Richard Serra (1938-2024)
March 28, 2024 10:30 AM Subscribe
This makes me sad. Serra's work is so powerful, but it's also the kind of stuff people so easily dismiss without having experienced it.
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posted by Thorzdad at 11:04 AM on March 28 [8 favorites]
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posted by Thorzdad at 11:04 AM on March 28 [8 favorites]
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Ever since I saw his exhibit at the Gran Palais in 2008, with the 50+'-tall pillars, I made a point of seeking out his work wherever I went.
posted by ssmug at 11:06 AM on March 28
Ever since I saw his exhibit at the Gran Palais in 2008, with the 50+'-tall pillars, I made a point of seeking out his work wherever I went.
posted by ssmug at 11:06 AM on March 28
I went to a Serra exhibit in NYC sometimes in the early 2000s with a friend, who about halfway through said something along the lines of, "This is all very interesting, but does it make you FEEL anything?" No, I thought, not really. But then we walked through a particularly massive sculpture that wheeled around in a maze, and upon reaching the center let out a kind of hiccup of laughter/surprise/pent-up emotion.
Then we watched group after group reach the center and have more or less the same reaction. It was like a machine. One of the most incredibly experiences I've had with a piece of art of any medium.
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posted by Transylvania Metro Android Castle at 11:09 AM on March 28 [17 favorites]
Then we watched group after group reach the center and have more or less the same reaction. It was like a machine. One of the most incredibly experiences I've had with a piece of art of any medium.
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posted by Transylvania Metro Android Castle at 11:09 AM on March 28 [17 favorites]
There's a Serra piece at the Modern in Fort Worth that's outside, before you even get in (it's too big), and has very interesting sound architecture. Mr Epigrams, who used to work on the side as an audio engineer, shows it gleefully to every friend we take to that museum. I know nothing about his other works, but for an artist whose work has brought my spouse such joy:
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posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:22 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
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posted by gentlyepigrams at 11:22 AM on March 28 [3 favorites]
Best commencement speech ever: https://post.thing.net/node/2064
posted by web5.0 at 11:30 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
posted by web5.0 at 11:30 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
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Wake is probably my favorite place in Seattle. I stroll through it at least once a week. Olympic Sculpture Park / Centennial Park are true gems of the city and that piece in particular makes me feel...small but in a comforting way? I dunno there's just something about walking amongst these giant lumbering organic shapes.
I also find the story of Tilted Arc fascinating. There's a tension between my taste in art (I like it) and my urbanist views (cities should work for the people who live there). Like it was making an interesting point, but when that point just angers everyone who experiences the park daily, maybe that's not the right place to make that point?
posted by davidest at 11:46 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
Wake is probably my favorite place in Seattle. I stroll through it at least once a week. Olympic Sculpture Park / Centennial Park are true gems of the city and that piece in particular makes me feel...small but in a comforting way? I dunno there's just something about walking amongst these giant lumbering organic shapes.
I also find the story of Tilted Arc fascinating. There's a tension between my taste in art (I like it) and my urbanist views (cities should work for the people who live there). Like it was making an interesting point, but when that point just angers everyone who experiences the park daily, maybe that's not the right place to make that point?
posted by davidest at 11:46 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
This reminded me about Titled Arc controversy, where the people who worked near the plaza did not want a giant abstract sculpture imposed in their space, and there was a lawsuit that went the duration of the 1980s to have it removed.
We now accept big abstract sculpture as the pleasant norm in public space, and when a figurative sculpture is installed there's a culture war flareup.
posted by bendybendy at 11:48 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
We now accept big abstract sculpture as the pleasant norm in public space, and when a figurative sculpture is installed there's a culture war flareup.
posted by bendybendy at 11:48 AM on March 28 [4 favorites]
This reminded me about Titled Arc controversy, where the people who worked near the plaza did not want a giant abstract sculpture imposed in their space, and there was a lawsuit that went the duration of the 1980s to have it removed.
