|
George
Segal: American Still Life |
|
||
|
"I think a minute of existence is miraculous and extraordinary," said
artist George Segal, whose famed sculptures of ordinary people caught in
the daily act of living force us to see the magnificence in the mundane.
Filmed during the last two years of his life (Segal died June 2000), George
Segal: American Still Life is very much a present tense biography of
an artist at the peak of his powers. The internationally acclaimed
sculptor created art out of life's seemingly uneventful moments waiting
for a bus, drinking coffee in a diner, listening to the radio. But Segal's
sculptures are more than just frozen moments; his trademark white plaster
figures created by wrapping his friends and relatives with plaster-soaked
surgical bandages stand in real bus stops and sit on real park benches,
offering a unique mirror to our own lives. "Daily life has a
reputation for being banal, uninteresting, boring somehow," said
Segal. "It strikes me that daily life is baffling, mysterious and
unfathomable." In 1997 Segal was given the Japanese equivalent of the
Nobel Prize, the Praemium Imperiale Award for Lifetime Achievement in the
Arts.
In addition, a Segal exhibition called "George Segal: Wall Works" is currently traveling through Japan until March 14, 2003 and will be on view in Hiroshima, Kagawa, Gifu, Tokyo, Akita and Utsunomia. Winner: 2001 CINE Golden Eagle Winner: First Prize, Audience Choice, FilmFest New Haven, Connecticut. |
|||
