Woman on White Wicker Rocker,

1984–85

George Segal was an integral part of the Rutgers avant-garde, a group of students and professors who worked in the art departments at Rutgers University and its sister institution, Douglass College, in the 1950s and 1960s. A friend to luminaries such as Allan Kaprow, one of whose earliest Happenings occurred on his chicken farm in South Brunswick, Segal embarked in 1961 on the work for which he is best known: figurative sculptures made from white plaster, often paired with everyday objects or placed in environments intended to represent quotidian places such as diners, buses, kitchens, and parking garages. Even when they depict a group of individuals, Segal’s sculptures often convey a sense of isolation and social anomie, thanks in part to the suppression of expression and individuality entailed by his method. In <em>Woman on White Wicker Rocker</em>, for instance, a bronze edition of an original plaster, the figure’s demeanor suggests introspection, melancholia, and apprehension all at once.