It's my understanding that the people who worked near the plaza didn't care about the abstractness so much as the "it blocks the path" part -- or at any rate, that was the part which resulted in removal. (After all, plenty of people are on record as hating another large abstract COR-TEN steel piece and it remains there to this day, having become grudgingly beloved.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:54 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]
It's my understanding that the people who worked near the plaza didn't care about the abstractness so much as the "it blocks the path" part -- or at any rate, that was the part which resulted in removal. (After all, plenty of people are on record as hating another large abstract COR-TEN steel piece and it remains there to this day, having become grudgingly beloved.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:54 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]
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posted by May Kasahara at 11:58 AM on March 28
posted by May Kasahara at 11:58 AM on March 28
Metafilter: it remains there to this day, having become grudgingly beloved.
posted by Crane Shot at 12:02 PM on March 28 [9 favorites]
posted by Crane Shot at 12:02 PM on March 28 [9 favorites]
I don't care about his personality or how he is perceived to be a jerk. I care about his art.
posted by Czjewel at 12:14 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
posted by Czjewel at 12:14 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
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I have experienced a few of his pieces and always found them oppressive and somehow disdainful of the spaces they occupy. But he definitely made you feel something.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:25 PM on March 28
I have experienced a few of his pieces and always found them oppressive and somehow disdainful of the spaces they occupy. But he definitely made you feel something.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 12:25 PM on March 28
I don't know much at all about the artist but I had a pretty perfect afternoon playing wiffle ball inside his St. Louis sculpture when I was in college. So thanks for that, Mr. Serra.
posted by AgentRocket at 12:29 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
posted by AgentRocket at 12:29 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
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posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:58 PM on March 28
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:58 PM on March 28
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posted by remembrancer at 1:00 PM on March 28
posted by remembrancer at 1:00 PM on March 28
Looking Back at the Destruction of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, 30 Years Later: Hal Foster interviews Richard Serra and Clara Weyergraf-Serra.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:40 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:40 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]
Thanks for posting that Gerald Bostock. I hate remembering that Ronald Reagan was the instigator of the modern culture war, but it's totally true.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:59 PM on March 28
posted by oneirodynia at 1:59 PM on March 28
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Viðey is an island just off the coast of Reykjavík. In the late 80s, Richard Serra was commissioned to do a piece in the city, and he opted to do it on the island. The pieces are dotted around one end of it, and they're really striking to walk around, framing the surroundings, and functioning almost like doorways. They're very meditative, or at least have that effect on me whenever I walk around Viðey.
posted by Kattullus at 2:41 PM on March 28
Viðey is an island just off the coast of Reykjavík. In the late 80s, Richard Serra was commissioned to do a piece in the city, and he opted to do it on the island. The pieces are dotted around one end of it, and they're really striking to walk around, framing the surroundings, and functioning almost like doorways. They're very meditative, or at least have that effect on me whenever I walk around Viðey.
posted by Kattullus at 2:41 PM on March 28
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posted by nightcoast at 3:07 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
posted by nightcoast at 3:07 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]
I saw his stuff at a NYC gallery a few years ago without knowing anything about him. When I asked and was told by staff that they were solid..I couldn't fathom how they could've been put in place or how the floor could support them. I enjoy that - when something is in front of you but seems impossibly difficult to pull off. At the other end of the spectrum, I got to examine a twig in the British Museum last fall. It was a fragment of an ancient Egyptian pot stand and only a ¼” thick but 100+ years ago, someone had painted a catalogue number on it: 55132. It was only about 3/16” high but looked typeset and the 2 fives were exactly alike…on a twig! Similar mind boggling feel.
posted by brachiopod at 3:27 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]
posted by brachiopod at 3:27 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]
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Television Delivers is a favorite of mine.
His personality was certainly off-putting, but I guess he found how to channel it in constructive rather than destructive ways?
