Skip to main content

Three People on Four Benches

Collections Menu
Photography by Dero Sanford
Three People on Four Benches
Photography by Dero Sanford

Three People on Four Benches

Artist (1924 - 2000)
Date1979
MediumBronze figures with white patina, aluminum benches, and paint
Dimensions52 × 144 × 58 in. (132.1 × 365.8 × 147.3 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, Gift of The George and Helen Segal Foundation, 2015.18
Accession number 2015.18
On View
On view
Provenanceto George and Helen Segal Foundation, North Brunswick, NJ; given to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2015
Label TextGeorge Segal designed Three People on Four Benches to both facilitate public engagement and subtly comment on the loneliness of modern life. An important figure in the Pop art movement, Segal engaged with popular culture, not by depicting Coke bottles or soup cans like Andy Warhol, but by examining the people who populate the modern world. The placement of the sitting human sculptures asks viewers to question the interactions, or lack thereof, between the figures. But Segal does not simply create a work to be looked at; by leaving enough space on the benches for viewers to join the group, he also invites guests to interact with the work themselves. The sculpture adapts to any site and offers itself to the aesthetic, psychological, and physical possibilities of its audience.
Photography by Edward C. Robison III
George Segal
1991
Photography by Edward C. Robison III.
Deborah Butterfield
2007
Photography by Edward C. Robison III
Nancy Graves
1982
Quarantania
Louise Bourgeois
1947-1953, cast 1990
Photography by Edward C. Robison III.
Georgia O'Keeffe
modeled 1946, cast ca. 1979-1980
Photography by Dero Sanford
Keith Haring
1986
Photography by Edward C. Robison III
Alex Katz
2006