拍品专文
At first glance The Artist's Studio appears to be a simple three dimensional rendering of the environment of a two dimensional pursuit. In reality the work is, however, a loaded testimony to Segal's attempt to not only celebrate the new inclusiveness of Pop Art but (in contrast to the Pop artist who situated their works in time), to develop an idiom of timelessness. Segal aimed to represent the timeless dilemma of man's choice between imprisonment and freedom.
Abstract expressionism had aimed at creating a total field in which to express inner realities through gesture on canvas. Pop Art attempted to create an environment, with both objects made and found, that introduced subjects that could no longer be adequately expressed in painting. Segal welcomed this new acceptance in art and believed that the new subject matter opened the door on everyday experiences that he personally had been unable to successfully portray in his own paintings. As is evidenced in The Artist's Studio, Segal's subjects are those that he stumbles on in everyday life. However, unlike Warhol or Lichtenstein he did not wish to force the context and never epitomized the prototypical spirit of 60's America. Segal simply looked around and recorded what he saw. The inherent colour of the objects and their environmental properties (for example the pre-fab bricks used for the chimney) represent a shifting of aesthetic priorities in his work from colour to form and space.
In The Artist's Studio there is a conscious attempt at structuring the space within and around the work. The space is like a subjective frame put over on top of reality, but never quite fixed in position. The viewer can guess at it but it is not physically defined. The space surrounding the figure is however firmly rooted in the artist's experience. It assumes the particular's of the artist's environment, his attic studio. Hence the intimacy of Segal's sculpture is readily explained by the intimate character of the place in which it was executed.
The model in the studio shows arrested motion and weightly repose, balanced between an act or sentence just completed and the unquestioned prospect of more of the same. Silence, pregnant and telling, is a characteristic condition of Segal's work. The plaster casts, white and depersonalized are like the ghosts that haunt our conscience. We suspect a human presence muffled inside the shells. Despite its physical concreteness the plaster cast and the commonplace objects surrounding it, are a caustic commentary by Segal on his own and humanity's mundane existence.
Abstract expressionism had aimed at creating a total field in which to express inner realities through gesture on canvas. Pop Art attempted to create an environment, with both objects made and found, that introduced subjects that could no longer be adequately expressed in painting. Segal welcomed this new acceptance in art and believed that the new subject matter opened the door on everyday experiences that he personally had been unable to successfully portray in his own paintings. As is evidenced in The Artist's Studio, Segal's subjects are those that he stumbles on in everyday life. However, unlike Warhol or Lichtenstein he did not wish to force the context and never epitomized the prototypical spirit of 60's America. Segal simply looked around and recorded what he saw. The inherent colour of the objects and their environmental properties (for example the pre-fab bricks used for the chimney) represent a shifting of aesthetic priorities in his work from colour to form and space.
In The Artist's Studio there is a conscious attempt at structuring the space within and around the work. The space is like a subjective frame put over on top of reality, but never quite fixed in position. The viewer can guess at it but it is not physically defined. The space surrounding the figure is however firmly rooted in the artist's experience. It assumes the particular's of the artist's environment, his attic studio. Hence the intimacy of Segal's sculpture is readily explained by the intimate character of the place in which it was executed.
The model in the studio shows arrested motion and weightly repose, balanced between an act or sentence just completed and the unquestioned prospect of more of the same. Silence, pregnant and telling, is a characteristic condition of Segal's work. The plaster casts, white and depersonalized are like the ghosts that haunt our conscience. We suspect a human presence muffled inside the shells. Despite its physical concreteness the plaster cast and the commonplace objects surrounding it, are a caustic commentary by Segal on his own and humanity's mundane existence.