# Art History/Assignments/28 August 2007

PROJECT 2 Point of View: Looking at Art as an Art Historian
After viewing the power point about Looking at Art and discussing what art reviews tell us about an artists work, you will write a review of an exhibition by Richard Serra at the Museum of Modern Art.
Do not read any published reviews of Serra’s work. Remember to capture your thinking in the Reflections portal.Post your review with your name below.
Post by September 14 by class time.
Thoughtful Questions
1. Is it art because of its quality, or the fame of the artist?
2. What is the relationship between art and design?
3. Is it art because he can make up a complicated explanation to explain what he's created?
4. Why is Serra an artist? Why is he considered "great"?
5. If I made a piece of metal art and sent it to MOMA, would be show it?
6. How does an artist become famous?
7. How much thought went into the artwork?
8. Why does it take so long to make the work?
9. Is it original if someone else executes it?
Emma Wilson Richard Serra Review Sept. 9th
Richard Serra’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art is a magnificent display of minimalist sculpture. A pioneer for the minimalist movement, Serra has forged (no pun intended) new ways to work with space, time, and steel. With monstrous twisted steel giants standing in both the sculpture garden and a large exhibit space, MoMA has captured the essence of Serra’s vision. A rising artist in the early sixties, Richard Serra was just finding his artistic voice when the minimalist movement was just beginning. Shifting his focus from painting to sculpture, Serra became one of the original minimalist sculptors. Serra began by experimenting with neon, lead, and rubber, and then moved on to working smaller steel pieces, all of which are represented in MoMA’s exhibition. As Serra became more comfortable with the smaller-scaled pieces, he started to test the limits of the palpability of steel. His pieces grew from smaller, welded steel pieces to colossal, forged steel plates, standing over 13 feet tall and at times hundreds of feet long. By manipulating the steel’s curvature and direction, Serra began to manipulate viewers’ perception of size and space, creating a unique perspective for the viewer. Serra uses bare, unpainted steel in keeping with his minimalist style, but this also causes the viewer to focus on the special illusions Serra creates. By displaying Serra’s pieces in a simple white room, the Museum of Modern Art has created a stark contrast between the twisted steel and the sharp right angles of both the museum and New York itself. This contrast is exactly what Serra wished to capture as he worked and lived in New York for most of the 40 years this retrospective is based upon. This exhibition is a must see for any fan of the visually simple but the expressively complex style of minimalist sculpture. “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” is a fantastic and perfect retrospective of an artistic pioneer.
Anna Konieczny
Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years
According to Dictionary.com, the definition of art is “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance”. Many art lovers, on first glance, would assume that the works of Richard Serra are not art. I, myself, thought that this was the case when I first laid eyes on Serra’s pieces. His works lack the beauty, grace, and most importantly, realism of many of his colleagues. Yet, after listening to Serra explain his pieces, the beauty and grace of his works shown through.
Serra, born in 1939, began his life as a painter. Yet, something was missing to him. He says that, I wanted to reduce things to pure process and activity, so I wrote down a list of verbs – to lift, to curl, to roll, to bend, to tie, to curve, to inlay, to splash…And I decided to work those verbs in relationship to material and place and times. This is exactly what Serra does, as he incorporates these specific verbs into his works, some even bearing the same name, such as To Lift (1967) and Bent Pipe Roll (1968). Serra prefers to work with raw materials, such as lead and rubber, and takes every opportunity to search for a new material. While living in New York, during the destruction of one of the piers, Serra took the opportunity to rummage through the trash in order to find materials of use for any of his works.
