Ilene Segalove’s Modern America
“There was an obvious, loud blur between artifice and reality,” Ilene Segalove says of growing up in Los Angeles. “The Graduate was filmed across the street from my house in Beverly Hills. Dustin Hoffman’s stand-in kept asking me out on dates. My mom told me I should wait for the ‘real’ Dustin Hoffman, and then say, ‘Yes.’ That never happened.”
Maybe not, but such slippages between reality and illusion would shape Segalove’s development as an artist. After studying with John Baldessari at CalArts, she worked in his studio, an experience that cemented the idea that in art anything is permissible. An early adopter of video art before the form even had a name, Segalove used playfulness and wit to create a distinctive body of work throughout the 1970s, often casting her own mother as lead protagonist. In The Mom Tapes (1974–78), Segalove, influenced by protoforms of reality television like the 1973 PBS series An American Family, adopted a mock-documentary approach, interviewing and following her mother around her spacious home. Other photo-based works from this time were influenced by feminist discourse and offer humorous commentary on the everyday. Segalove, who now lives in Santa Barbara, recently spoke with curator Charlotte Cotton about this period and growing up in LA’s celebrity culture.
Charlotte Cotton:
