Exhibit Review: Richard Serra at MOMA, New York
Published August 28, 2007
Not every piece that a great artist does is great.
Most interesting to me are those artists who take many years to achieve a realization of their work, of a vision that finally, against all odds, so completely includes the viewer that the viewer — most viewers — become enthralled by it.
Great art itself so seldom happens that your encountering it is a moment of fine good fortune. There are many artists who may have had some fleeting fame in their own time, some times even great fame, who are now forgotten. Very little that has been produced by artists in any medium — graphic, literary, musical, whatever — matters. Those works that we see now that do take us away, that do thrill us, are a minute percentage of everything that was being produced by artists in whatever time it was. So, while there was Wolfgang Mozart in the 18th century — and notable others, to be sure — almost all the artists from that century are now remembered not at all.
This is a fact worth keeping in mind when we're looking at contemporary fine arts, when art dealer blather and the hip collusion of art critics have resulted in so much self-referential lying. Indeed, product-touting has become as common in the arts as it has been in industrial products manufacturing since the beginning. This is an effort by art dealers, writers, publishers and the artists themselves to make pots of money and garner immediate great fame. Maybe the artist is, in his heart of hearts, sincere in his work. But none of the others can be, because so much of the work is so bad. Current art dealer marketing is shameless in its glorification of so many minor talents. Almost all of these artists will go the way of the Studebaker.
But there are some who somehow make a breakthrough and do transcend themselves to the level of great art — Richard Serra, for one.
The thing that make Serra's greatness so extraordinary is that most of his work prior to about 2006 is numbingly boring, especially when combined with his own verbal explanations of what he was trying to do early in his career, and with the commentary of art-speak critics hurrying helter-skelter to congratulate themselves for seeing his obvious genius so early on. It is this commentary — you can find it in almost every contemporary fine art publication — that makes Serra's early work so unintentionally comic.
I first became aware of Richard Serra, by the way, during the hilarious confrontation he had with the courts after setting up his piece Tilted Arc in the Federal Building Plaza in New York City in 1981. A construction made of steel, twelve feet high and one hundred twenty feet long that had a slight, curving shape, it basically blocked access to the building itself, and, so, represented a kind of artistic incarceration. It was an example of an artist's hubris writ very large, in which Serra's vision was forced upon the defenseless pedestrians trying to pass into and out of the building. The complaining on the part of office workers and the general public was noisy and constant. After a very public battle in the press and in the courts, in which Serra himself defended the piece as being site-specific and therefore meaningless without the site that surrounded it, the courts decided that it should be removed, which it was, in the dark of night, on March 15, 1989.
- Exhibit Review: Richard Serra at MOMA, New York
- Published: August 28, 2007
- Type: Review
- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Celebrity, Culture: Arts
- Writer: Terence Clarke
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- Terence Clarke's personal site
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Hello Kevin:
Thanks for your remarks about Richard Serra's earlier works . . . and his new work as well. Especially your reminder of his importance to the minimalist period of the sixties and seventies. You probably caught from my piece that I have a visceral dislike of Serra's early work, and I think you supplied me with a new reason for that dislike, an explanation for his work that I believe is right on the mark. You write that a lot of the minimalist urge in art asks for an attitude of "'hand's off' from any physical intervention by the artist - no mark making, no trace of the artist, no color just the brutal stark material of the manufactured piece." I believe you're right about that, which is why I find so much of the work from that period so uninteresting.
I cannot imagine a worthwhile piece of art that does not include physical intervention by the artist . . . i.e. his or her thoughtfulness, ideas, heart, emotional intensities and so on. I think those "marks" are essential to the making of any art of any kind, and do exist even if the artist intently believes that they should not. No matter the medium, the artist cannot negate himself from the piece. So, his wish that his own mark not appear in it hobbles the piece's emotional effect, and causes it to be dull.
It might be that my attitude comes from my own primary work as a novelist. I write about the human heart seeking knowledge within a community of conflicting feelings and ideas . . . i.e. a family, a tribe, a strange country. That vein is still the richest one of all despite the thousands of novels that have mined it over the centuries. The brutal stark material of the manufactured piece interests me the least of all those things from which art can be made.
I hope you'll look at a review I wrote of the recent Brice Marden exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, dated April 28, 2007. You can find it at www.terenceclarke.org.
Thanks again for your comments. Much valued.
Terry Clarke
Dear Terrence,
I had a very different interaction with the Guernica-Benghasi piece at the MoMA exhibition last summer. I went to the museum with a friend on a whim, had never heard of Richard Serra...I really don't have much knowledge about modern art; I usually just get frustrated, because modern art to me often seems to require a sort of intellectualization, or explaining-away, of the piece and its elements in a way that, I think, rewards artists for being inaccessible and confusing.
