George Segal (1980)

George Segal: Self

Photos 

Quotes 

• George Segal : When I started getting interested in sculpture, I got some old broken department store mannequins and I found out that they had been cast from a series of different models. The one with the most beautiful knee, the most beautiful breast, the most beautiful face. The most perfect features of several people were put together into an abominable travesty of beauty.

• George Segal : Specific individuals have an enormous complexity, almost to the point of miracle. When I started doing these sepulchral plaster casts that were pure white, in some way that I could not understand the sculpture I had made, unwittingly captured something of the mental life of the person who posed. In addition to the flesh I was catching a little piece of sprit. That astounded me and I still don't quite understand it.

• George Segal : Most sculpture is up on a pedestal in a psychologically different space. I was determined to take art off the pedestal and have it inhabit my ordinary space. To let myself walk in and around and among these objects. I am interested in form. I am interested in carving the shape of the empty space. But I am not that interested in narrative beginning, middle and end. It's a walk. It's a physical walk through real space.

• George Segal : I can't measure my own vitality, except by how strong is my impulse to make new things.