Each piece in this exhibit does not seem as if it is created by the same sculptor. The sixth floor contains smaller pieces involving pipes and small lead plates, whereas the second floor contains thirteen to fourteen feet tall curved pieces of massive steel. Yet, Serra had almost two different aspirations while creating both of these two “categories”. Serra focuses on an art called Process Art (part of Minimalism), defined by Grove Art Online as, “the process of a works creation is presented as its subject”. With his smaller pieces, Serra played with light and space, attempting at making his viewers feel differently as they walk into the room filled up with his pieces versus walking into that same room empty. However, with his larger pieces, Serra creates situations in which the viewer can walk into his work and enter a whole new world. These steel plates may look massive from the outside, but once a viewer walks in, he or she feels enclosed in some parts, bringing back memories in which they have felt captured, yet open in other parts, giving the viewer a sense of freedom and relief. These huge pieces were built exactly for the room in which they are held, to achieve Serra’s goal of changing the space inside the room.
Not only does Serra play with the feeling of space, he also attempts to play with shapes and the eye’s perceptions of shapes. For example, in his work Torqued Elipse IV (1998) the eye gives different perceptions of the shape depending on where the viewer is standing inside. One of Serra’s goals in this piece was to defy what was acceptable in the everyday world by not including one right angle. He went to talk to an Aerospace engineer in order to find out if what he dreamed could become a reality. After three years of building models and working with computers, Serra finally built the real thing and defied the ordinary. Serra’s works definitely push boundaries in terms of what is accepted in everyday life. After researching the exhibit, I do believe that what Serra has created is art. However, to understand and truly feel the exhibit, the viewer must interact with his pieces in real life. Then, the viewer will understand the power of Serra.
Bibliography
“Process Art.” Grove Art Online 2006 Oxford University Press. September 13, 2007 < http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?section=art.069795>.
Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. 2007. The Museum of Modern Art. September 13, 2007. <http://moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=2866&ref=calendar>.
Semin, Didier. “Serra, Richard.” Grove Art Online 2007 Oxford University Press. September 13, 2007 <http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=635525976&hitnum=1&section=art.077770>.
Want, Christoper. “Minimalism.” Grove Art Online 2007 Oxford University Press. September 13, 2007 <http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?section=art.058397>.
“Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” A Review
-By Kristen Robinson
Richard Serra, the 68 year old sculptor from San Francisco, has arrived at MOMA to present the full brunt of his work. I was skeptical at first at his ability to really call what he does during this process ‘art’. Bending metal in my mind wasn’t really a big deal; anyone with a few tools in a steel mill can do that. Also, I felt as though Mr. Serra might be using his reputation to build up attention for his artwork so that more of his fame covered for his pieces. I must admit though, somehow the real emotion that he put into his work came through. After doing a bit of research myself on his pieces and looking through his collection, I was stunned not only at the large scale masterpieces that were on display, but also the smaller ideas. One of the pieces that initially made me feel skeptical was Equal (Corner Prop Piece), worked on by Mr. Serra from 1969 to 1970. The more I began to go over the piece, the more I realized that this work was not melded. There were two parts of heavy steel somehow propped up together perfectly, prohibiting them from falling down. That was when the wheels started turning and the thought process in my brain went from, “This cannot be art!” to “How on earth did he do that?” He has quite a few other prop pieces held up simply by a pole or the corners of a room. These pieces seemed to convey a sense acceptance and general interest, but not like the landscape work Richard Serra also has on display. Very few pieces of art in this world give you the ability to interact with the art so you can acutely feel a difference. The words ‘look but don’t touch’ ring true for many contributions to art, but that is not the case here. That would only be one of the many properties that make his collection more appealing. Each piece of artwork has the ability to evoke an emotion with every step you take throughout the process. How Mr. Serra can take four pieces of steel from Intersection II (1992-93) and make you feel a range of emotions from closed in and uncomfortable to carefree and relatively safe in a matter of moments is unreal. Quite a few of the pieces like Band (2006) and Torqued Torus Inversion (2006) are enough to make simply looking at them seem like they go on forever and never end. I could actually see myself tripping over my own feet if someone simply stuck me in the crazy world that must lie in the middle of his piece Sequence (2006). It is incredible and also eye opening to realize that Mr. Serra must have taken a lot of time going through each planning phase of his work. If one of his pieces were simply tilted at an angle that didn’t fit, the illusion would not only be ruined, but so would the safety of the museum’s patrons. So how should we as mere viewers of Richard Serra’s mind interpret his most interesting visions? Should we look at what the art really brings out of us and go from there? These pieces bring to surface not only the magnitude of what he’s created but just how small we are next to such monumental effort. The ability to demonstrate his minimalist movement over a 40 year span and still be able to capture people’s attention is truly a very important gift. Few people are given the magic to inspire others, but seeing as it is Mr. Serra’s goal to continue working, we will continue to have younger artists building off the illusions he has created for many years to come.
"Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years". 2007. The Museum of Modern Art. September 13th, 2007. <http://moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=2866&ref=calendar>.
Semin, Didier. “Serra, Richard.” Grove Art Online 2007 Oxford University Press. September 13th, 2007 <http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?from=search&session_search_id=635525976&hitnum=1&section=art.077770>
Want, Christoper. “Minimalism.” Grove Art Online 2007 Oxford University Press. September 13th, 2007 <http://www.groveart.com/shared/views/article.html?section=art.058397>.
Richard Serra Sculpture- 40 Years
By Connor McCleskey
The Richard Serra Sculpture- 40 Years Exhibit is a retrospective of Serra’s work, currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In addition to a few sculptures, created just for this exhibit, it contains pieces from all points of Serra’s long career, from little known pieces involving only a pole leaning against a wall, to giant twenty ton sculptures made out of steel. The story of how Serra came to make these pieces is a very interesting one.
Richard Serra was born in San Francisco, California in 1939. He then went to University of California – Berkeley, where he majored in English. After attending Yale’s University of Art, where he was trained as a painter, he had to support himself by working in a steel mill. This had a tremendous effect on his art, as is obvious. His first work was an unusual one. Serra took molten lead and threw it at the walls of his studio, where it cooled. He then went on to experiment with many other industrial objects, such as rubber, lead, steel, concrete, and fiberglass. Over time, Serra came to be at the forefront of a movement called “Process Art” which is a form of Minimalism. Process Art is where you can see every step of the artist’s creation, and the creation itself is as much as a main subject as what the piece is trying to convey. However, unlike many other minimalists, Serra preferred to play around with the sense of space, and made sculptures that would only have their effect when placed in a certain site. Understandably, Richard’s work has been controversial, and he has had several works removed. Tilted Arc, for example is a piece he made for a park in New York. After a long battle, the city said it blocked people walking through the area, and it was taken down by workers, melted and used for scrap.
Part of what makes this exhibit so good is that it comprehensively looks at all of his works, from his widely popular ones to the ones that take a specific person to see. Due to the wide range of pieces that are in the exhibit, the quality of the work varies. Some of the pieces, such as Band or Sequence (both new pieces made for MoMA) are spectacular, and the space altering illusion they cause, are fantastic, while many of the smaller pieces, I find rather pointless. One of his pieces, titled Belts, is made up of piles of belts, lined up on hooks, and one has neon tubing inside, causing it to glow. Compared to some of his other enormous works, a row of belts don’t deserve to be in the same museum as Band. In addition, you can see the meticulous detail Serra puts into his sculptures, some of which take him three years to create. On some of his works, if the sculpture was any other length than what it was, it would ruin the effect. Also, the way the sculptures interact with the room they are in is fantastic. The way Torqued Torus Inversion dominates the room, and completely changes an ordinary white room in to something completely different, is something close to magical.
This exhibit is not for everyone. Nearly everyone can appreciate the awe of seeing a feat of engineering such as Torqued Ellipse II, which is an oval that rotates at it goes higher. The sense that the floor is moving is amazing. However, his smaller pieces, specifically those on the 6th floor, may cause a few blank stares from the more casual visitor, and I admit that I am frequently lost when looking at some of them. But, you owe it to yourself to at least walk through his bigger sculptures, and sense what I am talking about.
Bibliography
"Richard Serra." Answers . 13 Sep 2007 <http://www.answers.com/Richard%20Serra>.
"Richard Serra Sculputure-40 Years." MoMA. Museum of Modern Art. 13 Sep 2007 <moma.org>.
