Richard Serra: Forty Years

The Museum of Modern Art is currently exhibiting a retrospective of Richard Serra titled Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. The work exhibited ranges from older work from the 1960’s after graduating from Yale University until recent work from 2006. Richard Serra was born in San Francisco California in 1939 and has been creating large sculptures for over forty years. His use of materials and styles has varied during this time, but began working almost strictly with steel in the 1970’s. Previous to using steel, Serra used lead because of its malleability and before that dabbled in vulcanized rubber.

His early work such as Belts (1966-67) is reminiscent of Bruce Nauman’s “dude ranch dada” with his use of neon tube lighting and vulcanized rubber formed into hanging saddle-like structures. The neon imitates the forms of the saddle shapes, but is somehow opposite as if it was meant to reflect the outside contours of a horse rider. The rubber at first appears to be large strips of leather in various earth tones. Upon reading the plaque, one discovers that the material is in fact rubber. Other early works like Equal Parallel: Guernica - Bengasi (1986) resonate with the minimalist work of Donald Judd with his use of democratic, compositional hierarchy of forms. Serra’s title however, compares the grievances and suffering of Picasso’s Guernica and the old port city of Italian colonized Libia, Bengasi; which has seen its share of empirical suffering and violence. Serra’s new work from 2006 is located on the second floor: Sequence, Band, and Torqued Torus Inversion. They are all made from weatherproof steel, but have explicit, separate sensations to each of them. Band (2006) propels the viewer to walk closely to the steel while imitating the movement of a stream. Torqued Torus Inversion (2006) is actually two large sculptures next to each other. One gives a sensation of an open area inside and the other feels like the sculpture is closing in on the viewer. The most successful piece in the show is Sequence (2006) because of how Serra wants his work to be received; “I wanted to get away from the imagistic value of an object in an empty space and instead put the focus on the experience of the entirety of the context”. Sequence accomplishes what Serra expresses in this quote and can be the most enjoyable for most visitors. If Serra had pushed the limits of the angles on the material beyond what is physically possible, the sensation would have been the opposite, uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Sequence imitates the sensation of walking through a great canyon, like one of the small trails at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was something that one would want to walk over and over again. On the other hand, it was a bit crowded and would have been more appreciable without the constant stream of people and the incessant docent tour going on in the background.

While Richard Serra is a very important artist in the 21^st century, he has not always been favored by female artists in the art community. He embodies phallic, oversized sculptures teetering on the obscene. This oversized work insinuates many negative stereotypes of male artists from his generation. He has been recognized as a great artist while female sculptors such as Petah Coyne have gone unnoticed until recently. One has to take this into consideration when attending a forty year retrospective at the MOMA, but Serra has some new work that produces the exact experience he is attempting to create between the work and the viewer. That is something very difficult for an artist to achieve, and in his own right he deserves the recognition that he gets.

The Shape of Space

The Shape of Space currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum consists of various artists from different movements. The cohesive theme is geometry referenced or used to show space. There are particular curatorial issues where the show continues to be added upon from April to July, leaving many blank walls and a feeling of seeing work, that has been shown before- except hung next to different works. Bluntly put, don’t pay the full admission price until the show is fully hung.

The Guggenheim Guide briefs the visitor on the theme and some of the artworks currently on view. It references the historical artistic endeavor to portray space through cubism, linear perspective, and minimalism. The first work to stand out is Sarah Morris’s Mandalay Bay (Las Vegas) (1999). It references contemporary geometric abstraction based artists such as Julie Mehretu and many of the younger painters emerging from school. It stands out particularly because of its larger size compared to the rest of the works, and it precise, bright color palette. Strangely enough, it is hung next to Agnes Martin’s White Stone (1965), which is from the minimalist movement and addresses space in a very different fashion. Agnes chose a minimal white oil paint on linen with a small grid motif drawn into the surface. Sometimes minimalist art can be a bit heavy on the conceptual side, but in this particular case, the minimalist work of Martin and Morris next to eachother creates a dialogue between space and the lack of space tied together with a grid theme. One can begin to put together a consistent theme climbing the Rotunda Gallery, difficult to distinguish unless the visitor is an avid Guggenheim Guide reader or is keen on grids and geometry. Not until seeing these pieces side by side does one appreciate the work of Carl Adre or Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. How backwards does this idea feel? Moholy-Nagy in particular have two pieces hung that have both a quality of contemporary work and an old pioneer of the tradition of geometric abstraction. He used new materials like plexi-glass and painted planes in space, but also used the wall behind as another use of space with the shadow on the wall. Piotr Uklanski’s Dance Floor (1968) is somewhat overbearing for a museum setting. The constant hip-hop pop music plays in the background while colored squares below light up in various grid patterns. It receives most of the attention in the exhibit, but somehow people are missing their “thug get-ups” and a stiff drink in their hands. However, can appreciate Uklanski’s take on urban culture in 1968, but by adding contemporary hip-hop music to the work today, makes it latent with unprocessed cultural commentary and seems indirectly out of context with the date on the plaquard. It is difficult to imagine the artist isn’t sitting home now, laughing to himself about blaring hip-hop in the Guggenheim for the first time.

All of the artists chosen visually deal with geometry and space but what is most interesting is not the works chosen, or the curatorial theme developed by the institution, but how it references contemporary art trends. It is urban, architectural, contest capitalism and is old, yet somehow new and fits in New York. Perhaps this collection of works can be personally identifying for what has happened in the past and validates the forward trend of its re-emergence today. It will be interesting to return to the show when it is fully hung, and hopefully it will develop into a fully processable show, that does not wreak of – we had nothing else to hang up, so why not.