George Segal: Modernist Humanist. Where: The George Segal Gallery at Montclair State University, 4th Floor, Red Hawk Parking Deck, Normal Avenue, Montclair. When: Tuesday-Dec. 11. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays; 12:30-7:30 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. How much: Free. Call (973) 655-3388 or visit montclair.edu/arts/galleries
Finally, after two years of preparation, the eponymously named George Segal Gallery on the campus of Montclair State University has opened its retrospective, "George Segal: Modernist Humanist," and the show is as beautiful as the late, great New Jersey artist's work. Maybe it is even as beautiful as his life -- though that's a tall order.
There are 18 pieces altogether, divided down the middle between sculpture (for which Segal was internationally known) and the pastel/charcoal drawings of friends and acquaintances that the New Brunswick-based artist started working on after he developed a bad back in the late '80s. There is something here from each decade beginning with the 1960s, when Segal first attracted critical attention. The earliest work is "The Dentist" (1966-70), with its antique dental drill column and its relatively crudely built figure, both under thick layers of aluminum paint. There are examples of his tributes to the great Modernists who preceded him (like "Picasso's Chair," from 1973, on loan from the Guggenheim in New York), several of his remarkably thoughtful nudes, and, of course, the "environments," scenes that include Segal's cast-plaster figures arranged with actual everyday objects, a genre which he was among the first of contemporary artists to create.
Dominating the entrance to the gallery is "Walk Don't Walk" (1976), on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, a prime example of Segal's environmental sculptures. The work consists of three figures -- two Caucasians, a man and a woman, and an African-American man -- standing beneath one of those old blinking crosswalk signs that spell out directions in words (our modern crosswalk signs, in a concession to New York's cosmopolitan melting pot, use little cartoon human figures instead of English to signal the right of way). So tall it pokes through the wooden drop ceiling in the gallery, "Walk Don't Walk" is the sort of sculpture for which Segal's life-casting technique was invented. The all-white figures, their facial features smothered, preserve the anonymity of the street even as they reassert the poetry of the human figure, which had been all but chased out of the Minimalist and generally abstract Modernist sensibility.
Now, nearly eight years after his death, it's that almost stubborn attention to the figure that marks Segal's career. Segal will be remembered for his lifecasts of the Common Man not only for their technique (casting from life had always been considered a cheating shortcut until Segal came along) but also for their existential honesty. It was Segal almost alone, in those days, who struggled to maintain the "balance" in the Western tradition, as critic and poet Donald Kuspit, who curated "Modernist Humanist," says in his catalogue essay for the show.
Segal actually began as a painter, though, except for the 1984 "Summer Cabin" -- which features a nude plaster woman on a wooden chair before a deal-wood window in which the artist had quickly brushed in a summer landscape in yellows and ultramarines -- there are no actual examples of his painting here. His first plaster figures were built up out of wet plaster on simple armatures and seemed to step out of large painted backdrops (the origins of his environments).
Over time, and especially after he had discovered plaster-impregnated bandages made by the Johnson & Johnson company (which allowed him to make molds much faster and with greater textural accuracy), Segal was able to vary the realism of his work tremendously. Much as the figures in "Walk Don't Walk" seem roughly surfaced and anonymous, the bodies ginned up out of actual plastered clothes, many of his later nudes display a striking verisimilitude of skin tone, like the all black "Woman Lying on a Bed III" (1994). Lit through a casement window built into the gallery wall, the prone figure is surrounded by "bedclothes" made from cheesecloth and bandages that suggest a tangle of etched lines on a plate. Segal told this writer back in 1999 that the piece was a tribute to Rembrandt.
Which brings us to the late charcoal portraits, which, with their snaking, tangled marks and beetling presence, are even more reminiscent of the Dutch master. Their subjects are mostly friends and family --Segal's mother, Sophie, his wife, Helen, and some of the folks who posed for his sculptures. There are also portraits of Pop sculptor Marisol and Israeli politician Abba Eban. They are the late works of a master.
Tightly cropped and executed on a scale larger than life, the portraits detail every dewlap and wrinkle of age, yet somehow defy death in their aggressive poses. "Sophie III" (1988), in particular, which shows the artist's mother, her glasses hanging on her face like transparent billboards, seems to look into you like a bird of prey. Segal is probably one of the greatest portraitists of our era (check out his relief portrait of art historian "Meyer Schapiro," 1977, here on loan from the Metropolitan Museum), and these simple late works show a depth of individual human response you may not have expected.
Those who knew him, of course, were not surprised, and many have not gotten over Segal's death in 2000. Teresa Rodriguez, director of the George Segal Gallery, says the gallery has an elaborate reception and a symposium planned for Sept. 20, when the show will be officially opened, and she wanted to ask artist Lucas Samaras to speak. Samaras had been a student of Segal and is himself immortalized in several of Segal's sculptures. But Samaras said he couldn't appear, not even eight years later: He's still in mourning.
Dan Bischoff may be reached at dbischoff@starledger.com