(Sorry, the formatting got ridiculously messed up when I put this into the wiki)
Alison Bennett-
The Museum of Modern Art has a new exhibition of Richard Serra’s greatest sculptures from over a span of forty years. Richard Serra is a famous sculptor whose work is on permanent display at one of the greatest modern art museums in the country, The Museum of Modern Art. Though he is a famous sculptor now, he didn’t begin as one. He was born in San Francisco in 1939. He went to the University of California at Santa Barbara to get his B.A. in English Literature after going to the University of California at Berkeley. Then he went on to study painting at Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture. Only upon returning to New York in 1966 did he first start sculpting. This exhibition will contain some of his greatest works using metal slabs and pipes. At first glance, Richard Serra’s sculptures just look like nothing. But as you take deeper looks and think a little harder you will realize that they are beautiful sculptures that have hidden purposes. For example take one of his two huge walk-through pieces in the Sculpture Garden, Intersection II. Seeing this for the first time may send some critical viewers over the edge. Intersection II is made up of four identical slanted steel plates placed parallel to each other. This critical audience might argue that anyone could do that or this isn’t special. Well Serra isn’t just anyone, and he isn’t just doing anything. His intended purpose of this sculpture was to give the viewer a sense of openness and captivity that is truly unbelievable.
If you go online to moma.org, The Museum of Modern Art’s website, viewers can see the pieces and listen to audios of Richard Serra talk about his own sculptures. This is where I first came to understand how art critics call these 13 feet high steel plates art. On the second floor of the museum there are three more intricate walk through metal plate sculptures. The sixth floor contains some of his smaller works. The pieces on the sixth floor are smaller pieces of bended metal and pipes. Though you can’t walk through and experience these pieces the same way, they still have their deeper meaning. Richard Serra’s exhibition is a must see for any modern art lover. I encourage the skeptics to give his works a try and to try to understand how truly magnificent his pieces are.
Bibliography:
The Museum of Modern Art. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. September 13, 2007. http://www.moma.org.
Bibliography:
The Museum of Modern Art. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. September 13, 2007. http://www.moma.org.
Richard Serra- 40 years Rawson Haverty
The Museum of Modern Art is presenting an exhibition on the sculptures of Richard Serra. Serra, born in San Francisco in 1939, is a minimalist sculptor whose work is appreciated by many. Minimalism is defined as when a work is stripped down to its original features. Minimalism incorporates some aspects of modernism and is usually interpreted as a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. Also, it is often viewed as a connector to post modern practices. Minimalist style includes features such as: cubic and rectangular forms purged of all metaphor, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and industrial materials, which lead to an immediate visual impact. Serra also took part in the Process Art Movement which focused more on the process of building the piece and lesser emphasis on the final work. The gathering, collecting, and creativity of the journey of making the piece should be more important than the final product. Serra started off as a painter and received training at Yale University, but after to years in Europe, following his influence of Robert Smitherson, became a sculptor. Serra, a leader in the minimalist movement, uses his specific style to create simple, but immense sculptures. His exterior steel goes through an initial oxidation process, but after 8-10 years, the steel settles to one color that will remain relatively stable over the rest of the pieces life. He uses his sculptures to manipulate and displace space in such an incredible way that it is impossible not to value his innovation. At first, I had a hard time connecting to Serra’s works because I am so used to the idea of art as traditional realism, and I had a negative reaction to Serra’s sculptures. However, after hearing Serra talk about his works, and the thought process behind them, I stated to appreciate the pieces. Serra hopes that his inventiveness will inspire younger artists in the minimalist movement to experiment for themselves and create different types of art. Serra has expanded the boundaries of art, and his works rightfully deserve to be displayed in the Museum of Modern Art.
Bibliography:
The Museum of Modern Art. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. September 13, 2007. http://www.moma.org.