This story about how all the roads and bridges between Seattle, and Geyserville, CA had to be reinforced to transport one of his sculptures to its site, is something:
"From 1990 to 1993 Richard Serra created and installed Snake Eyes and Box Cars at Oliver Ranch. “I wanted to establish a visual system to make the volume of the valley more tangible physically, to make the space more distinct,” Serra explained. The 12 corten steel blocks were made in a Seattle mill with the largest forging jaws in the United States. It took nearly a year to make the forms, which were heated to 2,300 degrees and pounded with a 145-ton hammer. Oliver had to reinforce the roads to truck the 250-ton work from Seattle to Geyserville, in a convoy that was two and a half miles long. "
posted by nikoniko at 3:41 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]
Television Delivers is a favorite of mine.
His personality was certainly off-putting, but I guess he found how to channel it in constructive rather than destructive ways?
This story about how all the roads and bridges between Seattle, and Geyserville, CA had to be reinforced to transport one of his sculptures to its site, is something:
"From 1990 to 1993 Richard Serra created and installed Snake Eyes and Box Cars at Oliver Ranch. “I wanted to establish a visual system to make the volume of the valley more tangible physically, to make the space more distinct,” Serra explained. The 12 corten steel blocks were made in a Seattle mill with the largest forging jaws in the United States. It took nearly a year to make the forms, which were heated to 2,300 degrees and pounded with a 145-ton hammer. Oliver had to reinforce the roads to truck the 250-ton work from Seattle to Geyserville, in a convoy that was two and a half miles long. "
posted by nikoniko at 3:41 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]
Roberta Smith is a great writer and has a pretty on-point decription of Serra's large works: "Viewers might feel they were walking beside a sleeping whale, if not inside one."
posted by lisa g at 4:25 PM on March 28 [5 favorites]
posted by lisa g at 4:25 PM on March 28 [5 favorites]
sleeping whale, yes!
I've delighted at wandering through and around his big steel works. So massive, visceral, space-torquing. So endless.
I still remember how entering Tilted Spheres, at Toronto's Pearson, made the airport - its crush of noise and anxieties - evaporate away. And I remember how grateful I felt for it.
posted by marlys at 4:33 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]
I've delighted at wandering through and around his big steel works. So massive, visceral, space-torquing. So endless.
I still remember how entering Tilted Spheres, at Toronto's Pearson, made the airport - its crush of noise and anxieties - evaporate away. And I remember how grateful I felt for it.
posted by marlys at 4:33 PM on March 28 [1 favorite]
Yet another artist who felt he had to change everything he did after being exposed to Velázquez.
After a year in Paris, Serra got a Fulbright of his own, and he and Nancy Graves spent the next year in Florence. They also travelled-Greece, Turkey, Spain. Serra's first exposure to Velázquez, at the Prado, was a life- changer. "I'd come out of Yale as a painter," he said, "but I didn't quite know how to move painting on. When I saw 'Las Meninas, I thought there was no possibility of me getting close to that-the viewer in relation to space, the painter included in the painting, the masterliness with which he could go from an abstract passage to a figure or a dog. It pretty much stopped me. Cézanne hadn't stopped me, de Kooning and Pollock hadn't stopped me, but Velázquez seemed like a bigger thing to deal with. That sort of nailed the coffin on painting for me. When I got back to Florence, I took everything I had and dumped it in the Arno. I thought I'd better start from scratch, so I started screwing around with sticks and stones and wire and cages and live and stuffed animals."
