George Segal: Bronze

In the late 1960s, George Segal began double-casting his work--taking a second cast from inside the mold of the original cast. This process brought finer detail to the surface and was part of his evolution to a more naturalizing image. When, in the 1980s, he began making bronze work for outdoor installation, he continued this double-casting technique and all his bronzes were made from finished plasters. As Carroll Janis writes in the introduction, Segal's plaster sculpture presents an existential situation; the surrogate figure, more fagile and removed from reality when set next to the real object. The bronzes appear to reverse this idea by asserting the strength and permanence of the human figure within the surrounding environment.