appreciate how Segal’s stopped action narratives with their bare essentials produce feelings of alienation and loneliness recalling canvases by Edward Hopper, the 20th-century American painter.

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Rena Segal described her talented father as a “modest, low-key man who was most comfortable wearing sneakers and jeans.”

Not long after he had realized significant success and recognition, the sculptor remarked: “We came out of a background that was poor ... it was strange, coming into the art world ... and meeting people who from childhood were accustomed to discrimination, taste and quality. We were startled that people pay attention to clothes, how they cook their food, what kind of silverware they have.”

Rena even joked that she was “raised on New Jersey diners.” Indeed, “Restaurant Scene” creates the ambiance of stepping into an unpretentious 24-hour roadside restaurant in the middle of the night.

Segal began as a painter in the mid-1950s before turning to sculpture. Over a long career, he continued his two-dimensional pursuits making dozens of impressive pastel and chalk drawings of incomparable realism. The works on paper here are close-up heads of the artist’s wife, daughter and friends, as well as a poignant image of his mother, Sophie.

Rena Segal mentioned the portrait of her grandmother was based on a photograph her father had taken during a visit to Sophie’s nursing home. The elderly woman has a decisive and commanding presence watching over the gallery with her son’s work. Segal’s drawings concentrate on realistic facial features, and the expressive gestural lines enhance each portrait’s emotive intensity.

To offer a more intimate look at the artist, the second exhibition showcases photographs by Donald Lokuta providing an engaging “visual biography” of George Segal and his studio.

This traveling show of 50 silver gelatin prints was organized by Donna Gustafson, curator of American Art and director of academic programs at the Zimmerli Art Museum of Rutgers University in New Brunswick. In an email, she explained:  “My purpose in the selection was to create a portrait of Segal as an artist, friend, parent, and spouse and to document the space of the artist’s studio as a changing, mysterious, and active space.”

In 1984 at the age of 34, Lokuta first visited Segal in Middlesex County. In a conversation from his home in Union, the photographer, who is now 69, stated: “We hit it off and became best friends.”

It turned into a singular project of two professional artists collaborating with sculpture as well as photography, yet Lokuta sees it as “friends working together.”  He affectionately recalled many outings that they had taken together: “My Leica was always with me.”

“The decision to use only black-and-white was made early; it fit the mood of his work,” Lokuta explained.

Over 16 years, the photographer took nearly 15,000 negatives. Rena Segal stated: “it was a relationship of trust. Dad forgot he was there.” And, “It was friends and professionals working together in the studio,” she said.

The pictures run the gamut from carefully posed portraits to spontaneously candid moments, straight documentation to still life compositions of form and tone. Lokuta said:  “It was thrilling for me to be with George Segal in his studio to watch the birth of an idea.

“Segal never talked about his fame. He just wanted to make wonderful art. ... George was a workaholic.”

Indeed, the photographs comprise a unique visual diary. An especially tender studio scene is “Helen and George.” Segal was being cast as the figure seated on the crate in “Graffiti Wall.” Interestingly, Lokuta was the model for the person standing against the painted wall in the same sculptural composition.

The photographer explained he was assisting with the casting when Helen entered. In a spontaneous gesture, she hugged her husband as Lokuta quickly took his camera and clicked the shutter, “hoping it was well lit and focused!”

Another charmingly playful moment is preserved in “Diner, Freehold, NJ.”  With the mirror behind the booth, Segal, who was very interested in photography, aims his camera at Lokuta, who is also seen reflected at the far right as he captures the precise moment. The two often traveled to museums in New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia; but they also visited many other less decidedly art places as seen in the self-portrait with Segal, a selfie that was taken on the boardwalk at Asbury Park.

He characterized Segal as “the perfect neighbor, never nasty, a lot of fun but quite serious.”

Now 16 years after the artist’s passing, Lokuta continues to admire Segal’s genuineness and humanity. He delightedly acknowledged: “The photographs are a record of a personal journey, an adventure in art and creativity — a document of a life and a friendship.”

Fred B. Adelson is a professor of art history at Rowan University. Contact him at fbadelson@gmail.com

If you go

'George Segal in Black and White: Drawings and Sculptures.'

'George Segal in Black and White: Photographs by Donald Lokuta'

Through Dec. 10 at the Stedman Gallery in the Fine Arts Complex of the Rutgers University-Camden campus, 314 Linden St., Camden. Call (856) 225-6306.

Hours Monday to Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Thursdays until 8 p.m. Closed Nov. 24–26. To schedule a guided tour, call (856) 225-6245 or (215) 225-6242

'Cabaret in Black and White,' dinner and reception gala Oct. 15 from 6:30 to 11 p.m. Guests will be able to vote on which sculpture in the exhibit Stedman Gallery should acquire as a donation from The George and Helen Segal Foundation.