Wikipedia. Richard Serra. 2007. World Wide Web. 14 Sep. 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra
Elizabeth - The Museum of Modern Art is known for its presentation of works that further define what can be classified as art. The museum's newest exhibition, "Richard Serra Sculptures: Forty Years" does just that. Located on the second floor Contemporary Galleries, this vast array of sculptures (some supported by merely corners) blend the processes of sculpting, mathematics, and defiance of gravity perfectly. It seems unlikely that works thirteen feet high made of cortez steel 4 inches thick would be able to stand by themselves. This intriguing phenomena creates a "vacuum effect" where viewers, as well as art critics like myself, can not withstand to look away.
Serra, a man of great engenuity, was surrounded with the geometric architecture of row houses in San Francisco as a child. It is no wonder that a man who grew up in a city whose bridge building ideas were so modern, that they were put down by the society (but were later labeled as a way to internationally recognize San Francisco) would have the desire of modernizing the world, in his own way. (Serra was born two years after the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed.)
Artists like Serra are vital to the growth of the art society because they strive for the development of aspiring artists. In one of his interviews, Richard Serra stated that his work is directed to affect young artists and that he challenges them to make art out of objects such as tin cans or even water. With a mind that is always thinking, Richard Serra is a man that has successfully worked his way onto the "hit list" of any art-lover across the globe. Inspiration that reverberates off these sculpted masterpieces can form a new generation of artists who have the power to take art to the next level.
Forty Years of Richard Serra- Yeshwanth Kandimalla
Process art, a major concept that emerged from the evolutionary 1960s and 1970s, places a great deal of importance on the process of the artist’s creation of the work. The idea blends minimalism and its threadbare standards and use of unconventional materials. Richard Serra’s work does fit such a description. The metalworking involved in the creation of his sculptures particularly deserves notice. Serra, in an assessment of his own work, acknowledges that the public see such industrial materials everyday, but, that in a confined space within a museum, these materials take on an entirely new meaning. That’s certainly true of Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, which just finished its run at the Museum of Modern Art. The sheer size of many of Serra’s sculpture greatly diminishes the visual experience when one views them in photographs. Experiencing such pieces by moving around them, seeing all their curvature and metallic color, fosters a nonverbal connection between Serra’s and the viewer’s mind. Serra’s extraordinary combination of mathematical principles and optical illusion open the public’s eyes and force individuals, including me, to realize that Serra’s work belongs in a museum, not a steel mill. In particular, the works in the outdoor sculpture garden have the most evocative presence, given their great contrast with the angular buildings surrounding them. The work on the Second Floor features similar works and offers the perspective of Serra’s work within an interior space. The view within this area provides a spatial and geometric Serra’s work, which is his intention. This area also features his most recent works, including Band, Sequence, and Torqued Torus Inversion. Serra does include the shape of the room in the design of his exhibition. Unfortunately, the portion of the exhibition on the sixth floor seems lacking in such aspects. Serra himself does not discuss these earlier works, which are much smaller dimensionally compared to their younger counterparts. These works also lack the spatial quality that radiates from the large sculptures. Serra’s roots in Minimalism certainly defined those early works, as he had been influenced by the noted artists of the Minimalist heyday of the 50s and 60s. Serra began in painting and moved towards sculpture. Despite some deficiencies, Serra deserves commendation for the originality and the accompanying power and beauty of his work. The level of effort that such sculptures require is not lost on me; regardless of the fact the Serra doesn’t make the sculpture by hand. In fact, Serra should receive further acclaim for his ability to effectively create his vision without total control of the physical production of his work. For forty years, Serra has pushed the boundaries of art and MoMA’s decision to exhibit his work is nothing short of phenomenal. Bibliography
Didier Semin: “Serra, Richard.” Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 9/13/2007, http://www.groveart.com/
Serra, Richard. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. 2007. 9/13/2007. http://www.moma.org
“Process Art.” Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, 9/13/2007, http://www.groveart.com
Tusa, John. “Interview with Richard Serra.” The John Tusa Interviews. BBC Radio. BBC London. Transcript https://archive.is/20130707021240/www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/serra_transcript.shtml