Serra installation in the Sculpture Garden at MOMA
For all the hype around the Richard Serra show at MOMA, I was still in awe, pure awe. There’s no way to not be, these works are insanely beautiful, massive, haunting, playful, and unforgettable. Seeing these with your inner child in full command is my best recommendation. And given their girth, getting back to being small again is not difficult.
And such subtle plays of texture on these surfaces, both indoors and out. Every work has its own patina of seductive and painterly markings.
One rusted patch of a Serra wall
Schjeldahl’s review in the New Yorker was worshipful but right on. Here are two excerpts:
His art affords no handle as easy, or as ingratiating, as “style.” Consciousness of Serra’s furious ambition–an arbitrary force, like weather–addles both analysis and aesthetic response. My comprehension of his tons of shaped steel always feels inadequate to their conceptual subtlety, engineering sophistication and, oh my, size.
As an affair of big, rusty things without practical use, it evokes derelict ships, locomotives and heavy-industrial factories. It also recalls times when miracles of human invention were still spectacular, like the Brooklyn Bridge, rather than spectral, like the Internet.
Deborah – I do wonder how kind history will be to Serra’s work and his times. Does this Minimalist aesthetic prefigure in any way the social commentary of Edward Burtynskys “Ships” series, where the imagery actually documents the “affair of big, rusty things without practical use,” and shows the death of “miracles of human invention…still spectacular”?
Many persons find it difficult to obtain value from the abstract aesthetization of natural processes, when they seem so divorced from usefulness, and in my mind that is the main weakness of much of Minimalist art, that connections made must be obtained at a huge stretch, through massive expense. G
G,
Fair question to ask about any art trend, especially the ones that get caught in an art buying updraft.
Minimalism is a huge territory–really more of a continent IMHO. Some of it really sings for me, some of it does not. But when I stand in front of one of those early Brice Marden paintings that appears to be monochromatic (like Nebraska and Dylan) or when I walk the torqued halls of a Serra megamonument, I am deeply, deeply respectful of the spiritual lift that comes from a “minimalist” intent.
Not all minimalist work is as massively overwhelming as Serra’s installations–I like Schjeldahl’s phrase about Serra’s “furious ambition”–but playing the enormous card definitely works for him. After all, Agnes Martin’s simple canvases with her delicate graphite grids are often lumped in with minimalists as well, and her work is almost arte povera by comparison to Serra’s, works which come in at price points closer to architectural structures than individual works of art.
In the end, it is powerfully personal, isn’t it? One man’s meat, another man’s poison. But I believe I can make one universal statement: When I approach any art object, usefulness does not come up as a column check, ever.
I’d be interested to hear more about how that plays out for you.
Deborah
I agree with you in that reactions to such artworks have to be intensely personal. A massive scale can be awe inspiring, in the sheer bulk of material and complexity of construction, and in the co-operative efforts of various craftsmen to bring such objects to be. Or as in the case of Agnes Martin the effect is of greater intimacy. I feel it impossible to not be concerned with function though, perhaps that is my hang up. It seems we make objects with purpose in mind, and these purposes are many and varied. Trying to suss out potential purposes gives me great exercise -the “why” of things have been a lifelong preoccupation of mine, a most elusive quest. G
G,
Thank you for that clarification. For all the posts of yours that I have read, I actually found your admitted proclivity to look for purpose to be a surprise. But then you write with such fluidity and ease I may have been enjoying the ride and not looking for the clues…