The day after his six-part series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea finished airing on PBS, 56-year-old film maker Ken Burns was on an airplane to Macon, Georgia to speak at the opening of an art exhibit featuring the work of his friend and spiritual mentor William Segal. From the exhibition catalog introduction:
Thanks to a series of fortuitous circumstances, the Museum of Arts and Sciences presents this retrospective exhibition of the work of William Segal. A native-born son of Macon, his name is little recognized in Macon although his family left an indelible mark in the business and religious life of the community. Achievements at every stage of Segal’s life are testament to the exceptional abilities of this man whose parents immigrated to the United States from Romania with little material wealth. In maturity he was recognized for his successes as a publisher and businessman, but he was so much more.
The “so much more” seems to be the focus of this exhibition and the underlying theme of the opening events surrounding it. Ken Burns hosted a screening of his three-part documentary based on the life of Segal titled Seeing, Searching, Being and described the first time he met Segal to the audience:
“There was some workshop going on. … At some point this man with an eye patch and nearly bald head, very short, 5-foot-2 or three, walked by and sort of engaged with me for a moment and it was such a transformative moment I can’t describe it. Those of you who have faith know that there are moments in your life when that faith has been exponentially multiplied by sometimes the smallest event.”
In a later panel discussion, Burns says Segal’s challenge to all of us was to come to a curiosity about ourselves – some sort of self-awareness, and that part of Segal’s greatness was a constant overcoming of the spiritual laziness we all suffer from, resulting in a perpetual willingness to wrestle with that challenge RIGHT NOW.
I was reminded of Nietzsche who compared sin to the act of succumbing to gravity, with “gravity” being that constant force that resists movement and holds the false promise of rest in the form of stillness and death. Burns’ descriptions of Segal suggest he was never one to “succumb to gravity.”
Also in the panel discussion was the Director of the Georgia Museum of Art Dr. William U. Eiland, who described the act of painting as the pinnacle of that challenge for Segal, describing it as a “concentration of energy,” an intense focussing that excludes distraction and allows for what he calls “being there.” I suppose in terms of the gravity metaphor, painting was when Segal was able to move weightlessly – or to dig up another existentialist Kierkegaard, painting is when Segal was able to become the Knight of Faith, living in the finite but making moves in the infinite. (It’s been a while since I took Existentialism in college, so my recollections might be a bit off.)
The show is simply titled “William Segal” and features paintings, drawings and prints from Segal spanning seven decades, from a self portrait painted in 1924 to a series of lithographs completed in 1997, as well as examples of the innovative textile and style magazines he published, books, photographs and artifacts from his life.
Even without the well-articulated descriptions and stories from the panel speakers and friends of William Segal’s in attendance, it was obvious from the works in the show that this was an introspective and spiritual soul who was able to find peace with himself and the world through the act of painting – an act that he never seemed to allow to become easy. In his work is a certain calmness, but it is a calmness after the storm of creation – especially his self-portraits.
I’ve never been one to value talking a lot about visual art, so I will play the role of dossier and shush myself as you enter the gallery.
Click thumbnails to view larger images in the gallery:
Above: Ken Burns talks about his friend and mentor at the opening of “William Segal: A Retrospective” at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, Georgia. The exhibit was up from October 3, 2009 – January 4, 2010.
Each morning at dawn, I pad downstairs to find, just to the right as I take the last step, this compelling face staring at me, demanding my attention. “Good Morning, Mr. Segal,” I say each day without fail, grateful for the graceful reminder of a wondrous hidden world, a presence, seemingly so far away and yet so close to the sleep we call our normal “waking” lives. There is a risk in self-portraiture. We see our own reflections countless times a day – in mirrors and windows everywhere we go. And we are curious, pleased, critical, vain. But we rarely have the courage William Segal has, the courage of self-portraiture, to ask with each fleeting glimpse of oneself: Who am I?
– Ken Burns