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:35 PM on March 28 [4 favorites]
After a year in Paris, Serra got a Fulbright of his own, and he and Nancy Graves spent the next year in Florence. They also travelled-Greece, Turkey, Spain. Serra's first exposure to Velázquez, at the Prado, was a life- changer. "I'd come out of Yale as a painter," he said, "but I didn't quite know how to move painting on. When I saw 'Las Meninas, I thought there was no possibility of me getting close to that-the viewer in relation to space, the painter included in the painting, the masterliness with which he could go from an abstract passage to a figure or a dog. It pretty much stopped me. Cézanne hadn't stopped me, de Kooning and Pollock hadn't stopped me, but Velázquez seemed like a bigger thing to deal with. That sort of nailed the coffin on painting for me. When I got back to Florence, I took everything I had and dumped it in the Arno. I thought I'd better start from scratch, so I started screwing around with sticks and stones and wire and cages and live and stuffed animals."
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:35 PM on March 28 [4 favorites]
The citizens of Peoria, Ill. weren't buying this Richard Serra funny business. (from The New York Times, March 6, 1981)
The maquette's unveiling before the authority last December was greeted with a stunned silence. But then public reaction, touched off by newspaper pictures and descriptions of the work, began to build. It was nicknamed ''the shaft,'' and among the politer comments was that it would give Peorians ''something to do when it rained: watch it rust.'' Some citizens proposed more appropriate monuments - a pink flamingo two and a half stories high, a tractor on a pole (Peoria is headquarters of the Caterpillar Tractor Company), a statue of an Indian, or a huge carp. Oh, there were calmer heads that decried Peorian provincialism, but they were in the minority. ''I think Peorians don't like anything unless it's second-rate and out of date,'' commented Adelaide Cooley, a local leader, who was on the sculpture-selection committee. ....posted by Harvey Kilobit at 6:49 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]
What did he think of Peoria? Mr. Serra said he didn't want to think of it at all. ''It's like negative energy, and I don't want to be bothered with that. In Peoria, a contemporary mode of equestrian statue would be Ronald Reagan on a bronze horse.''
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I walked his dogs. I was a dogwalker in lower Manhattan for 11 years and he was a client.
I don't remember the doggos names but it was two labs, chocolate or black. Black I think.
The loft was like a museum, immaculate and with plenty, but not to much, art. Certainly a sort of minimalist vibe. Very high ceilings, and some big metal art, his work I think, on at least one big brick wall...old fashioned freight elevator to get up there. It was in tribecca but just a few blocks north of chambers near Duane Park.
I'd take the doggos north on a street that was more of an alley-I thought it was Walker but that runs E-W, this ran N-S- then head west and walk along the river.
I met him at least once, when my boss and I went there for the "meet and greet our new employee who we are going to give the keys to your elevator to." Maybe a few other times in the comings and goings. And a charming lady as well. I wish I could remember more.
posted by vrakatar at 7:10 PM on March 28 [7 favorites]
I walked his dogs. I was a dogwalker in lower Manhattan for 11 years and he was a client.
I don't remember the doggos names but it was two labs, chocolate or black. Black I think.
The loft was like a museum, immaculate and with plenty, but not to much, art. Certainly a sort of minimalist vibe. Very high ceilings, and some big metal art, his work I think, on at least one big brick wall...old fashioned freight elevator to get up there. It was in tribecca but just a few blocks north of chambers near Duane Park.
I'd take the doggos north on a street that was more of an alley-I thought it was Walker but that runs E-W, this ran N-S- then head west and walk along the river.
I met him at least once, when my boss and I went there for the "meet and greet our new employee who we are going to give the keys to your elevator to." Maybe a few other times in the comings and goings. And a charming lady as well. I wish I could remember more.
posted by vrakatar at 7:10 PM on March 28 [7 favorites]
Mod note: One removed. I must agree with flaggers that immediately jumping to a single summation of a whole life with basically "well, so he was an asshole then," is not a great start for the thread.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:52 PM on March 29
posted by taz (staff) at 10:52 PM on March 29
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I’ve been privledged enough to see his works at the Kroller-Mueller in the Netherlands and the Guggenheim in Bilbao. It’s definitely one of those things you have to experience in person.
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:39 AM on March 28 [2 favorites]