Richard Serra

Biography Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement. Serra went on to study English literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduating with a B.A. in 1961.  Serra supported himself by working in steel mills, which has shown to have a strong influence on his later work.  He was also influenced by his father’s place of work in the San Francisco shipyard where he was constantly surrounded with the raw material, which then later would make up the majority of his work.  Many of his pieces are self-supporting and emphasize the weight and nature of the materials. For example his use of rolls of lead which are designed to sag over time.  Serra often constructed site-specific installations, frequently on a scale that dwarfs the observer. His site-specific works challenge viewers’ perception of their bodies in relation to interior spaces and landscapes, and his work often encourages movement in and around his sculptures.  Serra continues to produce large-scale steel structures for sites throughout the world, and has become particularly renowned for his monumental arcs, spirals, and ellipses, which engage the viewer in an altered experience of space. Relevance to Key Themes Richard Serra, along with many other well known, successful artists, were involved with the “Process art movement”.  Process art focuses on the “process” of making art rather than any predetermined composition or plan, and the concepts of change and transience, which is shown in, Serra’s work, along with Lynda Benglis, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Alan Saret, Robert Smithson, and Keith Sonnier. Their interest in process and the properties of materials as determining factors has precedents in the Abstract Expressionists’ use of unconventional methods such as dripping and staining. Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences, improvisation, and the liberating qualities of nontraditional materials such as wax, felt, and latex. Using these, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.  Serra was also categorized as a minimal artist.  Minimalism refers to painting or sculpture made with an extreme economy of means and reduced to the essentials of geometric abstraction.  Minimalist art is generally characterized by precise, hard-edged, unitary geometric forms.  In Minimal art the main characteristics are the phenomenological basis of the viewer’s experience, which is what Serra incorporates into his work involving his large scale sculptures made of steel. Major Influences One of Richard Serra’s main influence on his work as an artist was that when he was younger one of his first real jobs was working in a steel mill.  Day in and day out he was constantly surrounded buy the material that he soon would use to create his works of art out of.  He developed a certain way of thinking from working at this job, he began to see that “everything had a potential use, if you could see its potential.”  Serra credits this way of thinking to American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist, John Cage.  Cage is best known for his 1952 composition 4’33”, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not "four minutes and 33 seconds of silence," as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance.  Serra uses this style of viewer interaction in almost all of his work, primarily in his large-scale steel pieces such as the Torqued Ellipses, where the viewer is able to travel in and out of the piece, giving them a sense of themselves within the work.

Favorite Work Richard Serra has many great works that he has created over his life time as an artist ranging from small instillations, very large scale steel metal works, to oil paintings.  Out of all of these I think that my favorite work would be the Tilted Arc.  In 1981, artist Richard Serra installed his sculpture Tilted Arc, in Federal Plaza in New York City.  Tilted Arc is a curving wall of raw steel, 120 feet long and 12 feet high that carves the space of the Federal Plaza in half. Those working in surrounding buildings must circumvent its enormous bulk as they go through the plaza.  Like most of Serra’s pieces, he wanted to challenge the viewer and have them interact with his work.  In this case the viewers were that of the employees in the surrounding buildings to the plaza.  This piece caused quite a problem within the community.  Most of the employees and other pedestrians walking through the plaza did not like how the wall obstructed it and how it made getting through the plaza a bit of a hassle.  They disliked it so much that they positioned to have it removed.  Serra explained that this piece was site specific so that if it were to be moved then he would remove his name from it, making it no longer his artwork.  Eventually it was dismantled and all “order” was restored within the plaza.  Even though it was short lived, the Tilted Arc was successful in creating a self awareness within the viewer, simply by disrupting their path and obscuring their way of seeing things or going about their every day routine. Annotated Bibliography

Richard Serra: Between the Torus and the Sphere (Toruaren eta esferaren artean) 2003-2005, Weathering steel, four torus and four spherical sections

This series continued with the theme of the viewer addressing one’s self within the work.

Richard Serra: A matter of Time, 2005, Installation of seven sculptures, weatherproof steel

The Matter of Time enables the spectator to perceive the evolution of the artist's sculpted forms, from his relatively simple double ellipse to the more complex spiral. The final two works in this evolution are built from sections of toruses and spheres to create environments with differing effects on the viewer's movement and perception. Shifting in unexpected ways as viewers walk in and around them, these sculptures create a dizzying, unforgettable sensation of space in motion.

Top: Richard Serra: Right Angle Prop, 1969, Lead antimony, 72 x 72 x 34 inches.

Right Angle Prop also displays the theme of leaning elements. Dispensing with carving and welding, conventional methods of delineating volume and securing mass, Serra created precarious sculptures that stand together based on the elements of equilibrium and gravity.

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/3900

Bottom: Richard Serra: One-Ton Prop (House of Cards). 1969, Lead antimony, four plates, each 48 x 48 x 1inches.

Serra used the simplified geometric forms and industrial materials of Minimalism. One Ton Prop is formed by one edge of each sheet of lead leaning against the other, like a house of cards. 

Richard Serra: Rubber, 1967, Vulcanized rubber, 36" x 6' 8" x 60"

In  Serra’s early work he began experimenting with nontraditional materials such as fiberglass, neon, vulcanized rubber, and lead. He combined his examination of these materials and their properties with an interest in the physical process of making sculpture.