But to get back to the story, my friend and I wandered through the room with the large brown steel pieces, walking alongside the curves and remarking idly to one another how they were reminiscent of canyons, or polished wood, and how it might be cool to have a swimming pool shaped like one of these sculptures. (Sorry-- )
Then, when we arrived at the smaller room with the darker steel pieces, I looked around nonchalantly, and approached the two identical upright slabs of dark steel for a closer look. My visceral reaction to the piece was, "Okay, this totally reminds me of the bombings in World War II...creepy." My friend chuckled, "Random," but as I forced myself to walk between the two [what I could now, having voiced my concern, only see as destroyed walls], he had found the nameplate for it and said, "Wait, this piece is called 'Guernica'--That's the Spanish city that was bombed by the Nazis, and there's also a Picasso painting of that same name."
I was shocked, and a little bit frightened. But my faith in [modern] art's ability to quickly communicate a message was restored in that moment. Although the piece certainly does not have the monumental scope of the series of brown, curvy, room-size installments, my interaction with Guernica-Benghasi seemed as all-encompassing and universal as it was instantaneous...which is why I was so surprised by your review that I was provoked into writing this reaction.
What was it about that piece that affected me so greatly? Was there something in the bleak coloring of the steel that sparked a subconscious association to the monochromatic chaos depicted in the Picasso painting (subequently researched) of the same name that I may have vaguely recalled from postcard or television images? Well, no, for most of the other sculptures in that room were made of steel treated in the same way... True, I definitely missed the reference to Libya, but (at the risk of doing some 'explaining-away' of my own) the very blankness and simplicity of the piece somehow conveyed to me the universality of desolation within massive-scale destruction; I had correctly picked up the reference to WWII, but it was just a metaphor, a paradigmatic example of a more universale human experience.
Is it really mere coincidence that two "meaningless", "ho-hum" slabs of steel could pinpoint, out of all the millions of things that I (not much of a MoMA enthusiast, though I've tried) could have thought of, the hopelessness that pervaded World War II and Nazi Germany-- or should we perhaps give the artist some due credit? Can a piece really have failed if, even though most people may not be affected by it, just one person interacting with it can be transported to the correct mindframe, time period, political regime, or conflict that an empassioned mind was translating into his work with his hands? If so, shall we take a majority vote on what constitutes and does not constitute art? How then shall we define art, its meaning, and its purpose within the Western Liberal tradition that prizes the individual spirit and thought?
I did not mean to ramble...but it is interesting to see how we two reacted so differently to the same piece...perhaps that justifies/necessitates all the 'explaining-away' modern art seems to require...i.e perhaps the 'intellectualizing' of modern art that I find so annoying is simply a reflection of the shift in placement of individualism from artist, to subject, and finally, to the viewer.
Thanks!
Hello Katie:
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my piece and to Richard Serra's sculpture. No, I don't think the sculpture fails if one person sees in it the kinds of intensities you saw in Serra's. As someone once said, there's no accounting for taste, and for me the most valuable responses to art are those that are the most emotional. I can see how important the Guernica is to you. You express it very clearly, and my hat's off to you for finding things in it that I did not.
I still don't care for the piece myself very much, but my reaction is visceral and emotional also, like yours. One of the reasons I look at so much art is that I want to be shaken by it, positively or negatively, and then to figure out why I reacted the way I did. In the end, I can explain it only with my emotions and, I hope, with some good writing.
Many thanks,
Terry
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Having recently been blessed by a site specific sculpture by Richard Serra here at the MOCA in San Diego, "numbingly boring," I find myself largely in agreement with the notion that "not every work that a great artist makes is great" - but very much in disagreement with your assessment of Serra's earlier works.
A lot of the earlier pieces are just that, "site-specific" meaning that the content and the context were essential to its "reading" by the viewer. Does this mean that the work is weak or incoherent or that it cannot live outside its specific context, no, it just means that times have changed and so have museums, artist's studios, galleries and the like. What do I mean by this?, I'll use "Delineator" to explain. All you have to do is look at the surrounding in which the piece has been installed - pristine white walls, hardwood floors, track lighting (notice how the lighting rail in the ceiling mimics the dimensions of the steel plaque), large expansive space and glass double doors that empty out directly onto the piece. It is nothing but interference for a work that was never intended to compete with a global standardization of un-questioned un-thoughtful exhibition space. And how about the height of the ceiling in relationship to the floor? Would it not make a difference to your perception of the piece had it been installed in a setting with only 8ft ceilings compared what looks like to be 20ft or more? I wonder how you would perceive "Delineator" if you did not have the luxury of walking around it or not having the option to engage the piece or not. You can't forget that a lot of the minimalist and land art works being made in the 60's and into the late 70's was about ideas and concepts - about "hand's off" from any physical intervention by the artist - no mark making, no trace of the artist, no color just the brutal stark material of the manufactured piece. Look to Donald Judd as a prime example of this working methodology.
The irony for lack of a better word is that Serra's "newer" works in my opinion are made for a museum, meaning made for the interior. They can be nothing more than pleasing, lacking the raw energy and thought of his earlier works.