George Segal, Depression Bread Line, 1991, Bronze, 108 x 148 x 36 inches. Collection of Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. © The George and Helen Segal Foundation. Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo: Allan Finkelman © 1991.
This is huge: In conjunction with its exhibition of works by George Segal this fall, the Before I try, I should disclose that I am a MMoCA member, have admired the late Segal's work since the early 1980s and thus am twice biased. I'm obliged to add that I'm neither an art critic nor an art scholar, so my opinionated personal perspective should in no way be misconstrued as authoritative. But I hope you'll stay with me here for a moment, and allow me to justify my enthusiasm for what the museum has achieved, and what the achievement might mean to Madison. "Depression Bread Line" is one of Segal's more visible public sculptures. The original was commissioned for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C. Like his other best-known works, it is figurative -- showing five men waiting in line near a door during the Depression. It measures nine feet by 12 by three, but like his other life-sized figurative works is imbued with an evocative emotional power that renders those dimensions even more impressive. "Depression Bread Line" will be a cornerstone of "George Segal: Street Scenes," the exhibition now being organized by MMoCA. Scheduled to open here on September 14 and continue through Dec. 28, it will include about 17 sculptures spanning from his early plaster works of the 1960s through later works executed a short time before his death in 2000. After the exhibit closes here, "Depression Bread Line" will travel with the other works in the show to three other cities before returning to Madison to become a cornerstone of MMoCA's permanent collection. What a cornerstone. I need to re-emphasize that I'm writing from a perspective of personal opinion, not authoritative scholarship. But let me try to supply some context for what MMoCA has achieved here.
For anyone who lived in Madison between 1986 and 1991, "Depression Bread Line" will invoke memories of "Gay Liberation," the Segal sculpture featuring two men and two women sited at Orton Park during those years, and now installed at New York's Sheridan Square in commemoration of the historic Stonewall Riots that erupted in that neighborhood -- a critical event in the birth of the gay-rights movement.
Segal's own birth, in 1924 in New York, was to Jewish emigrants from east Europe. His parents first established a butcher shop in the Bronx, but later operated a New Jersey poultry farm where Segal grew up. His birth as an artist came circa World War II, and his rebirth as a figurative sculptor occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He spent much of the rest of his artistic career devoted to constructing scenes evocative of class and the human condition. That's the short summary. For more authoritative appraisals of his life and work, there are any number of books and doctoral dissertations to consult.
Here's my personal perspective. By the 1980s, Segal was near the peak of his renown. I was fortunate enough to be traveling around Europe on a Eurail pass in the mid-1980s. At least one of his works was on display at almost every significant modern-art museum I visited, and many were part of the museums' permanent collections. This was a time when those collections included works by the likes of Lichtenstein, Giacommeti, Warhol, Magritte and Pollock. Even in such distinctive company as that, Segal made an impression. In viewing his work, walking around it, I had the sense of being drawn into it, almost part of whatever scene it depicted. The scenes were almost always quiet calm on first appraisal, but there were compelling undercurrents in the implied narrative that were rendered even more powerful by that surface sense of stillness and silence.
Sharing the credit for helping to make this commission possible: donors including Bill and Jan DeAtley, James and Sylvia Vaccaro and the Madison Community Foundation.
The magnanimous cooperation of the George and Helen Segal Foundation was also critical, MMoCA Director Stephen Fleischmann explains. "I've been an admirer of Segal for a long time," he says. That's the first line of the story of how this commission happened. "A number of years ago I received an introduction to the George and Helen Segal Foundation," he continues. He traveled to New Jersey to visit the foundation, meet Helen Segal and other members of the family.
By then, Fleischmann was starting to lay the groundwork for this fall's exhibition. He toured Segal's studio, converted from an enormous former outbuilding on the farm where George and Helen raised their family. "That's where I saw the original plaster sculpture used to cast the bronze" for the FDR memorial, he says.
The first of the five men in the breadline was made in the likeness of Segal himself, Fleischmann notes. The second was sculpted in the likeness of Martin Friedman, emeritus director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, who had facilitated Fleischmann's introduction to the foundation. The third, fourth and fifth figures were also sculpted in the semblance of Segal friends. This was common practice for him.
As plans for the exhibition moved forward, Fleischmann paid another visit to the New Jersey studio to discuss the checklist of works for the Segal retrospective. "I kept saying I wanted to use 'Depression Bread Line,'" he says, "but there was some anxiety about it being in plaster." Then, the foundation floated a proposal. Before his death, Segal had authorized up to seven bronze casts of the work. The foundation offered one of those to MMoCA, if the museum would pay for the casting costs.
"It's a huge acquisition," Fleischmann agrees. "There's no question about it. We've made great strides in building the sculpture collection, but this is clearly a work that will appeal to a broad variety of visitors and that people will make a special trip to see." The brick-wall backdrop will also be rendered in bronze, adding yet more gravitas to the work. Fleischmann is not yet sure where in the museum "Depression Bread Line" will be installed once it returns from the exhibition's three-city tour, but says it might find a home in MMoCA lobby.
Regardless of where in the museum it finds a home, its impact on the museum's stature promises to be enormous. You won't have to be a MMoCA member to view it or appreciate its impact on Madison as a destination for arts patrons. But if you've been thinking about purchasing a MMoCA membership for yourself or as a gift for friends, you might want to do so now -- before a line forms.
