The Georgia Museum of Art has repurposed its new media gallery to present the exhibition George Segal: Everyday Apparitions, which is on view through March 6. Consisting of only three works, all of which are recent gifts to the museum from the George and Helen Segal Foundation, the exhibition will give visitors a chance to focus on Segal’s work at length.
Along with Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, Segal was affiliated with the pop art movement of the 1960s. Like these artists, Segal’s work addresses the conditions of modern daily life; unlike them, he focused almost exclusively on the human form. He is best known for his life-size plaster sculptures of human figures arrayed in tableaus. These figures—sometimes ghostly white, sometimes brightly painted—exude a melancholy and isolation Segal believed was inherent to the human condition in the 20th century, much like Edward Hopper’s paintings. The small gallery, which has no windows, removes distractions from the experience of viewing the work.
Two works in the exhibition (“Young Woman in Doorway” and “Post No Bills”) are plaster sculptures, and the third is a large pastel and charcoal drawing. Segal made his sculptures through a process similar to papier-mache, layering wet medical bandages to create a cast from a live model.
