George Segal, Woman Shaving Her Leg, 1963

Show TranscriptHide Transcript

transcripts

CAITLIN HASKELL:

How do you bring together art and life? And this, to me, looks like you’ve got an art component and then you’ve got a life component.

SARAH ROBERTS:

I mean, everybody has seen that bathroom in some cheap hotel or some relative’s house.

HASKELL:

And they’ve been brought together in a very deliberate and overt way.

NARRATOR:

We’re here with Curators Caitlin Haskell and Sarah Roberts talking about George Segal’s “Woman Shaving Her Legs.”

ROBERTS:

She’s this kind of ghostly lump in the tub, and it is unsettling.

HASKELL:

It is, yeah.

ROBERTS:

And the razor’s a real razor.

NARRATOR:

About that ghostly lump of a woman. Segal would wrap his models in plaster-soaked bandages and let the materials harden. The way a doctor might put a cast around a broken arm. Once he cut the plaster away from their bodies, he’d put the hollow pieces back together. And deliberately left them faceless, like mummies.

GEORGE SEGAL:

It’s a real bathtub. I built it. I built it exactly the way a plumber would. The girl stands in a bathtub like an ancient narcissistic pussycat, caressing herself. And you know, she can be a woman any time, anywhere, but she’s in a twentieth century antiseptic enclosure.

I was after composing ordinary real space around you psychologically wiping out the idea of art as high art taking it off the pedestal.

transcripts

NARRATOR:

Artist George Segal’s 1963 installation is a highly realistic depiction of an actual bathtub and shower, framed by yellow tiles. In the middle of the scene, a white figure bends over, with her foot perched on the edge of the tub. She is a lumpy mass of unfinished plaster and gauze. The installation is almost lifesize, but not quite. It stands 5 feet tall and runs 5 ½ feet wide. The yellow-tile walls frame a space 3 ½ feet deep. It’s made of plastic-coated fiberboard, metal fixtures, and features a real razor in the woman’s hand. Segal called it Woman Shaving Her Leg.

As we stand in front of this scene, no curtain or shower door blocks our view; the hulking mummy-like woman in the tub is completely exposed. She faces out towards us, but her body is fully bent over in concentration and her head is down. She holds an actual razor in her hand, poised above her ankle, about to take a swipe. Her right arm is bent across her knee, and she leans into it for balance. No attempt has been made to paint her, or make her look realistic, like her environment.

The bottom portion of the installation is a white porcelain bathtub, complete with a drain and stopper. It’s enclosed on three sides by walls covered in mustard-yellow tiles. On the left, actual metal plumbing fixtures have been affixed to the wall – knobs for hot and cold water, a spout for the tub, and a showerhead above. On the right wall is an empty metal towel rack.

Artwork Info

Audio Stories

transcripts

Audio Description

transcripts

Other Works by George Segal