There was never any question as to who should sculpt Mr. and Mrs. Robert Scull, Manhattan's leading pop art patrons. George Segal, of course—the man who has made his reputation by casting his models full size in plaster, then setting them in "environments" that range from a washbasin (for a nude washing her foot) to the whole front door of a brownstone. The only thing holding back Ethel Scull was her dislike of being slathered all over with wet plaster.
"Come on, be a sport. Nothing will happen to you," Segal promised. So Ethel reluctantly agreed, began making preparations by buying a cheap $4 house dress. But friends, including Vogue Editorial Director Alexander Liberman, objected. Said he: "Ethel, this is for posterity. As a fashionable woman, how can you wear anything but Courreges?" In the end, she settled for a $45 copy of a Courreges dress that she already owned, but her white Courreges boots were for real. Then, with her hair done by Kenneth, she showed up with her husband at Segal's studio for the pour.
Vivaldi & Cold Compress. Normally, Segal casts his models in sections, but for Ethel he wanted to try just two casts, the first from the neck down. "Take a natural position," Segal urged. Ethel plunked herself down on a secondhand green velvet Victorian couch, one leg tucked under the other. Segal proceeded to swab down her arms, dress, legs and boots with petroleum jelly. Then, carefully dipping squares of cheesecloth in plaster, he began molding them to her body.
"I felt nothing till he got to my bare legs," recalls Ethel. "It was deliciously cool. Then it began to get warm. In five minutes, it was hot." Inside the 1-inch of plaster, her body heat was building up at the same time the plaster itself was heating in the process of drying. "You're doing very well," said her husband reassuringly. "I'm burning up!" cried Ethel, as the plaster dried. To cool her, Husband Scull put a cold compress on her forehead.
To soothe her, Segal played Vivaldi on the phonograph. "It was awful," she recalls. "After I got encased and began to harden, I couldn't feel my foot. It was numb. Then I couldn't move my hand. I began to itch. I knew this was an important piece, but all along I kept thinking, To hell with posterity! Let me out!' "
Slip & Saran Wrap. In 45 minutes, Ethel was hard. "When they tried to get me out of the cast, I wasn't coming out too well," she recalls. "They tipped me over." Her buttons were imbedded in the plaster, so Segal had to snip her out in her slip. As for the boots, they were hopelessly stuck and remained behind.
"I didn't want to finish," she admits, "but then I didn't want to be a bad sport." So she let Segal smear her face and place Saran Wrap over her Kenneth coiffure, which preserved for history its general silhouette, if not the actual hair.
"Well," said Ethel, "the exact same thing happened. The plaster hardened. I couldn't swallow. I couldn't talk. I kept moaning, hmmmmm, hmmmmm, hmmmmm! They knew I was suffering, but they made believe they couldn't hear me."