"I was my own first model."

"I wrapped myself in the bandages and my wife put on the plaster. I had a hell of a time getting the pieces off and reassembled.… I had found my medium."—George Segal

We salute sculptor, painter, and printmaker George Segal on his birthday. Segal is best known for his life-size figures that are often placed in realistic positions and settings.

In the summer of 1961, George Segal was given plaster-impregnated bandages by one of his students attending an adult art class he was conducting near his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey. These bandages, samples of a product being developed by Johnson and Johnson, would be used to produce the figure in Man at a Table, the first of a vast number of tableaux by Segal incorporating a body cast of a human subject with "found" or everyday objects.

The Curtain is one of his enigmatic sculptural tableaux from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. To find out more about George Segal, go to our online journal American Art, which includes a recent tribute to the artist.

Source: Brenda Schmahman. "Casting a Glance, Diverting the Gaze: George Segal's Representation of the Female Body" American Art journal 12 (fall 1998).

Pictured: George Segal, 1924–2000, The Curtain, 1974, mixed media: plaster, glass and painted wood, 84 1/2 x 39 1/4 x 35 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.