"Art Imitates..."

15 June, 2000 - Happy Pride Month!

The very first piece of public art commemorating lesbian and gay people (as lesbian and gay people) wasn't created until 1983. Pop sculptor, George Segal, originally proposed "Gay Liberation" as a memorial in New York City to the Stonewall Riots. Unfortunately the proposal generated immediate protests.

Some long time residents of Manhatten's Greenwich Village had grown increasingly angry with the large number of gays and lesbians who had been moving into the village over the previous three decades. Segal received death threats. Several anonymous notes and phone calls to city hall threatened to blow the statues up if they were placed in Sheridan Park. Many of the threats and protests referenced the bible and threatened god's retribution on the whole city.

While the controversy raged, the sculptures were installed on the other side of the continent, on the Stanford University campus. Segal's sculpture depicted two couples, one sitting on a bench, the other standing in front of it. It takes a few moments of looking before you realize that anything is unusual. The two women sit close, one with her arm laying casually in the other's lap, the other's hand tenderly resting on the first's. The two men lean toward each other, as if having a quiet, intimate conversation, one firmly holding the shoulder of the other.

Throughout his sculpting career, Segal created figures that communication by their posture. His figures are slightly indistinct, weathered-looking, and bereft of ethnic features of any kind. They evoke ancient runes, like the ash and lava "castings" of ancient romans in the city of Pompeii. This style, which Segal perfected, allows him to communicate profoundly universal themes through his life-sized sculptures. Like his other works, Gay Liberation was never intended to be on a pedestal. Segal wanted people to be able to enter his sculptures, to interact with them, and to become a part of the artistic message.

It's a very effective method, as the history of this sculpture proves. Less than a month after the bronze figures were installed on Stanford's campas, a vandal tried to destroy them, inflicting $50,000 worth of damage with a ball-peen hammer. The news sent chills through the gay and lesbian communities. We had long endured gay bashing, but to see such hatred and bigotry on an infamously liberal campus, just a short distance from San Francisco's vibrant and open gay community, was quite a shock.

It was a shock to the artist, as well. Shortly after the attack, Segal told a New York Times reporter, "The statement I tried to make in the sculpture is not a political one. It's rather a human one regarding our common humanity with homosexuals. I'm distressed that disagreement with the statement took this violent, brutal form." It was a case of art imitating life. Gay and lesbian people have always lived under the shadow of violence. It probably shouldn't surprise us that these statues do, as well.

The sculptures were removed from the university grounds for repairs, and remained in storage for over a year. Less than a year after being re-installed, someone vandalized them again, spray-painting the word "AIDS" on the male couple.

In 1992 New York City finally agreed to install replicas in Sheridan Park, just across the street from the Stonewall Inn, often called the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. Segal openly expressed surprise at the dedication ceremony that there were no protesters. A local resident told him that most of the residents who had objected earlier were older, and had simply died during the interim.

But there was some criticism of the statues, sometimes quite shrill, from within the more radical gay and lesbian activist groups. They were angry that Segal, a straight man, was allowed to create this memorial to Stonewall.

The originals at Stanford came into the media spotlight one more time, in 1994, when several members of Stanford's football team, including the star quarterback and a leading linebacker, rammed the statues several times with a stolen park bench, then splashed them with paint. Ironically, the scandal got more press coverage than any real gay-bashing before that point ever had. The culprits were convicted and sentenced to a year of probation and community service. The judge suggested that if the jocks took and passed a gay studies course, he would count the class time toward the community service. I've never been able to find out if any of them took him up on the offer.

"Gay Liberation" is an important contribution to the history of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights movements. Its message is of the simple tenderness of love and affirmation. Their embraces represent emotional intimacy, not sexual expression. Segal has created many other works, most famous is the group of five men standing in a bread line, which is part of the new Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial in Washington, D.C. But I will always be grateful that this straight artist created "Gay Liberation."

"I wanted to take sculpture off its pedestal," Segal told The Associated Press in a 1985 interview. "I wanted something solid, something you could walk into and walk around and be a part of."

Mr. Segal succumbed to cancer Friday, June 10, in his home in New Jersey. He was 74. Thank you, Mr. Segal, for giving us such something solid and powerful.

This page is copyright 2000 by Gene Breshears. Photograph is copyright 1998 by Julie Rampke. All Rights Reserved.