"In Memory of May 4, 1970 : Abraham and Issac," sculpted by George Segal in 1978, was commissioned by Kent State and later rejected because of its subject matter.
Rather than send descriptions or models, Segal began grafting the plaster casts, says McCoy.
"One summer day in the office arrived a big mailing tube from George Segal," McCoy says. "In the mailing tube were the plans of what he's going to do with the Abraham and Isaac statue and three large blow-ups of the full-sized plaster casts. It was at that point we knew we were in difficulty."
Unlike McCoy, Brinsley Tyrrell, one of three sculpture teachers at Kent State in 1978, has no stories of luncheon or discussion with Segal because Segal was never introduced around the School of Art. Tyrrell says he got most of the story on the Segal work from the newspapers.
"Being a sculptor at the university, I was getting telephone calls from around the country asking, "What the hell is going on?' And I didn't know what was going on. People assume that if you teach sculpture on the campus, you know what's going on when an internationally known sculptor comes to campus."
If university administrators had asked, Tyrrell says, he would have told them that Segal doesn't do designs and models.
"They were asking an artist to submit designs who never does," he says. Also, says Tyrrell, he would have told them that Segal's work was always specific. Segal places cloth dipped in plaster directly on the bodies of living people, lets it dry, then saws off the body cast like a surgeon would. He pieces the cast together to form a plaster likeness of the human.
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"In Memory of May 4, 1970 : Abraham and Issac," sculpted by George Segal in 1978, was commissioned by Kent State and later rejected because of its subject matter. |
Segal's first protest piece, done in 1967 in response to the war in Vietnam, is called "Execution." Three bodies lie crumpled on the ground, while another is hung upside down, a rope wrapped around its feet.
McCoy says a piece like the current memorial is more what the Golding administration had in mind. After Segal's project-in-process photos arrived, Golding sent McCoy on a visit to Segal's New Jersey studio.
"It was cordial - he fed me," recalls McCoy. "We had lunch."
When McCoy saw the work that day, he knew for sure it wasn't what the administration wanted.
"It's really powerful because you see the man looking up toward his father," he says. "But our point is that Abraham didn't sacrifice Isaac -that the ram in the thicket was used in its place."
That, says Alan Canfora, was precisely the point of the work.
